Michael DiCenso, left, Noah Wilson, center, and Robert Oehme make their way through a crowded Bruce M. Whittier Middle School hall on their way to lunch recently. Poland taxpayers will be asked to approve an $8.5 million building expansion in November. A public forum to explain the project will be held at 7 p.m. Monday at the school.
POLAND — When students at Bruce M. Whittier Middle School change classes, the halls are crowded.
“This building was built for half our population,” Principal Shawn Vincent said.
It was built for 130; this year, there are 230. Next year, 260 are expected.
When the middle school and Poland Regional High School were built in 1999, the high school was for students in Mechanic Falls, Minot and Poland; the middle school was only for Poland students.
Middle school enrollment jumped in 2009 after the three towns consolidated and Mechanic Falls and Minot students came to Poland.
The idea eight years ago was to get by for a while with portable classrooms. The time to stop getting by and build is near, administrators hope.
In November, voters in Regional School Unit 16 will be asked to approve an $8.5 million middle school addition. It would be paid by local taxpayers because the district is not on the state’s priority list for state-funded construction, Superintendent Tina Meserve said.
A 20-year bond would pay for the project.
A forum to explain the expansion and answer questions will be held at 7 p.m. Monday, Feb. 27, at the middle school.
“We need to pack the auditorium,” Merserve said, because she wants residents to understand the proposal and ask questions.
The addition plans call for 16,000 square feet for nine classrooms, four science labs, new bathrooms, a teachers room, an IT room and a book closet. There would be new front entrances for the high school and middle school for better security.
While the middle school is crowded this year, it was even more so last year.
“We ran out of classrooms,” Vincent said. “We had one teacher who had to wheel his curriculum around on a cart,” he added, referring to Spanish teacher Peter Webster.
Another teacher taught in a “borrowed” classroom at the adjacent high school.
Last fall, school opened with a third portable classroom building. There are now six classes taught in modular buildings that sit near the school building.
Conditions are less than ideal, Meserve said. Students walk to the portable classrooms.
When it rains or snows, students come in with wet papers and books and sometimes they slip or fall, said teacher Sheryl Walters, whose classes are in one of the modular buildings.
On a recent day with heavy snow, “the back door won’t open because of ice and snow,” she said. “Last year, we had a big bobcat out back.” When students came and went, “Shawn stood over there, I stood over here. We didn’t know where the bobcat was going to go.”
Occasionally they can hear gunfire from a nearby range, she said.
A fence has since been installed, to keep people and bobcats out.
Safety is a big concern, Meserve said.
“We’re not contained in a secure building,” she said. “We’d like to have one entrance where eyes are on all people coming in and out.”
Now there is more than one entrance and security isn’t ideal, she said.
The modular classrooms don’t have bathrooms. Students have to go to the school building. And teaching in portable classrooms “is isolating for teachers, away from the main building,” Meserve said.
She acknowledges that $8.5 million is a lot of money for three small towns.
“It’s not that we can’t provide an education, but it’s just not advantageous for middle school kids to be in and out of a building,” she said. “You want a cohesive culture.”
Despite a lack of space, the 2009 consolidation was a good move, educators say.
It’s saved $22.5 million for taxpayers of the three towns, Meserve said.
“And it’s been great for our school,” Vincent said.
Students are getting a better education, he said. With the three towns’ middle school students at one location, teachers are able to work together and share ideas.
“That’s where we’ve really grown in strength,” Vincent said.
And students from the three towns get to know each other as seventh-graders instead of ninth-graders, making the transition to high school “100 percent better,” Vincent said.
Statistics show academic success since the consolidation. The high school graduation rate was 80 percent in 2010. It was 91 percent in 2016, Meserve said.
“We do a great job educating our middle school kids,” she said. “They score above state averages in all subject areas.”
Sheryl Walters stands in the doorway of her classroom, one of the temporary buildings set up behind the Whittier Middle School in Poland. The modular classrooms isolate students and teachers from the rest of the school and lack security and bathrooms.
A sketch shows the proposed $8.5 million addition to Whittier Middle School in Poland.
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