Kristina Michaud knows she’s going to owe about $150,000 in student loans by the time she graduates from medical school.

She’s not worried about it.

“I’m very confident in the value of my education and the value of my degree and where it’s coming from,” said the second-year student at the University of New England College of Osteopathic Medicine in Biddeford. “I think it’s going to allow me to pursue opportunities that will allow me to pay back that debt with no problem.”

Michaud, who plans to be a pediatrician, attended UNE as an undergraduate, too. Including room and board, it costs about $47,000 a year for undergraduates. Medical school, including equipment fees, textbooks, health insurance and test fees – is about $79,000 a year.

That means being smart about money along the way, she said.

Even before the Kennebunk native got to UNE as an undergraduate she sought out scholarships, which cut her undergraduate tuition bill in half. After adding in work-study, help from her parents and about $7,000 of her own money earned from working summers as a nanny, she graduated with about $25,000 in student loan debt.

“I am a firm believer if you are willing to put in a little extra effort to find scholarships, you don’t have to be graduating with all this debt,” said Michaud, who serves as a student representative on the UNE board of trustees.

As a graduate student, she has to take out student loans, but is saving money by living at home and keeping her work-study job at the campus library. She also got a scholarship for $25,000 a year, knocking $100,000 off her bill.

“You just have to live frugally while you are in school and pay close attention to money and know that you’ll be working soon enough and making enough to pay those loans back,” she said. “Just remind yourself there’s a difference between having debt, and being in debt.”

– Noel K. Gallagher

As parents struggle to find ways to help pay for their children’s college, a federal parents-only loan program has ballooned in the last decade.

In 2011-12, the most recent year for which data are available, 20 percent of students reported using Parent PLUS loans to pay for college, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

That’s a 400 percent increase since 1989-90, when only 4 percent of students used the loan.

Unlike federal direct student loans, which limit borrowing to $31,000 for dependent undergraduates and $138,500 for graduate students, there is no limit on how much parents can borrow through Parent PLUS loans, which are intended to be a last-ditch option that fills the gap between all other aid and the total cost.

Schools use the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, to calculate the expected family contribution, commonly known as EFC.

The EFC does not necessarily represent what a family actually can afford to contribute, but schools use it to determine how much financial aid to provide each student.

It generally works out to about 15 percent of the family’s annual gross income, plus 5 percent of its non-retirement assets, plus 30 percent of any savings in the student’s name. For example, a family that earns $75,000 a year, has $50,000 in non-retirement assets and a $5,000 college savings account for the student would have an EFC of $15,250 per year.

On average, parents pay about $7,793 a year toward their child’s college costs, according to a survey by Sallie Mae.

But parents can find they simply don’t have the money.

The government issued almost $10 billion in Parent PLUS loans in 2013-14, up 26 percent from 10 years earlier, according to the College Board.

That $10 billion is about 10 percent of all federal student loans issued that year.

It has become so common that some schools include the expected PLUS loan amount in their financial aid letters. Intended to make college affordable to all, the loans have drawn criticism because they are easy to get and there is no mechanism to ensure that borrowers have the ability to repay.

“PLUS loans can be easier to get than private loans, but parents can find themselves over their heads if they don’t monitor their borrowing carefully,” said Bill Smith, who runs a Portland-based company advising students and parents on college financial aid. “It’s tricky because there are a lot of variables. PLUS or private loans can make college achievable, but people should go into them with their eyes open. Unfortunately a lot of borrowers don’t fully consider all the costs and implications.”

Not only are more parents using PLUS loans, but they are borrowing larger amounts of money. The average amount borrowed has jumped 211 percent, to $27,700 in 2011-12, from $8,900 in 1989-90, in inflation-adjusted figures.

Most worrisome is a near tripling of the default rate for PLUS loans three years after borrowing the funds. In 2013, 5.1 percent of 2010 borrowers were in default, compared to a 1.8 percent default rate for 2006 borrowers.

Like federal student loan debt, these loans cannot be discharged in bankruptcy.

Noel K. Gallagher can be contacted at 791-6387 or at:

ngallagher@pressherald.com

Seventh in an occasional series

First it was medical issues that left Carolyn Balsamo unable to work.

Then her husband had an unexpected stretch of unemployment. With four children to raise, mortgage payments were put off and they pulled their sons out of Boy Scout Webelos to save money. When Antonio Balsamo found work, he had to commute to Boston for the temporary contract position.

Saving for college wasn’t even on the radar.

“We never really had enough to save,” said Carolyn Balsamo.

In all the talk about the nation’s staggering $1 trillion in total student loan debt – higher than the total amount of U.S. credit card debt – one factor is often overlooked: the impact on parents’ finances.

Two-thirds of parents help pay for college, according to Sallie Mae, the nation’s largest private education lender. But the average amount saved in advance by parents is only $10,400, which barely puts a dent in what families are spending on colleges today.

Four years of tuition, fees, room and board at public four-year colleges costs about $75,000 today. At private nonprofit colleges, those costs are almost $165,000.

That means parents find other ways to pay, by dipping into income and savings or borrowing the money. An online poll in March by investment planning company T. Rowe Price found that half of parents said they would be willing to delay retirement, work more or take on a second job to pay for their children’s college education.

College adviser Bill Smith said parents don’t save enough because of the “ostrich effect.”

“I think for a lot of people, college is one of these big expenses, and everyone knows it’s a big expense, and it’s hard to wrap their heads around it,” said Smith, who runs ScholarFits, a Portland-based company advising students and parents on college financial aid.

“People don’t think about it as early and as systematically as I think is helpful for them,” Smith said.

The recession amplified the problem for both parents and children.

“We’re seeing a serious shrinkage in what parents are contributing,” said Marie O’Malley, senior director of consumer research at Sallie Mae. The company annually surveys 800 undergraduates and 800 parents of undergraduates on how they paid for college during the previous academic year.

In recent years, the polls found that families have spent about $21,000 a year for college, down from a peak of $24,097 in 2009-10, just as the recession struck.

Families told Sallie Mae they spend less on college, despite rising tuition, because they are cutting costs by having students live at home, start college at a cheaper community college or attend an in-state school, she said.

O’Malley said the belt-tightening is directly tied to the recession.

“Whatever they had planned to use from their savings or investments just wasn’t there, or they lost money or lost income from job losses and had to dip into those college savings,” she said.

PARENTS FORCED TO BORROW

Even parents who save for college can find themselves short when the tuition bill arrives.

While most parents use income and savings to pay for college costs, about 10 percent have to borrow money, according to the Sallie Mae study.

They borrow the money from a range of sources, from federal parent-only loans known as Parent PLUS loans, to credit cards and retirement accounts. That can add up to more debt than the students themselves take on. Maine college graduates carry an average of almost $30,000 in debt, the seventh-highest amount in the nation.

“The student loan debt crisis people talk about may be real, but for many people it’s a parent or family situation,” Smith said.

And that can be stressful because parents are trying to balance the desire to provide their child with the best possible education with the pressure of taking on a realistic amount of debt.

Tom Robustelli, a certified public accountant based in Lewiston, recommends that parents and students start the college search by figuring out what they can afford, then select colleges within that range. If parents let their children just pick out a dream college, the parents and students could get squeezed financially.

“The dynamic is that most parents want the absolutely best for their kids and they want them to reach for their dreams,” said Robustelli. “The reality is you start shopping around for schools and the sticker shock sets in.”

It happened to him when his daughter was accepted at George Washington University, where tuition was $58,000 a year.

“It was the toughest thing I ever did. I had to look her in the eye and say we can’t afford that,” said Robustelli. She immediately suggested taking out student loans to pay for it, an idea he rejected.

“Now that she’s out of school, I think she’s very grateful that she didn’t end up $200,000 in debt,” he said.

LESS TIME TO PAY BACK LOANS

The Balsamos wound up taking out a home equity line of credit on their Saco home to help pay for their daughter’s tuition at a private Pennsylvania college, leaving the family about $35,000 in debt.

Victoria Balsamo graduated this May with a psychology degree and lives at home while looking for work as a counselor.

But the college debt, some of it in student loans, makes it hard for her to move forward, her mother said.

“She wants to find work as a caseworker, but she needs a car to do that. But she doesn’t have one and she can only get one if she borrows the money from us,” Balsamo said. “But it’s a Catch-22 because she says she doesn’t want to owe any more money.”

