DIXFIELD – Dirigo High School’s application for a $250,000 grant has made it to the semifinals.

“We’re pretty tickled,” said DHS Principal Dan Hart. “We were wondering what our chances were. This is a good boost. I guess they liked what they saw.”

DHS was one of 65 high schools in Maine to apply for a Gates Foundation grant, and now is one of 24 semifinalists that will vie for the 10 to 12 grants to be administered over the next five years.

Even if the Dixfield school doesn’t make it to the final round, the staff and community will benefit from making it as semifinalists. Along with a $10,000 grant, five DHS staff and community members will attend an “Imagining Whole School Change,” a three-day workshop at the Mitchell Institute in Portland in July.

That event, said Hart, will provide the DHS team with opportunities to come up with a plan that will help provide a variety of instruction techniques so that all students can learn.

“We’ll be part of a regional network for sharing the best practices,” he said.

Meanwhile, the next step in the process will be a visit by a team from the Mitchell Institute sometime in mid-May. The five or six people who come to the area will visit the school to talk with staff and students, and meet with members of the community.

A few weeks later, the decision will be made on the 10 to 12 finalists.

Hart isn’t sure why his school was chosen and others weren’t, but perhaps it had something to do with the small, rural nature of the high school, and its association with a student aspiration project at the University of Maine at Farmington. He thinks the district’s close partnership with the community may also have helped. But for whatever reason, if Dirigo High School is a finalist, it will be a good thing.

“We could really benefit by getting data for students, staff and the community,” he said.

Mountain Valley High School in Rumford and Telstar Regional High School in Bethel also applied for the grant, but did not make it to the semifinalist round.

All three high schools have held community forums over the past few months to get ideas to include with the grant application.

Both Mountain Valley and Telstar will use some of the data and community interest from the forums to work to improve their schools, their officials said.

Shawn Lambert, principal at Telstar, said his community group worked on various goals that made sense for his school. He said the group has started work on developing a high school mission and a student code of conduct, and is continuing work on the curriculum, among other things.

At Mountain Valley, Assistant Principal Matt Gilbert said community input will go a long way toward improving an already good school. He said community resources were identified and a desire to reinstitute the student service learning program was emphasized.

“A lot of people got involved. We’ll decide later whether to use these volunteers to pursue other goals,” he said.

eadams@sunjournal.com

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