Monmouth Academy began its 200th year

this week.

MONMOUTH – In Monmouth Academy’s crowded hallways Samantha Fairchild is more comfortable than the average high school freshman on the first day of school.

A black backpack slung over her shoulder, the 14-year-old smiles at the teachers standing by their classroom doors. She calls a quick “Hi” to passing friends.

She’s been to this school dozens of times. She’s not really nervous. She pretty well knows her way around.

In this small town’s 200-year-old high school, where alumni teach the children and grandchildren of other alumni, the first day of school is more like a reunion.

Even for freshmen.

“It’s easier than starting somewhere they don’t know your family,” Fairchild said after class. “Most of these people, your parents know them before you know them. You kind of grew up that way.”

Small family

Established as a private school in 1803, Monmouth Academy originally served students from Greene, Leeds, Litchfield, Wales and Sabattus. In the 1970s, after many towns left the private school to form their own school unions or districts, Monmouth Academy became a public high school open to Monmouth students only.

Alumni stayed in the proud, tight-knit community. Some became Monmouth Academy teachers. Many sent their own children to the town school.

“Two and three generations are common. And I wouldn’t be at all surprised if there are fourth generations,” said Pat Amero, Monmouth Academy’s guidance secretary and a member of the class of 1960. Her own sons graduated from Monmouth in the 1980s. One has returned to teach business.

The start of the school year has become a kind of annual homecoming.

“It’s a small family within itself,” said Scott Wing, a teaching assistant and 1989 graduate.

For Fairchild, it meant entering ninth grade at the school where her grandfather served as principal and superintendent. It’s the same school from which her father and older brother graduated. And it’s just down the road from where her mother teaches third grade.

Looking at old black and white family photos and her father’s high school belongings over the summer, Fairchild said she felt a connection.

“I can see his old school things, the maroon and white, and be like ‘Oh, I’ll have things like that,'” she said.

On her first day of school, Fairchild took classes with teachers she had already met through her parents or learned about from her older brother. She chatted with friends she had known her whole life.

At lunch she sat with Chelsea Grant, a third generation Monmouth Academy student whose grandparents and parents were alumni.

“You know everybody,” Grant said. “Some of the teachers I have, my parents had. It’s cool that we can relate to some of the same funny stories.”

For teachers, Monmouth Academy is a “cool” situation, too. They get to pass on their school traditions while shepherding the next generation at their alma mater.

Rick Amero, the business teacher – and guidance secretary Pat Amero’s son – is just starting to see the children of his former schoolmates in class.

“It really kind of blows my mind,” he said. “Some of the faces you can tell are so-and-so’s children.”

Growing

Monmouth Academy is filled with students and teachers whose relationships go back generations, but the school is beginning to get an influx of new families fleeing the cities and their outskirts.

Once housing less than 200 students, the school had 264 kids when it opened its doors this week. Sixteen of the students were new.

Some in the school wonder if the academy can keep its intimacy – and its sense of tradition- as it grows.

“I think that’s one of our biggest challenges these days,” Rick Amero said.

But Fairchild and her friends welcome and reach out to the new students. In a bigger school, she said, “You might not even get to meet them.”

And at a time when Maine is losing its high school graduates to out-of-state colleges and out-of-state jobs, Fairchild and Grant said they would likely stay in Monmouth. And they’d like to send their own children to school there.

“I think it’s nice being in a small town,” Fairchild said. “I think it’d be nice.”



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