The Balsamos would like to help her, but with four children between 13 and 22, that means they are looking at 12 straight years of college-age children. They’re paying the interest on the home equity line, but may need to tap into that to help some of their other children with college costs.

To save money, their 18-year-old son, Robert, plans to live at home next year while studying music at the University of Southern Maine. He got some scholarship and grant money, but he’s already taken out student loans. Their 17-year-old hopes to join the military and their 13-year-old dreams of opening up an auto body shop someday, she said.

Parents taking on loans and borrowing against assets need to be cautious since they have less time and opportunity than students to pay back debt, financial experts say.

“You can’t get a loan for retirement,” said Robustelli, who also warns clients not to tap into a poorly funded 401(k) retirement account.

“I think the first thing parents should be concerned about is their own retirement. If they’re not doing that, they have no business raiding those funds,” Robustelli said. “Maybe you could strike a balance, like reducing contributions to a 401(k). That’s reasonable.”

According to Sallie Mae, 7 percent of families said they withdrew an average of $8,870 from their retirement accounts, while 1 percent reported taking out loans against them, for an average amount of $5,062.

FINDING WAYS TO CUT EXPENSES

For Nicole Marsten, changing financial circumstances caught her up short now that it’s time to consider college costs for her 16-year-old son, Noah, who will be a senior next fall at Deering High School in Portland. As a single mother, she couldn’t save anything for his college.

Today, she’s married and works as a senior compliance officer at insurance company Unum, and the family makes too much money to qualify for any financial aid.

“It’s crazy. The system seems to penalize you for making choices when you can’t save,” Marsten said, adding that she’s opened a college savings account for her 9-year-old son. “Now I make a good living, and we’re looking at having to dish out a lot of money.”

Some colleges Noah was considering would have cost more than $40,000 a year.

“Where in the hell does someone think I’m going to pull that off? That is not something I have,” Marsten said.

But she also doesn’t want him taking on a large amount of student debt.

That means a reality check. At the moment, the plan is for the family to cut college costs by having Noah attend USM and live at home.

Just as the recession turned out-of-state vacations into local stay-cations, the education equivalent is deciding to live at home, go to school locally or go to a community college first.

Gianna Marr, director of the financial aid office at the University of Maine in Orono, said her office is flooded with calls in March, April and May, as parents seek help calculating costs and explore borrowing options.

A common thread is parents who haven’t saved enough money.

Sallie Mae found that among the roughly 50 percent of parents who haven’t saved anything for college, 61 percent said it was because they didn’t have enough money to do it. Even for families earning more than $100,000 a year, 45 percent said they didn’t have enough money to save for college.

“We’re not being a good nation of savers, whether it’s for retirement or our children’s college education,” Marr said. “That really puts pressure on students to pay their own way through college.”

Despite tax advantages for some college savings plans, about half the families saving for college just tuck the money into a general savings account, and 23 percent use a checking account, according to a Sallie Mae survey.

Only 27 percent used 529 college savings accounts, which many financial planners recommend because of the tax advantages. Parents control how money in a 529 plan is invested, and the fund grows tax-free until money is withdrawn tax-free for educational purposes. If the intended recipient doesn’t use the money, the fund can be transfered to another qualifying family member or a 10 percent tax penalty can be paid on withdrawal.

Since they were created in 1997, 529s have become increasingly popular. There were 12.1 million 529 savings accounts in the United States at the end of 2014, up 4.1 percent from the year before, according to the College Savings Plan Network. The plans held a record level of $247.9 billion in assets, almost double the $133.4 billion in 2009.

But the group’s year-end report noted that the average balance was $20,474 – about the cost of a single year at a public four-year university.

POSITIVE INFLUENCES ON SAVING

In Maine, the Harold Alfond Foundation automatically awards $500 grants to all babies born as Maine residents for the child’s NextGen 529 college savings account.

Once an account is established, parents can get annual tax deductions for the first $250 contributed each year, and the Finance Authority of Maine gives parents a 50 percent matching grant on the first $200 each year.

And the way parents save can influence how much they save, the Sallie Mae survey found. The average total savings for families using 529 plans was $11,590, compared to $3,419 saved in savings accounts.

Even with savings, many families find they need to pull money from many sources.

Susan Folsom said she’s a saver and a planner, and she’s passing that on to her two sons, 12-year-old T.J. and 9-year-old Wyatt. They both know they’re going to college and regularly put aside money from odd jobs for their own college funds while their parents put money into separate college funds.

“We started saving when they were born,” said Folsom, a counselor at Gardiner Area High School. It’s not the same as when she went to college and her parents just “wrote the checks.”

“I was very fortunate, and I was not able to put away enough for today’s college. They will need aid,” she said, as the trio walked through a college fair hosted by the Portland Sea Dogs.

Folsom said she didn’t mind her sons having to take out some student loans.

“They will take their education very seriously because they will have had a hand in it,” she said.

BILLERICA, Mass. — Something that was in outer space now calls Billerica Memorial High School home.

A balloon, along with a GPS tracking device and a GoPro camera, briefly reached outer space on June 5, rising almost 90,000 feet before the balloon popped. Billerica Memorial High School seniors in engineering design, who had graduated a few days earlier, were thrilled to meet their altitude goal.

“They were so excited about it, and ending with them on that note was perfect,” said Christine Tewksbury, who taught the science course with Matthew Flood. “It was the most exciting, most fun day I’ve had in my 10 years of teaching.”

Flood knows a Windham, N.H., high school teacher who has conducted these balloon experiments, and decided to incorporate the project into Billerica’s course. The teachers received a $1,600 Billerica Partners for Education grant, which covered everything: the helium, balloon, parachute, GPS, GoPro and more.

The 26 engineering students were the “driving force behind the class project,” Flood said. They researched the experiment and designed the successful apparatus.

They connected the balloon to a box with the GPS, which sent them the balloon’s position and altitude every two minutes. The GoPro took photos every 10 seconds. A microcomputer measured air temperature, pressure, humidity and light. They also included a buzzer to find the contraption when it landed.

Instead of releasing the balloon in Billerica, which would get tricky descending over Boston and near airplanes at Logan airport, the students traveled up to New Hampshire’s Keene High School away from traffic June 5. The 6-foot diameter balloon rose for more than two hours, expanding to 28 feet when it popped at 88,688 feet, according to the GPS calculation; the edge of outer space is 65,000 feet.

The balloon reached this maximum height over Goffstown. Outer space temperature: minus 57 degrees Fahrenheit.Once the balloon popped, it came rocketing down, with a maximum speed of 69 mph; it even dropped 50,000 feet in four minutes.

They were concerned it would land on Interstate 93 in Manchester, N.H., instead of a suburban area.

“We wanted some breathing room in the country, but it was dropping so rapidly,” Flood said. “Luckily, the parachute eventually did catch, and it began to slow down. Thankfully, it ended up in the dead end of a community.”

The GPS told them to head to Hooksett, N.H., a bit north of Manchester. The balloon was in the woods at the edge of a neighborhood, which was the perfect location, they said.

The apparatus traveled 63.8 miles. “What an adventure today turned out to be!” tweeted the Billerica Memorial High School’s physics account.

BRUNSWICK — Callie Ferguson shut the trunk of her Honda CR-V packed with the last load of clothes and other odds and ends, a trunk of towels and a mug of pens, from her room at 11 Potter St.

She had thought that moving out of the house she shared with four of her classmates would be the hardest part about leaving Bowdoin College, but since graduation, living there hadn’t been the same.

Everyone was either in and out, or had left for good. Their bodies and belongings gone from the house, a woody scent they hadn’t smelled since they moved in returned. The old desks and bureaus, lived-in couches and chairs, most of which had been there when the friends moved in, now sat bare of books or clothes or picture frames, making the patchwork of patterned wallpaper throughout the house pop.

Most of the housemates weren’t going far. Four of them got jobs in the Portland area and decided to live together on Munjoy Hill.

But their move-in date was two weeks after they had to be out of the house on Potter Street, forcing them to find couches to crash on and somewhere to store their stuff, leaving them in limbo between the end of college and the start of their careers.

Their last day in the house, a Saturday, Ferguson was happy to have to go to work.

After packing up her car, she headed to Allagash Brewing Co. in Portland, where she had started full-time three weeks earlier, giving tours and beer tastings. “It’s the only routine that I have,” she said.

