Harvest help on the rise at PIHS
PRESQUE ISLE, Maine — Twenty-six more Presque Isle High School students worked during this year’s potato harvest than the previous year.
According to results of the student harvest survey that were shared with the SAD 1 board of directors at their Nov. 12 meeting, 147 high-schoolers performed harvest-related work during the three-week break. In 2013, 121 students worked, while 136 worked in 2012.
This year’s harvest-related jobs included handpicker (nine students), harvester (22), potato house (42), School Farm (61), truck driver (five), windrower (three), barrel loader (one), seven performed other harvest-related jobs, while three babysat for others who did harvest-related work.
Of those students, which represents 26.9 percent of the school’s population, 51 were seniors, 44 were juniors, 28 were sophomores and 24 were freshmen. They earned, in total, $161,069.
By comparison, 22.3 percent of the students performed harvest-related work in 2013. They included 32 seniors, 50 juniors, 33 sophomores and six freshmen. Combined, they earned a total of $162,600.
Survey results for this fall show that seven other freshmen did non-harvest work, while 116 did not work at all. Nine sophomores did non-harvest related work, while 96 were unemployed. Thirty-one juniors did other work and 64 were not employed, while 49 seniors did non-related harvest work, and 34 did not have jobs.
Last year, 110 students did non-harvest work, while 311 didn’t work at all.
The percentage of PIHS students doing harvest-related work this year (26.9 percent) is comparable with more recent years. In 2013, the percentage of workers was 22.3 percent, in 2012 the number was 24.5 percent, while in 2011 the percentage was 21.5.
“One thing I noticed is the higher the grade, the more students who worked,” noted SAD 1 Superintendent Gehrig Johnson, “and that’s not unusual. Sixteen percent of the freshmen worked, then it went up to 21 percent for sophomores, 31 percent for juniors, and 38 percent of the senior class worked directly in the harvest.
“This year 26.9 percent of the students did harvest-related work, and that’s the highest — as a percentage — in the last nine years,” he said.
Several years ago the board agreed to revisit the potato harvest issue if the percentage of students doing harvest-related work got down to 15 percent. Since the current percentage is nowhere near that figure, there was no further discussion on the matter.
