Rural school is only one in Maine on national list
Easton Junior-Senior High School has found itself as the lone Maine school on Newsweek’s list of 500 American high schools that are overcoming barriers to student success.
Easton came in at 405 out of the 500 schools that are “beating the odds,” according to Newsweek. These are “schools that do an excellent job of preparing their students for college while also overcoming the obstacles posed by students at an economic disadvantage,” according to the news magazine.
The rankings are based on data compiled by the research company Westat, using an index of variables including graduation rates, college attendance rate and the percentage of students eligible for free and reduced-price meals.
Easton Junior-Senior High School has a graduation rate of 96.3 percent, and 92.3 percent of graduates go on to college, according to the Newsweek report. Meanwhile, 41 percent of students come from households in some form of poverty, with income levels that qualify them for free or reduced-price meals.
Easton’s schools serve a town of around 1,200 residents in the heart of Aroostook County potato country. But the town and school district are unique because of the property taxes paid by Huber Engineered Woods and McCain Foods factories, which cover about 80 percent of the total municipal budget, including the schools. In the 2014-15 school year, Easton had a $20,000 per student operational cost – almost double the state average and on a par with island communities in per capita spending.
With sizable tax payments from the two local employers, Easton’s school system is able to afford small class-sizes, all-day kindergarten, laptops and overall more personalized learning, according to superintendent Roger Shaw. There were 11 graduating seniors in the school’s Class of 2016.
Shaw and other school officials could not be reached Monday, as the school system is closed for the potato harvest break.
But during an interview this spring, he pointed out that Easton Junior-Senior High School has less than 100 students, with a student-teacher ratio of 8:1 – much lower than the statewide average of 12:1. For this and other reasons, according to Shaw, Easton’s school district receives some of the lowest funding from the state government, amounting to 4.5 percent of the district’s total budget this year.
Town residents have long taken pride in their small, robust schools made possible with generous tax payments from the two factories, Shaw said during the earlier interview.
At the same time that Easton’s schools have been lauded locally and now nationally, more Easton kids are coming to school from lower-income families and with special education needs — as is the case in many rural communities, Shaw said.
The state government is required to pay all districts the equivalent of 30 percent of the district’s’ previous year’s special education costs, and this year Easton saw its state special education funding increase by $50,000, Shaw said.
“Special ed needs are increasing in every school. Typically, they mirror the free and reduced lunch rate,” Shaw said in April. “It’s more costly to educate kids out of poverty than out of affluence.”