Ferguson and two of her housemates had been friends since their freshman year, when they all lived in the same dorm. One of them, Oriana Farnham, played on the Ultimate Frisbee team, where she met the other two housemates.

All five lived together their sophomore year, but went separate ways as juniors, when several of them spent semesters abroad.

Molly Sun, one of the Frisbee players, lived in the off-campus house on Potter Street that year with teammates who were seniors, so she got first dibs on taking over the place. She sent an email to her sophomore year housemates inviting them to move in with her.

A group of women’s lacrosse players and a couple of other seniors lived in houses on the street, right across from campus, but their most prominent neighbor was next door.

“The senator is in,” they’d tell one another when someone spotted Angus King back home from Washington.

Although the housemates never got to know him, they talked about him as if they did. Their house is said to be haunted by King’s ex-wife’s mother, since a ceiling light crashed beside the head of someone sleeping in Sun’s room.

“She likes empowered women, so we’ve been fine,” Sun said, though she slept with her feet on the opposite side of the bed.

Sun, who starts her job as a health analyst in Portland in July, was the first to leave the house, then Emily Tucker, who will be working on a wind energy project and writing for a magazine in West Virginia, where the others are already planning a road trip.

Nina Underman went home to Indiana for her sister’s high school graduation and returned with time to spare before starting work as a business analyst for Maine Health in July.

Farnham, whose family lives in Germany, has mostly stayed at Potter Street, aside from some time spent at her grandmother’s house in Alfred. When Ferguson went to work that day, she was left with the last of the cleaning.

Remnants from parties past had already come down – the “Happy Birthday” banner that hung on the living room wall and the messages written on the chalkboard in the kitchen, erased and replaced with a to-do list.

Farnham dragged rugs from the common areas outside to shake them out and sweep the floors beneath them.

“I don’t even remember if these rugs are ours or came with the house,” she said.

For the week prior, Farnham had been traveling the state training for her job as a paralegal with Pine Tree Legal Assistance. Her only experience with the law before had been watching “The Good Wife,” and she was exhausted from the onslaught of information. It would be nice to settle in their new place, she said. “I wish that we were going right now.”

Farnham hadn’t felt like a college student for a while before she graduated. Living off-campus and hanging out mostly with her housemates, she, like Ferguson, thought leaving Potter Street would be more emotional than receiving her diploma.

“I had been really apathetic,” she said about going into commencement.

But she got a surprise marching around the Bowdoin quad in her cap and gown, seeing all the professors she’d had over the years and alumni lined up and looking on. She cried twice during the ceremony.

Since then, her focus has been on finding an apartment in Portland and buying a car to get to her new job. When Sun was on her way out of the house for the last time, they only had time for a quick hug.

That was weeks ago, and Farnham was still there. Wiping the stove with a sponge, she picked up a tea kettle and put it down again, unsure whether it belonged to a housemate or the house.

“The goodbye is really drawn out,” she said.

SKOWHEGAN — Letters have been sent to the state education commissioner, the state Board of Education, the Skowhegan-based School Administrative District 54 school board and to the Maine Press Association.

The letters say the same thing: Please stop using the word “Indians” when referring to Skowhegan Area High School sports teams.

On June 16, a complaint was filed with the Maine Human Rights Commission by Maulian Smith, of the Penobscot tribe. The complaint alleges discrimination by the SAD 54 school board and the superintendent during a public meeting on the mascot issue.

The controversial question may have reached its apex in public last month when the school board voted to keep the Indians name, making Skowhegan the last high school in the state to have imagery that Maine’s Indians have asked to be removed. But behind the scenes the struggle is continuing as opponents of the mascot name seek different ways of pushing for change.

Doctors, lawyers, educators and business leaders have called on the school district to drop the name because they say it is offensive to the very people it is meant to honor – Maine Indian tribes.

Others in the community, including many members of the SAD 54 board, are holding fast to their belief that keeping the Indians mascot name is their heritage, their way of channeling the power and strength of the people who first settled on the banks of the Kennebec River, which runs through Skowhegan.

BOTH SIDES OF ISSUE DIG IN

Neither side is budging in a debate that has turned ugly in the past year, with insults, intimidation and charges of racism.

“As long as they continue, I will continue,” said Harold Bigelow, of Skowhegan, a vocal supporter of keeping the name who was elected to the school board June 9. “As long as they continue – that’s not a problem – that’s why I joined the school board.”

Bigelow said the school board vote in May to keep the name should be the final word on the matter.

“I think the town spoke and the vote was fair and I think it surprised a lot of people, but I had faith in it,” Bigelow said. “I believe that there is nothing they won’t try. I think that they have enough problems on the reservation and in their own lives. Why are they pursuing this? It’s not an issue as far as I’m concerned.”

American Indians in Maine, not all of whom live on a reservation, see it differently. So do many non-Indians who support them.

Members of Maine’s tribes say use of the name and related images is an insult to their heritage and an affront to the history of the region where tribal members were slaughtered and forced to move from their ancestral home so white Europeans could settle the land and enjoy the abundance it offered.

“While we understand that well-meaning folks truly believe they are honoring our people with these images, we do not feel honored and want their use to be discontinued,” Kirk Francis, chief of the Penobscot Nation, wrote in a letter to the SAD 54 school board.

Francis said “sports team mascots and other imagery … are offensive to and objectify Native people.”

In an 11-9 vote in May, the school board decided to keep the Indians mascot after public forums with the four tribes of the Wabanaki confederation and residents who support and oppose changing the name.

The rallying cry from Indians has been: “We are people. We are still here. We are not mascots.”

MEDIA OUTREACH BY EDUCATOR

Ed Rice, an author and adjunct instructor at the New England School of Communications and Husson University, sent a letter in May to members of the Maine Press Association asking newspapers and broadcasters across the state to stop using the Indians nickname when covering Skowhegan sports. Rice was behind the renewed effort in Skowhegan and has pushed for removal of similar Indian imagery at other schools in the state.

The press association declined to take a stance on the issue, saying it was beyond the scope of its mission, but said it would include Rice’s comments in a future newsletter for member media outlets.

“As the author of ‘Baseball’s First Indian,’ I’ve fought for years to see the Cleveland nickname and mascot ‘Chief Wahoo’ dropped because these do not honor Penobscot tribesman Louis Sockalexis,” Rice wrote to the press association. “I’ve been involved, since the symposium I helped to create in 2010 with the Maine Indian Tribal State Commission, to help eradicate these nicknames and mascots in my home state.”

Rice said the decision by some media outlets to stop using the name “Redskins” when referring to the NFL team from Washington, D.C., is a good start. Now, he said, he wants Maine media to stop using Indians as well.

Scott Monroe, managing editor of the Morning Sentinel and the Kennebec Journal, said the newspapers are “aware of the request” regarding the Indians name “and will certainly take it into careful consideration.”

The newspapers “do not have any official policy regarding use of the name ‘Redskins,’ but we did decide last year to avoid use of the name whenever possible in stories that refer to the Washington NFL team. Our thinking is that particular name is no different from any number of other ethnic slurs that are unsuitable for publication.”

NAACP CHAPTER BACKS NAME CHANGE

It’s been a year since Rice helped renew scrutiny on use of Indian imagery and names for sports mascots at Maine high schools.

Since that story published by the Morning Sentinel in May 2014, the focus has shifted to the last high school in the state to consider dropping Indian mascots – Skowhegan Area High School. There have been published reports of meetings, blog and social media entries, television reports and a statement from the Bangor office of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Michael Alpert, president of the Greater Bangor Area NAACP, said in February that his organization is dedicated to “universal civil rights and to the eradication of all forms of racism” – including use of the Indian mascot, which he called a symbol of racism. He said continued use of the Indian mascot degrades the community.

Alpert recently reaffirmed the Bangor chapter’s intentions, saying that his group supports the tribes and is disappointed in the SAD 54 school board vote.

“We would like to work with the tribes and the school board and the Skowhegan community to find a better resolution,” Alpert said. “I feel that it’s mistaken to have that kind of emblem for a school.”

Alpert noted that Skowhegan is near the site of one of the worst massacres of tribal people at Old Point, in what is now Madison, in 1724.

“That needs to be remembered,” he said.

