BETHEL – Telstar High School officials met with parents Tuesday night to determine possible strategies to best implement an education foundation grant received in August.

Thanks to grant writers Theodore Davis and Cathy Newell, the SAD 44 secondary school’s Project Opportunity was awarded a three-year, $65,000 grant from the Maine Educational Loan Marketing Corp., or MELMAC, in Augusta.

The grant, part of $1.1 million in 2003 grants to Maine high schools and communities, stems from MELMAC’s major new initiative, Connect Aspirations to a Plan, said MELMAC Executive Director Wendy L. Ault.

The initiative funds school- and community-based programs to increase students’ aspirations for higher education. It also helps students connect those aspirations to a plan that ensures enrollment in college immediately following high school graduation, Ault said.

“The goal of the Connect Aspirations to a Plan initiative is to raise Maine’s college enrollment rate from 55 percent of all graduating seniors to the national average of 68 percent of all graduating seniors by 2008,” Ault said in a Sept. 1 press release.

This will result in 2,100 more Maine high school graduates enrolling in post-secondary education each year, she added.

Telstar’s award breaks down into a $5,000 planning grant and two annual implementation grants of up to $30,000 for a total of $65,000.

Project Opportunity, Davis said, is a school program that was founded by Les Otten and the Sunday River Ski Resort in 1988.

Project Opportunity’s concept provides every Telstar student access to points in their first seven semesters. These points, which can be accrued by participating in seminars and such, can be cashed in toward scholarships to postsecondary schools, Davis said.

Davis is a former Telstar principal who retired after a lengthy tenure.

Since the first Project Opportunity scholarship was awarded in 1989, $148,000 has been doled out in grants totaling more than $80,000 to help participating students succeed.

“Over the years, underclassmen were aware these opportunities were available, but there was minimal participation. Last year, 40 students applied for Opportunity points,” Davis added.

Strategies discussed at Tuesday night’s forum, the first of three planned for SAD 44 towns, are aimed at opening the doors to postsecondary education by providing financial counseling to both parents and students as an outreach effort.

Other goals include providing last dollar scholarships, college visits, career guidance, tutoring and test preparation courses to graduates.

“This grant is designed to help us work with the guidance department to increase awareness for parents and to increase participation of students to go to college and complete it,” Davis said after the 60-minute brainstorming session.

The other two community forums are scheduled to be held before the holidays in Woodstock and Andover.

“Tonight’s meeting was to make people aware of the grant and to hear what they would like to have happen in order for us to help them out,” he added.

Money from the grant will also allow Telstar officials to establish first-ever baseline data on the school’s rate of graduating seniors who pursue postsecondary education and attrition rates.

Davis said that 85 percent of Telstar seniors who graduated this spring intended to pursue a college education, but only 66 percent are actually involved in postsecondary endeavors.

That’s something they hope to change in the next three years.

“It’s a great deal and a great partnership from which we can reap the work that some people like Ted Davis did a long time ago,” said Shawn Lambert, principal of Telstar Regional Middle/High School.

Telstar, which is located in Bethel on Route 26, serves students in grades 6-12 from the communities of Andover, Bethel, Greenwood, Newry and Woodstock.

tkarkos@sunjournal.com

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