Soon after Xavier Botana took over as superintendent of Maine's Portland Public Schools, he realized that, despite the district's professed commitment, efforts to promote equity were embedded in other programs rather than being its own goal. He knew that if he were going to make his vision for equity a reality, he would need to get the community's…

Local communities are increasingly becoming concerned about what to do about changing climatic conditions and they want to know more about how to best work together to address complicated socioecological issues. This paper addresses this need by presenting findings from four exploratory case studies (two in Maine and two in Oregon). The…

In partnership with the Barr Foundation, the Center on Reinventing Public Education conducted longitudinal interviews with ten teachers and seven parents across four school systems in Connecticut, Rhode Island, Maine, and Massachusetts between January and June of 2021. Our interviews expose how ill-equipped New England schools were to address…

"Teacher-Powered Practices: How teacher teams collaboratively lead and create student-centered schools" focuses on how innovative teachers are radically changing the ways schools are designed and run. The how here are the common practices, structures, and processes teacher-powered teams design and use daily. The guide identifies nine…

The close-knit, personal nature of small rural communities results in school and community operating as a single integrated social structure. Useful rural school improvement strategies must, therefore, address needs that are recognized by both the local school and the community and must operate in a style congruent with the local setting. Although…

Traditional definitions of school readiness have focused primarily on the skills, knowledge and abilities children need for educational success. However, these definitions have evolved in recent years to encompass a multidimensional view, adding physical and mental health, social and emotional skills, executive functioning and self-regulation, and…

The Downtown Education Collaborative (DEC) is an innovative collaborative which includes public and private colleges working with community organizations in interdisciplinary community service learning. This article reviews DEC's development, from its inception as a shared vision aspired to by its partners, to a functioning collaborative. We…

Research suggests that institutional commitment to community engagement can be understood by examining levels of student, faculty, and community involvement in engagement; organizational structure, rewards, and campus publications supporting engagement; and compatibility of an institution's mission with this work (Holland, 1997). Underlying all of…

This paper is part of a series investigating the implementation of competency education. The purpose of the paper is to explore how districts and schools can redesign grading systems to best help students to excel in academics and to gain the skills that are needed to be successful in college, the community, and the workplace. In order to make the…

Almost immediately after he was named Commissioner of Education in March 2011, Stephen Bowen traveled to school districts across Maine and spoke to students, teachers, school administrators and community members about what they saw as the challenges confronting Maine's schools and what role they saw for the Maine Department of Education in…

Discusses how one community middle school, whose creation was the result of involvement of the town it resided in, became a lifesaving facility for many of the town's residents when disaster struck. Examines the community-wide effort in the school's construction planning and its benefits to the community after its completion. (GR)

This booklet is designed to help people in Maine communities organize on a local level to address one of the main goals of the America 2000 program, that all children will start school ready to learn. The booklet suggests that this goal is more complicated than it first appears and that its meaning can vary, depending upon the perspective from…

The Facilitator's Role in Collaborative Rural Development Project began in 1979 as a study of 12 rural development efforts which comprised the North Carolina Rural Employment Laboratory and was expanded in 1980-81 to include rural development in 6 other states (California, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, and Vermont). A wide range of…

In the past and present, the communities of Mount Desert Island in Maine have faced the issue of school consolidation. In 1948, the four towns of Mount Desert Island each had their own high school and several elementary schools. Despite an extensive survey and community discussion, the vote to consolidate into one high school was defeated in 1949…

Compares attitudes of Maine elected school officials, teachers, and community members on 18 educational issues including teacher and administrator salaries, merit salary increases, teacher competency exams, tenure, collective bargaining, truancy/drop-out rates, student competency exams, graduation requirements, discipline, substance abuse,…