When Emmanuel Caulk was named chief of Portland’s schools in 2012, the district was just emerging from a disastrous financial scandal that forced out a previous superintendent and prompted a major shakeup of policies and procedures.

The school board at that time wanted a superintendent with experience in urban schools who would build community ties and refocus on core issues, officials said. They chose Caulk, who was working in Philadelphia as an assistant superintendent in charge of a division with 36 schools and 16,500 students, more than twice Portland’s enrollment of roughly 7,000.

Three years later, Caulk is leaving Portland to be superintendent for Fayette County Public Schools in Kentucky, a system with 40,000 students.

During his time in Portland, supporters say, Caulk established important new ties to the business community and improved community outreach, while using data-driven metrics to measure student achievement. But critics say some of his outreach initiatives were only distractions that didn’t directly improve education. They also note that test scores have not improved across all grades, and that he had to withdraw a “virtual school” plan after criticism.

“Certainly (Caulk) has taken a lot of things we discussed and started and really brought them to fruition,” said school board Chairwoman Sarah Thompson. She cited the board’s work on a comprehensive plan for the school system, a multi-year budgeting process and the creation of an independent education foundation to raise funds for the district.

“I think he brought a different approach to superintendent than previous superintendents. Some people think it was good, some thought it was bad. Different superintendents have different styles,” she said.

As for the next superintendent, Thompson said the board needs to hire someone with a “style that fits into what Portland wants. Even though we’re a big city in Maine, we’re a very close community.”

Caulk’s time in Portland has been marked by tight budgets and a changing landscape that included a new charter school in town and a series of education reforms enacted by Gov. Paul LePage’s administration. Those reforms forced school districts across the state to overhaul classrooms to align with Common Core standards, adopt new proficiency-based graduation standards and, in Portland’s case, deal with a shrinking state subsidy.

NOT SURPRISED BY EARLY EXIT

Caulk did not return calls for comment Sunday, but he had issued a statement last week when it was announced that he was a finalist for the Kentucky job. “I will miss Portland, but I’m eager to take on a new career challenge that represents an opportunity for me personally and professionally,” he said.

Board members said they knew when they hired Caulk that he might leave after his first contract term, which was originally due to expire this year but was extended twice by the board until June 2019. And that may happen again with his successor, said Ed Bryan, former school board chairman and part of the team that hired Caulk.

The board purposely launched a national search in 2012 to find someone with experience in urban schools, something they didn’t think they could find in Maine, Bryan said.

“We knew if we hired a rock star there was a good chance they wouldn’t stay very long. The job is so difficult, so multifaceted, it’s almost set up for failure,” Bryan said. “The decision the school board now faces is, do we go out again on a national search, and risk losing someone in three years since we are an attractive first step for someone looking for that first school district experience?”

Among the “urban” characteristics that shape Portland schools, officials said, is a high poverty rate among families and a large number of non-native English speakers.

Portland is the state’s largest school district, and 58 percent of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, an indicator of poverty, compared with the statewide average of 47 percent. Twenty-five percent are English language learners, who need additional resources, compared with a statewide average of 3 percent. The dropout rate is 3.2 percent, compared with 2.7 percent statewide.

Thompson said she thought the board should launch a national search again. “Portland deserves the best (either from) here or in another state,” she said.

UPON ARRIVAL, A BUDGET CRUNCH

When he arrived in August 2012, Caulk immediately faced significant budget issues.

The governor issued a curtailment order in December and shifted teacher retirement costs from the state to local districts, adding $1.5 million in spending to Portland’s school budget. Caulk also had to add $1.7 million in catch-up teacher raises in that first budget, and account for an unknown number of students from the district who would attend Baxter Academy for Technology and Science, a new charter school in Portland.

That $98.3 million budget cut 36 teacher positions and seventh-grade sports, despite being $4.7 million higher than the previous year’s budget and requiring a 3.7 percent increase in the school portion of the property tax.

Many of those positions and the sports programs were restored the next year, and in his most recent budget, 17 positions were added. Over his three years, Caulk increased the school budget by nearly $9 million, from $94.2 million under former Superintendent James Morse to the $103 million budget approved by voters this spring.

At the same time, enrollment remained steady at around 7,000 students. The district has 1,248 employees, with 660 teachers and 160 education technicians.

ANALYZING STUDENT PROGRESS DATA

Former board members and colleagues said they are sorry that Caulk is leaving.

Like Thompson, City Councilor Justin Costa said Caulk moved the district forward, but served during a time when the superintendent was finishing work initiated by the board or previous superintendents.

“As superintendent, he followed through on those things,” said Costa, a former school board member. “His role has been more about refocusing.”

“I’m personally disappointed that he’s leaving as soon as he is,” said Peter Eglinton, former chief operations officer and a former school board member.

“I think the district benefited from his being with us. He brought a perspective that was different and a style that was confident and reform-minded. He was not afraid of questioning the way things were done,” Eglinton said.

Eglinton and the other top administration officials all resigned at various times in the past year, creating a complete turnover in Caulk’s top staff. Among the resignations were the top academic, finance, human relations and transportation officers. Exiting staffers said they were leaving for better opportunities or personal reasons.

Several school officials noted that most of Caulk’s initiatives were related to building ties to the community, adding avenues of communication or using data to measure progress.

The state compiles extensive education data and makes it available through its online data warehouse, and in recent years the Maine Department of Education launched annual report cards for every school in the state, which many educators found controversial.

Soon after the state’s report card was launched, Caulk introduced a “district scorecard” with much of the same testing data, plus additional measurements.

Caulk had already made a point of sharing data internally with school leaders, Eglinton and Bryan both noted.

“Early in his tenure he met with each principal of the schools and had them review the student data with him,” Eglinton said. The data had always been available, but reviewing it personally with the principals sent a signal about Caulk’s priorities, he said.

“Data was not just reported, but evaluated,” he said. “And students were the primary objective.”

STRENGTHENING COMMUNITY TIES

Building up the district’s reputation with the local business and philanthropic community was behind several of Caulk’s initiatives, Bryan said.

“In Philadelphia he really relied on corporate partners, and he saw there was a gap here. He reached out and he started to build those relationships,” said Bryan, who serves as vice president of the Portland Education Foundation, which raises outside funds for the district.

The board praised Caulk for starting a book club, speaking at the Chamber of Commerce’s monthly Eggs and Issues breakfast, noting student and teacher accomplishments during board meetings, starting an online newsletter, and launching an online video series highlighting certain district programs. He also initiated an annual online survey of parents, and held public meetings and launched online tools to explain the school budget process.

The board also praised Caulk for his “Principal for a Day” program, when local executives come to the schools for a day. The program has led to sponsorship of the district’s first STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) exposition, and a donation of $18,000 in lab equipment from Idexx Laboratories.

Some of those efforts won’t pay off for years, Bryan said.

“He’s laying the groundwork for what’s to come,” said Bryan, noting that there have already been some successes. For example, when a local philanthropic group wanted to invest $100,000 in the schools, it called Caulk and asked how he would use it. He immediately said it would go to summer school programs in three schools, Bryan said. That clear-cut answer, with a specific program, is welcomed by donors, he said.

“We have had some relationships with the community, as a district, that have been challenging at times,” said Thompson, the board chairwoman. “(Caulk) did a fantastic job bringing them into the fold. I think that is key, having a happy community.”

Some critics of the school district said those initiatives don’t reflect the right priorities.

“I don’t think it’s totally Manny’s fault, but I don’t think the system has come up with any real framework for how to transform the school department into a place that is focused on education,” said resident Steven Scharf, a regular at school board meetings who often urges fiscal restraint.

“All these other things that come along are distractions,” he said of the community outreach efforts.

Some of the district’s biggest changes in recent years came outside the classroom. The system built a new central kitchen, purchased a new central office downtown, and moved the West School and adult education classes out of a substandard building and into leased space.

Academically, Caulk launched innovations, mostly for small numbers of students or individual schools. Among them was introducing a Spanish immersion classroom at one elementary school and an Arabic language class at one high school. The district’s pre-K program expanded slightly from 83 students to about 100 students last year. An elementary school adopted International Baccalaureate standards, and a high school adopted an international focus.

SOME MISSTEPS AMID INNOVATIONS

Caulk also had some missteps, including having to reissue the district scorecard after a contractor’s errors indicated vast test score improvements in some areas that were incorrect. He also had to withdraw his plan to launch a virtual school within the district, aimed at luring back charter school students, after criticism from the state commissioner of education and the city’s mayor.

