Norway

Nine students from SAD 17’s Streaked Mountain School, an off-site, alternative education program, will be marching with their classmates Saturday night.

Most of them never thought they’d make it.

And most wouldn’t have, if the only choice they had was to try to fit in with the traditional classroom structure at the 1,157-student Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School.

Take Rob Reese, for example. The 19-year-old was getting suspended time after time, falling behind, slipping through the cracks.

“It was too fast-paced,” he said. “I’m slow. I see things a lot differently. And I’m not afraid to speak my mind.”

Then he tried the alternative school, located in the annex beside the Guy E. Rowe School in Norway. After a tenuous first year, he found his focus as a senior, and took to the books.

His dad loves the Beatles, so Reese did his senior research paper on how the use of drugs influenced their music after 1967.

Students at the school work at their own pace, in either a morning or afternoon program, or on a drop-in basis. There’s plenty of flexibility, balanced by accountability.

“It offers people the chance to be themselves while they’re learning,” he said.

Fellow senior Adam Kosiavelon, 18, said what he appreciates about the school is that he is not being told what to do, but encouraged to ask questions instead.

“That’s what kids like me need, to sit down and talk, instead of just saying ‘do this, do that,” he said.

A freshman dropout, Kosiavelon admits he acted out his anger on the world.

“I wouldn’t have been able to graduate if not for this,” he said of the school. After a few years of trying to make it on his own, his mother convinced him to move back home and finish school.

“I’d like to think that in a couple of years, this school is still going on and helping people graduate,” he said.

School Director Jason Trask said the school, in its second year of operation, is strongly supported by SAD 17 officials, who credit it with helping to lower the high school dropout rate.

Trask said it’s difficult to generalize what traits the alternative school’s 60 or so students have in common. While some have had a fractured home life, a history of substance abuse or violence, or lives disrupted by homelessness, others drop out for other reasons, and seek to re-enter school during the middle of the school year. There’s consistently a waiting list, he said.

“This program is geared toward students for whom the traditional classroom has not worked,” Trask said.

“They’re either rebels or saints,” joked the school’s full-time ed tech, Rei Cortez.

Lori Whitman, 18, got pregnant and had a baby she named Isaah last August. When she couldn’t find daycare, she could bring him to class. In the past, getting pregnant meant dropping out and later pursuing an equivalency diploma. Because of the Streaked Mountain School, she is able to graduate with the rest of her class.

“This program offers more than leniency. It helps students discover who they are,” Whitman said. After graduation, she plans to attend a college and major in massage therapy.

Samantha Ugosoli, 17, also appreciates the flexibility of the Streaked Mountain School, and the dedication of its teachers. She, like Reese, drifted in and out of the school program the first year before making the decision to learn.

“I’m stubborn, and I don’t like to have people tell me what to do,” she said.

Whitman said that doesn’t happen at the alternative school. “That Trask, he won’t give up on you. He’s annoying and nagging” until the learning process begins, she said.

Ugosoli put it another way. “They take the time to get to know us,” she said.

Trask is proud of his nine graduates. Last year, although he graduated eight students, only five of them were ready with their studies in time to actually march with the other high school students.

“They kind of disappear from view when they come here,” said Trask, “But I think they do deserve some credit, considering all of the things they’ve been through.”

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