Parent Tim Rozan said he wants the district to have a sharper focus on districtwide academic initiatives to improve college and career readiness, instead of “education bandwagon” ideas like early start times, Spanish immersion, launching a new website and the district scorecard.

“Bottom line, (Caulk) had absolutely no K-12 plan – either academic, counseling or career or college prep – and refused to press for individual skill achievement,” Rozan said. “I don’t see a plan.”

Academically, student test score trends in recent years have been mixed.

Districtwide scores on the New England Common Assessment Program, for grades 3-8, have improved across the board since 2010, while standardized test scores for grades 9-12, the Maine High School Assessment, have decreased across the board.

Individual schools have markedly different results.

In elementary school math scores, for example, East End Elementary School went from 25 percent of students scoring proficient or better in 2010 to 42 percent in 2013, and Riverton and Presumpscot schools also showed gains. Every other elementary school showed lower scores over the same period.

Complete test score data by school are available at portlandschools.org.

PLEASED WITH DISTRICT’S DIRECTION

Former chief academic officer David Galin said the district needs top leadership that will continue to develop strategic plans to reach measurable goals, with clear benchmarks along the way.

“I believe strongly that if you set rigorous goals, have really solid instruction and really strong support for students, you can get so many students to higher levels academically. That’s the hard work. It happens in the classroom.”

Currently, the district regularly cites Caulk’s goal of making the district “the best small urban school district in the country by 2017″ in news releases and public statements. The district scorecard notes goals of improving test scores to higher percentages, but Galin suggested that itself isn’t a goal, just an indicator of progress toward a goal.

Thompson said the district’s comprehensive plan, completed in 2011, needs updating, but remains the road map for future superintendents.

“I think this board is not disappointed with the direction we are (going) in,” she said. “There may have been some things that Manny put a personal touch on that may change, but the general course is not going to change.”

UNITY — Unity College President Stephen Mulkey intends step down from the position and retire at the end of the year.

The Unity Board of Trustees announced Mulkey’s retirement in a news release posted on the school’s website. His retirement will be effective Dec. 31. Mulkey was hired as Unity’s president in 2011 and led the school when the trustees voted in 2012 to become the first U.S. college to divest its endowment portfolio of fossil fuels.

Trustees “reluctantly” accepted Mulkey’s resignation and will work with the school administration to craft a transition plan, according to the release.

In a written statement, board of trustees Chairman Bruce Nickerson extended the board’s “profound gratitude and appreciation.”

“Stephen has not only elevated the profile of our college, but he has built a solid infrastructure, stabilized enrollment while attracting a bright, energetic and engaged student body, made significant gains in fundraising, and implemented visible improvements to our campus,” Nickerson added.

Mulkey is the 17th president of the college. He holds a bachelor’s degree in forestry, fisheries and wildlife and a master’s degree in biology and ecology from the University of Missouri and a holds a doctorate in biology and ecology from the University of Pennsylvania. The college is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year.

Mulkey is well-known for his research on ecosystems and is recognized for his research and program development related to climate change, which he has called “the greatest challenge of our time in what will be known as the environmental century.”

Along with working on the board of trustees to unanimously vote to divest the college’s endowment from 200 fossil fuel companies, Mulkey also presided over three years of enrollment growth, led the effort to adopt sustainability science as a framework for the school’s entire curriculum, started renovation and modernization of the school’s teaching and research facilities and implemented construction of a fossil- fuel-free, suite-style residence building on campus.

“I wish to thank Stephen for reopening my eyes to the natural world and for all he and (his wife) Michele (Leavitt) have given of themselves to Unity and Unity College,” Nickerson said. “I commend them both on their stewardship. They will be leaving us far better than they found us.”

Portland’s school board decided Tuesday night to seek an interim superintendent to replace Emmanuel Caulk, who will leave Maine soon to become superintendent in Lexington, Kentucky.

Chairwoman Sarah Thompson said the board has chosen to hire a superintendent for one year, to enable the school department to take a methodical approach to finding a permanent replacement. An interim superintendent could be named as early as next week, she said.

Though Caulk has not indicated when his last day might be – he returned this week from his honeymoon – Thompson said he has told her that he must be in Kentucky by the start of that district’s school year, Aug.12.

Thompson said the board could appoint an interim superintendent from within the district or hire someone such as a retired superintendent to fill the post.

The Fayette Kentucky County Board of Education voted unanimously Saturday to hire Caulk to lead the 40,000-student public school system.

The Portland Board of Education plans to name an interim superintendent next week.

A special meeting of the board has been scheduled for 6 p.m. Tuesday in Room 250 of Casco Bay High School, the school district said in a statement Thursday. The board will meet privately before reconvening in public to vote on the appointment.

Chairwoman Sarah Thompson said the board will select an interim superintendent to replace Emmanuel Caulk, who has been superintendent since 2012 and was hired last weekend to lead the 40,000-student public school system in Lexington, Kentucky. Caulk is expected to leave Maine soon and start his new job by Aug. 12.

Caulk got married this month and has family ties to Kentucky.

In a previous interview, Thompson said the board could choose an interim superintendent from within the school department or seek a candidate – most likely a retired superintendent – through the Maine School Management Association.

“The board will set a timeline for a superintendent search,” Thompson said in a previous statement. “But, there is no need to rush. It is my belief that the best course would be for the board to appoint an interim superintendent for a year, during which time we would launch a national search for a new superintendent. That would give us the time to do a comprehensive search and find the best candidate for the job.”

Dennis Hoey can be contacted at 791-6365 or at:

dhoey@pressherald.com

For the third year in a row, and the fourth time in eight years, Scarborough voters are battling over school spending. And judging by high voter turnout and caustic comments on social media, the divided camps appear to be more impassioned than ever before.

A month ago, they soundly rejected a $43.8 million school budget for the fiscal year that started July 1. An impressive 20 percent of registered voters cast ballots, with the vast majority indicating on a nonbinding advisory question that it was too high.

Town voters will head to the polls again Tuesday to consider a $500,000 reduction that’s also expected to fail, since both sides have mounted opposition campaigns with dueling slogans, “Vote No, Too Low” and “Vote No, Still Too High.” Again, the advisory vote on whether the latest proposal is too high, too low or just right will inform the Town Council’s next steps.

Meanwhile, Scarborough’s neighbors in South Portland, Portland and beyond regularly approve larger school budgets with higher per-pupil costs that generate little consternation or controversy, draw low voter turnouts and usually require one referendum.

So what’s going on in Scarborough that makes passing a school budget an increasingly volatile process? Two major factors are rising property values and shrinking state education aid, which together are driving up property taxes.

Polarizing rhetoric has Scarborough’s schools at a precipice and fixed-income seniors on the verge of fleeing, especially if they have desirable ocean views. Communication blunders by school and town officials, combative social media websites and a shifting town culture have also contributed to the growing din.

“We’re dealing with the changing nature of Scarborough,” said Jean Marie Caterina, a town councilor. “We were a sleepy little town that has grown and changed over the years. We’ve had an influx of people with different values and different ideas about what people should get for their taxes.”

HIGH INTEREST, CHANGING NUMBERS

Interest in the school budget and Tuesday’s referendum was high heading into the July Fourth holiday weekend.

By Thursday afternoon, Town Clerk Tody Justice had handed out 1,037 absentee ballots and received 914 completed ballots, surpassing a record 888 absentee ballots cast during the June 9 school budget referendum.

Also on Thursday, Scarborough officials learned that the town will receive $4.6 million in state education aid this year – $884,890 more than expected and nearly the same as last year, according to the Maine Department of Education website. Town officials developed the school budget with a conservative $3.8 million aid estimate, in part because Gov. Paul LePage and the Legislature were so late in passing a biennial state budget.

The additional state aid has been earmarked for property tax relief, so the Town Council would have to decide to spend it otherwise.

The council approved the $500,000 or 1 percent school budget reduction after voters rejected the $43.8 million proposal that was up $1.8 million or 4.3 percent.

The vote was 1,719 to 1,408 against the initial 2015-16 school proposal. On a nonbinding companion question, 1,761 voters said the budget was too high, 619 said it was too low and 710 said it was just right.

With the initial school budget, the property tax rate for both municipal and school services would have increased 87 cents or 5.78 percent, from $15.10 to $15.97 per $1,000 of assessed value. That would have added $261 to the annual tax bill on a $300,000 home.

With a $500,000 reduction, the tax rate would increase 72 cents or 4.75 percent to $15.82 per $1,000, which would add $216 to the same tax bill.

That’s still too high for Councilor Edward Blaise. He initially sought a $2 million reduction but ultimately supported the $500,000 cut, along with councilors Shawn Babine, Peter Hayes and Chairwoman Jessica Holbrook. Caterina and William Donovan opposed the cut, and Katherine St. Clair was absent for the vote but had supported it at a previous meeting.

“Taxes are too high in the town of Scarborough, and every year they climb higher, and the big driver is the schools,” said Blaise, who has suggested repeatedly that the district’s teachers give up negotiated raises to save $616,000.

CONTRIBUTING FACTORS

A former IBM manager from Vermont who retired here 17 years ago, Blaise said the annual tax bill on his Higgins Beach home assessed at $820,000 has increased from about $3,500 when it was built in 1998 to more than $12,000 today.

But it’s not just his tax bill that troubles him.

“Taxes are too high for everybody,” Blaise said. “Taxes shouldn’t be going up more than 1.5 to 2 percent per year.”

And just because the state has reduced education aid doesn’t mean property taxpayers should make up the difference, even if the town’s property valuation has exploded in recent years, Blaise and other school spending critics said.

Since 2009, the town’s annual share of state education aid has fallen $1.7 million, from $6.3 million to $4.6 million, and the town’s valuation has increased $200 million, from $3.5 billion to $3.7 billion, because of commercial and residential development.

During the same period, enrollment in town schools has fallen from 3,355 to 3,110, according to the state education department. And still, the town’s per pupil cost in fiscal 2015 – $12,312 – was one of the lowest in Greater Portland and just above the state average, $12,056. The town’s median household income – $75,487 – and residents’ median age – 44.7 – also put Scarborough in the middle of the pack demographically.

Meanwhile, budget critics frequently point out that Scarborough’s annual tax levy for schools has increased $10.2 million in six years, from $28.1 million in fiscal 2011 to $38.3 million in fiscal 2016, after the $500,000 reduction. This year’s proposed levy is up $2.4 million or 6.8 percent from fiscal 2015.

‘CAN YOU DO THE SAME?’

Andrew Gwyer is one voter who expects school and town officials to do better. He’s semiretired after 23 years in the Navy and has two kids in town schools. He’s frustrated that the $10,000 annual tax bill on his $654,000 Higgins Beach home now eats up one-fifth of his yearly pension.

“I understand every year things get more expensive,” Gwyer said. “My question to the powers that be that drive me to make budget constraints is, ‘Can you do the same?’ ”

It doesn’t help when town or school officials talk down to agitated taxpayers, Gwyer said, or when the school department uses its emergency robocall system to encourage parents to support the school budget.

To promote open dialogue, Gwyer started a Facebook page in 2013 – “Concerned Taxpayers of Scarborough” – that’s one of three Web pages managed by local school budget critics. All have been busy this budget season.

Posts are strongly anti-tax, which is understandable in a town where three of its four state legislators are Republicans. Some commenters openly accuse town and school officials of corruption, question their intelligence or call for their removal.

“People tell me, ‘Thank you for giving us a voice. We used to just sit back and take it,’ ” Gwyer said.

SHOCKED BY ‘VITRIOL’

Stacey Neumann is among the voters who are fighting to preserve school funding. After the council approved the $500,000 reduction June 24, she started a private Facebook group to oppose the cut. In a few days, “Supporters of Scarborough Schools” had more than 1,100 members.

Neumann is a lawyer and mother of three whose eldest just finished kindergarten. She and her husband, Noah Perlut, a university professor, moved to Scarborough in 2009 for its schools. While they can afford a nearly $5,500 tax bill on their $339,000 home on Windsor Pines Drive, Neumann said she believes the town should find a way to help residents who truly can’t afford an increase.

Neumann made “Supporters of Scarborough Schools” a closed Facebook group because she saw inaccurate information on a similar open page, “Save Scarborough Schools.” She also wanted to avoid the negativity promoted by some budget critics, including a campaign sign that showed a pig vomiting money.

“Of all the issues to generate such vitriol, I was shocked,” Neumann said. “To view our kids as a burden is mind blowing to me. At some point I think you have to realize that when you vote down the school budget, you’re hurting kids.”

A Portland School Board member faces a charge of drunken driving after she was stopped in Scarborough and failed a field sobriety test, police said.

Jenna Vendil, 30, who is completing her sixth year on the board, was charged with operating a car under the influence of alcohol on June 27.

Vendil was driving a 2013 Chevrolet Cruze when she was spotted driving erratically by a Scarborough officer at 11:11 p.m., police said. She had just pulled out of the McDonald’s on Route 1 and was headed north. She was pulled over on the Interstate 295 connector, police said.

Vendil apparently was alone in the car, police said. She told police she was coming from a friend’s house.

Police would not release the results of a breath test pending her July 29 court date in Cumberland County Unified Criminal Court.

Vendil was elected to the School Board in 2009 and was selected as one of MaineToday Media’s 40 Under 40, a list of emerging young leaders in the state.

Vendil is completing her second term on the School Board representing District 1 and has taken out papers to run for a third term, although she has not submitted them yet.

Sarah Thompson, chairwoman of the School Board, said Vendil notified her and other board members last week about what happened.

“She has been very professional about the matter, taking ownership of the issue and letting board members know,” Thompson said Monday evening.

Thompson said she is unaware of any provisions in the City Charter or in School Board policy that would require action by board members. For now, she will leave it up to Vendil to decide how to proceed.

“It’s hard when you are in the public eye,” Thompson said. “People hold you to a higher standard.”

Vendil’s LinkedIn page lists her most recent position as director of field organizers for the Democratic Party in southern Maine during the last legislative races.

The School Board’s code of ethics, signed by each board member, makes no reference to personal behavior. It does say board members will uphold state law, but that is in the exercise of board duties.

A telephone message left for Vendil on Monday was not returned.

The School Board’s next regularly scheduled meeting is Tuesday night. The board will meet in executive session at 6 p.m. in Room 250 of Casco Bay High School. Thompson said the board will enter into public session at 6:30 p.m. and vote to appoint an interim superintendent of schools.

The appointment of an interim superintendent to replace outgoing Superintendent Emmanuel Caulk is the only item on the board’s agenda.

David Hench can be contacted at 791-6327 or at:

dhench@pressherald.com

Twitter: MaineHenchman

Dennis Hoey can be contacted at 791-6365 or at:

dhoey@pressherald.com

Twitter: DennisHoey

AUGUSTA — New report cards that use the numbers 1 through 4 instead of letters or a more traditional numerical system to indicate student performance could be coming to the city’s public elementary schools.

The new report cards for grades kindergarten to six would replace the current system of reporting individual student performance using a combination of the letters E, M, P and N and, in grades four through six, numerical grades such as 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s.

Donna Madore, assistant superintendent, said Augusta first tried updating its report cards in kindergarten to grade six in 2008. A new method of grading students based upon how they met standards in multiple areas was implemented in kindergarten to grade three in 2008. But school officials, following some criticism from parents, adopted a dual-grade reporting system for grades four to six that includes both the level to which they met standards in each skill area and a numerical grade, such as a 70.

“Numerical grades, that’s what people are used to. It’s what they experienced in school,” Madore said. “There was some push-back (in 2008). Some families didn’t really want (to change from) that. So in grades four to six, there has been dual reporting, saying whether each student meets or exceeds standards, and also giving a number grade, to make everyone happy. Now we’re looking at going completely standards-based, (kindergarten) through six. It’s time.”

Under the new proposal, students would be graded on how they master a number of skills in each subject area included on the report cards on a scale from 1 to 4 with 4 being the highest grade and 1 the lowest.

The proposed new system goes to the Augusta Board of Education for approval at a meeting starting at 7 p.m. Wednesday in council chambers at Augusta City Center.

Implementation of the new reporting methods is tied to the recent implementation of state legislation in 2013 that required Maine schools to convert to proficiency-based diploma standards. Those standards generally seek to measure and report what students have picked up and can demonstrate for skills in each subject area rather than their performance on class assignments such as homework or classroom participation.

The 1-to-4 grading system would take the place of the current, four-letter system of E, for exceeds standards, M for meets standards, P for partially meets standards and N for needs more time to meet standards.

The school system’s current kindergarten to grade six report cards, officials noted, also don’t line up with the curriculum that is based on mandated Maine Learning Results and Common Core standards. The new system would better line up with those standards. Madore said Augusta has aligned its curriculum to those standards already, but has not yet aligned its grade reporting system with them.

Madore said Augusta, if the school board approves the new report cards, would begin using them with the first trimester reporting period next school year.

She said the school system will hold open houses at which teachers will explain the expectations to parents. Forums will also likely be held at each elementary school to help inform parents about the new report cards and written information will also be made available to them.

The school board’s Curriculum and Education Committee voted 2-0 to forward the proposal to implement the new proficiency-based report cards to the full board for a vote.

Madore said the current, more traditional numerical grading system will remain in place, at least for now, for middle and high school students.

Portland’s schools will hold a free picnic for students and parents Wednesday at Deering Oaks.

The event, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., is part of the school district’s annual meals program, which provides healthy, consistent meals to kids 18 and younger during the school year and the summer.

When students are out of the classroom in the summer, the school department establishes 18 sites throughout the city where it distributes free lunch each day.

Part of the initiative this year includes additional learning opportunities for students at each site, such as science experiments, reading, art and games.

The picnic will include entertainment by the Circus Conservatory of America, the Portland Public Library Bookmobile, and Slugger the Sea Dog.

In case of rain, the event will be postponed until Thursday.

The picnic is part of an effort called Feeding Bodies & Minds, a collaboration between Portland Public Schools, Preble Street Maine Hunger Initiative, The Opportunity Alliance, Healthy Portland, 211 Maine and other organizations.

Portland has a new superintendent of schools, at least for the next year.

The Board of Education, after meeting privately in executive session for an hour, voted Tuesday evening to hire Jeanne Crocker as its interim superintendent.

Crocker, a former South Portland High School principal and longtime French and Spanish teacher who is now the Portland school district’s director of school management, will officially take over her duties Aug. 1.

Crocker will replace Superintendent Emmanuel Caulk, who will leave Maine at the end of the month to take a new job as superintendent of schools in Lexington, Kentucky.

She was hired to serve for one year. Her salary will be the same that Caulk has been earning – $138,875 a year.

The one-year appointment will give the school district the time it needs to conduct a comprehensive nationwide search to find Caulk’s permanent replacement.

Crocker, who graduated from Colby College in Waterville in 1976, has no intention of applying for the permanent position and plans to retire after her one year is up.

“I honestly can’t think of a better person right now for this position,” said board member Marnie Morrione. “She will be a wonderful person as we transition to a new superintendent. Some people view change as a scary time. I feel we can move along and not miss a beat.”

Crocker’s appointment was unanimously endorsed by the six board members who were present Tuesday evening. John Eder, Holly Seeliger and Stephanie Hatzenbuehler were unable to attend the special business meeting.

“We’re very happy to have such a qualified administrator able to step into this position,” Sarah Thompson, chairwoman of the board, said in a news release. “We expect the transition will be a smooth one because Jeanne has been working side by side with the current superintendent and will be able to guide the district along the solid trajectory of success that he has established.”

The 60-year-old Crocker, who lives in Scarborough, was hired by the Portland Public Schools in 2014 to serve as its first director of school management. Her primary job duty in that role has been to support and supervise the district’s school principals.

Crocker previously served as assistant executive director of the Maine Principals’ Association from 2011 to 2014 and was also an adjunct professor at the University of Southern Maine from 2012 to 2013.

Prior to that, Crocker spent 28 years at South Portland High School, where she served as principal for 13 years. She held that post from 1998 to 2011 and was named Maine’s High School Principal of the Year in 2003.

Crocker received a bachelor of arts degree in French and Spanish from Colby and a master’s degree in school administration in 1979 from USM.

During her career in education, Crocker taught French and Spanish at South Portland High School, Windham High School and Waterville High School.

Caulk, who got married in June, recently accepted a job as superintendent of the 40,000-student Fayette County Public Schools in Lexington, Kentucky. He was hired by the Portland Public Schools in 2012. He was under contract through 2019, but the board has accepted his resignation.

Jenna Vendil, the Portland Board of Education member who was charged with drunken driving last month, said she understands the seriousness of the allegations but promised to serve her constituents to the best of her ability until the case is resolved.

Vendil’s unexpected comments came Tuesday evening during a board meeting held to appoint an interim superintendent. Board members listened, but took no action, while Vendil read a prepared statement.

Vendil gave no indication that she will resign. She said it would be inappropriate for her to comment on the charges while the Cumberland County District Attorney’s Office is reviewing the case.

Vendil said she is prepared to give the city and her constituents a “one hundred percent” effort while the legal process plays itself out.

Vendil, 30, is completing her second three-year term on the board representing District 1 and has taken out papers to run for a third term in November. She has not turned in her nomination papers yet.

Vendil was elected to the board in 2009 and was selected as one of MaineToday Media’s 40 Under 40 – a list of emerging young leaders in the state.

She acknowledged while reading her statement that she was arrested June 27 on a charge of operating under the influence.

Scarborough police say Vendil was stopped by an officer who saw her driving erratically at 11:11 p.m. Police said Vendil, who was driving a 2013 Chevrolet Cruze, had just pulled out of the McDonald’s restaurant lot and was going north on Route 1 toward Interstate 295. Police said she failed a sobriety test.

Vendil, who was alone at the time, told police she was coming from a friend’s house. Police would not release the results of a breath test pending her court appearance July 29 in Cumberland County Unified Criminal Court.

For the second time in a month, Scarborough voters rejected the district’s 2015-2016 school budget, setting up a third vote on a new budget – most likely sometime later this summer.

Town Clerk Tody Justice reported late Tuesday that residents voted 3,584-496 to reject a proposed $43.3 million education budget.

In advisory questions intended to help town officials gauge voter sentiment, a majority indicated that the amount was too low. Justice said 2,047 felt the funding level was too low, 1,838 said it was too high and 177 said it was appropriate.

The outcome of the vote was expected following one on June 9 in which Scarborough residents turned down a $43.8 million education budget 1,719-1,408. In a non-binding expression of opinion then, 1,761 people said they thought the budget was too high, 619 said it was too low, and 710 said it was acceptable. That proposal called for a $1.8 million or 4.3 percent increase over this year’s $42 million budget.

The voters’ rejection led the Town Council to cut $500,000 from the spending plan for a second attempt at validation. That reduction spawned the formation of a new Facebook group, “Supporters of Scarborough Schools” to compel the town to restore the funds. Its slogan was “Vote No, Too Low.”

The defeat was fueled by strong anti-tax opposition, promoted on a Facebook page titled, “Concerned Taxpayers of Scarborough,” with the slogan “Vote No, Too High.”

That placed the budget being voted on Tuesday night on shaky ground. People who thought the budget was too high said they were going to vote against it, as did people who thought it was too low.

“There are other ways of doing this rather than just by increasing taxes,” said Judith Montgomery, a registered nurse, who has lived in Scarborough for 43 years. Approaching retirement age, Montgomery voted against the budget. “To increase the budget. That is not the way to go. What do we get in return? I no longer have children or grandchildren in the school system. What more do they want from me?”

But, Stacey Neumann, a mother of three young children, whose eldest just finished kindergarten started a private Facebook group “Supporters of Scarborough Schools.” Neumann says her group believes the proposed $43.8 million budget is too low.

“We believe the most recent result of the school budget vote indicates a re-commitment of our community to support and fund high quality schools for our children,” Neumman said. “Strong, well-funded schools provide great opportunities for our students, increase our property values and create a sense of community pride.”

The Town Council must wait at least 10 days to revise the budget before it is presented to voters again, according to a legal opinion from its attorney.

“If the voters do not validate the budget by July 1, the work of municipal government continues while the retry process is followed,” said Shana Cook Mueleer, an attorney for Bernstein Shur. “In the interim, the latest budget approved at a regional school unit budget meeting and submitted to voters for validation at a referendum is automatically considered the budget for operational expenses.”

That means that under state law, until the voters approve a new budget for the fiscal year that started July 1, the school district would continue to operate under the fiscal 2015 budget.

Voter turnout was high for a school vote, with 26 percent of the town’s 15,500 registered voters casting ballots. With the initial school budget, the property tax rate for both municipal and school services would have increased 87 cents or 5.78 percent, from $15.10 to $15.97 per $1,000 of assessed value. That would have added $261 to the annual tax bill on a $300,000 home.

With a $500,000 reduction, the tax rate would have increased 72 cents or 4.75 percent to $15.82 per $1,000, which would add $216 to the same tax bill.

Scarborough officials learned last week that the town will receive $4.6 million in state education aid this year – $884,890 more than expected and nearly the same as last year, according to the Maine Department of Education website. Town officials developed the school budget with a conservative $3.8 million aid estimate, in part because Gov. Paul LePage and the Legislature were so late in passing a biennial state budget.

However, the additional state aid has been earmarked for property tax relief, so the Town Council would have to decide to spend it otherwise.

This is the third year in a row that Scarborough has battled over its school budget through multiple referendums. The division stands in sharp contrast to most southern Maine towns, where a small fraction of the residents routinely vote to approve school budgets.

Scarborough’s budget tensions are in part of a result of rising coastal and commercial property values and shrinking state education aid, which together are driving up property taxes. Communication blunders by school and town officials, combative social media websites and a shifting town culture also have contributed to the growing din.

Offering online courses and improving marketing were part of a plan to rescue the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies presented by former students to the school’s board of directors Wednesday evening.

While no consensus was reached on whether to keep the school open, members of the group Save Salt left the meeting feeling “cautiously optimistic” that the 42-year-old nonprofit based in Portland might stay open.

The board announced last month that the school will close in September. Board members cited declining enrollment, a lack of an endowment fund and a lack of consistent fundraising as reasons for the decision.

A spokesperson for Save Salt said former students from across the country and world participated in Wednesday’s two-hour meeting – either in person or by telephone conference call.

Save Salt members said  the board indicated it would respond to Save Salt’s rescue plan July 17.

“We thought it was a productive meeting and while we didn’t get the assurances that we were hoping for, we left the meeting feeling cautiously optimistic,”  said Elyssa East, a former Salt Institute student who now teaches writing at New York University.

Board chairwoman Kimberly Curry declined to comment Wednesday evening.

Save Salt formed three weeks ago, just days after Salt’s board of directors announced the school, now located on Congress Street, would close.

The group’s plan calls for a number of significant changes to the way the Salt Institute conducts business, including offering online courses, hiring a full-time development person or grant writer to raise funds, and making improvements to the way the nonprofit school markets itself.

East said the plan calls for Salt Institute to go into “hibernation mode” for about a year, allowing the school to regroup and position itself financially for a rebound.

One idea to improve marketing would be to bring back the “iconic” recruitment posters that the school decided to discontinue in 2007.

Tavia Gilbert of Brooklyn, New York, and a Save Salt member, said the group conducted a survey and found that more than 40 percent of Salt students discovered the school via the “iconic Salt poster.” The posters contained photographs taken by Salt students and were gorgeous and compelling, alumni say.

“Posters were discontinued as an outreach vehicle years ago because of the expense,” Gilbert said in an email. “This should have been seen as an investment, not an expense, particularly if they were the primary tool for securing enrollment.”

The institute built its reputation by offering students a concentrated 15-week program that focused on documentary storytelling.

Students of Salt had been able to earn college credits in the past, but that opportunity has not been available for the last two years or so. The school typically enrolled 25 students each semester. Tuition is $9,890.

East, who lives in New York City, said in addition to former students who attended the meeting, alumni and board members from around the world offered opinions via phone.

Nelson Chan, a member of the board of directors, called in from Hong Kong. Amanda Waldroupe, a former student, listened in from Portland, Oregon.

“People beyond the state of Maine believe in Salt. It’s a Maine treasure,” East said.

OAKLAND — Town Manager Gary Bowman said he was shocked when the assessor broke the news this week that the town would owe about $170,000 more than it had planned for its share of the Regional School Unit 18 budget.

But as it turned out, the school district’s budget team, had mistakenly transposed figures for required additional local revenue for two of the district’s towns in an earlier version of the budget, making it appear that Oakland would pay less and Sidney more.

The mistake was caught after voters rejected a $34.7 million school budget in a ballot referendum in late May, and the figures were corrected in the $34.4 million budget ratified by voters on June 30. RSU 18 includes the towns of Oakland, Belgrade, Sidney, Rome and China.

But the mistake was never explained to Sidney and Oakland officials, who were using earlier projections to compute next year’s property tax rate.

As a result, the tax rate in Oakland is expected to increase from $14.75 per $1,000 worth of property to $15.40. Before, the town estimated that the town’s tax rate would increase to only $15.

The mix-up meant that voters were receiving inaccurate budget figures in the run-up to the second vote, according to Bowman. Oakland voters approved the budget in both rounds of voting, backing it 391-286 in the second vote on June 30.

The Town Council held a special meeting Wednesday afternoon with Superintendent Gary Smith and School Business Manager Bobbi Avery to get an explanation for the mistake. More than 20 people, including school budget opponents who campaigned to reject the spending plan, crowded into the council chambers.

Town Council Chairman Mike Perkins set the tone for the meeting.

“We are not here to beat up on anybody,” Perkins said. “All this is a fact-finding mission for us.”

Residents attending the special meeting Wednesday asked whether the mistake meant the budget vote was annulled and whether RSU 18 should find the $170,000 in its own budget instead of having Oakland pay.

Council Chairman Perkins said the council could not annul or challenge the results of the referendum other than through judicial intervention. Proving a case would be a “daunting task” that would cost an “astronomical amount of money,” and the council didn’t intend to start legal action, Perkins said. Residents would need to lobby the school board if they wanted more action on the budget, Perkins added.

Smith, speaking to the council, explained that the error was discovered by Sidney resident and Selectman Tim Russell after voters defeated the proposed school budget in late May, and it was corrected before the second vote.

The towns usually are listed alphabetically on spreadsheets used to design the budget, Smith said. But the Oakland and Sidney lines were switched in one section, so he mistakenly transposed the numbers, he said.

“I didn’t catch it this year. That’s what happened,” Smith said.

But after finding the mistake and correcting it in early June, Smith acknowledged that he never communicated that to town officials and didn’t take into account that they were using the outdated figures to develop tax rate increases.

“The error on my part was to not communicate directly to each town,” Smith said. The administration would take extra measures in the next budget cycle to make sure the mistake wasn’t repeated, he said.

According to Bowman, Oakland originally was told that its share of the RSU 18 budget was roughly $4,880,000, about $229,000 more than last year. In fact, that number was the amount Sidney was expected to pay. Oakland’s actual proposed contribution is more than $5,058,000, almost $170,000 more than projected, Bowman said.

Councilor Don Borman said the largest concern for taxpayers and town officials is how a proposed budget is going to affect the property tax rate. In light of the mix-up this year, a plan needs to be developed to make sure people get the correct facts and figures, he said.

Bowman, too, said it was “a shock” when the new figures came in earlier this week. He said he thought his own reputation was on the line because he had been providing people, including political adversaries of the school budget, with inaccurate tax figures. With due diligence, the mistake could have been caught, he said.

“Something broke in the process this time,” Bowman said.

Peter McGuire can be contacted at 861-9239 or at:

pmcguire@centralmaine.com

Twitter: PeteL_McGuire

Portland held its Bigger Than Ever Summer Success Picnic at Deering Oaks on Thursday. The picnic was hosted by Portland’s Feeding Bodies and Minds collaborative project to raise awareness about the Portland Summer Meals Program, promote summer learning, reading and exercise.

The meals program offers children 18 and under free lunch at 18 sites this summer. It is an open, anonymous program, which means participants do not have to register or meet any qualifications to participate. The program is administered by Portland Public Schools and the Opportunity Alliance and receives funding from the USDA Food and Nutrition Service.

Greg Piotrowicz, program specialist with the USDA Food and Nutrition Service, said the USDA Summer Meal Program fed 600,000 meals to children in Maine last summer and hopes to increase the number by 15 percent this summer. Piotrowicz said the meal program tries to bridge the gap that occurs during the summer for children who normally receive free and reduced-price lunches during the school year.