Coming about | The Boat School in Eastport is changing hands, but can it change direction?
Eastport is used to digging in. Here on the easternmost edge of the United States, this city of roughly 1,600 people digs in every winter against the bitterly cold winds from Cobscook Bay whipping through the narrow downtown streets. Locals here have spent decades digging in to protect the maritime character of Eastport despite increasing, and often colorful, influences from new residents "from away." Lately, Eastport hunkered down and fought for one of its most prized possessions, one that has come to be synonymous with the island city's industrious connection to the ocean: the Eastport Boat School.
This month, the state of Maine will formally return The Boat School to Eastport, its original owner, for the cut-rate price it paid for it more than 30 years ago — one dollar. By fall of 2008, Husson College, based in Bangor, will oversee courses at the school rather than the school's longtime steward, Washington County Community College, based 30 miles from Eastport in Calais. In 2004, WCCC President Bill Cassidy suggested moving The Boat School to Calais, setting off a three-year Eastport uproar that this spring culminated in an all-out push at the capitol to get the school back. After months of behind-the-scenes wrangling between lawmakers, representatives from Maine's public and private colleges and Eastport officials, the sinking school may finally be salvaged this September.
The Boat School, located in a waterfront business park called the Maine Marine Technology Center on the edge of town, was founded in Calais in 1969 and moved to Eastport in 1978. It has graduated some 300 boat builders. But despite regard for the school in boating circles, enrollment has shrunk nearly every year since the mid-90s. Advocates, including what seems like the entire city of Eastport, say the school was failing because the community college bungled the job, but WCCC's Cassidy says the troubles occurred because of The Boat School's remote location.
Two years ago, WCCC and The Boat School updated the curriculum to reflect changes in the boat-building industry and temper the school's traditional emphasis on wooden boat building. Despite the changes, Cassidy says the school still makes only about half of the $400,000 it costs to run every year. Each student, he says, costs the school $30,000.
Cassidy says the college spent around $5,000 a year advertising the school in print ads in industry magazines, at boat shows and in brochures, but students still just wouldn't enroll. For most of the last 15 years — despite a one-time bump in 1998 to 27 freshmen — The Boat School has enrolled only about half of the 17-freshmen average the school had previously enjoyed. "It just became a matter of the economic model," Cassidy says. "We can't subsidize a program at $30,000 a student. That would be irresponsible."
Staying afloat
It's clear The Boat School has seen better days. From a staff that once included seven full-time faculty members, a full-time director, a librarian, two full-time support staff, a full-time custodian and a maintenance mechanic, The Boat School has operated without a director since 2001, when Cassidy eliminated the position due to budget restrictions. It no longer has a librarian or maintenance mechanic. This fall, The Boat School will open with one part-time office assistant, a part-time janitor, two full-time faculty members and around five adjuncts.
In spring 2004, Cassidy proposed moving the program to Calais to consolidate costs. The suggestion met with bitter opposition from area officials, including Sen. Kevin Raye (R-Perry), who co-owns Raye's Mustard Mill in Eastport. Gov. John Baldacci pledged $75,000 to keep the school in Eastport. In 2005, at the end of an academic year in which the school had suspended recruiting because of low enrollment and a curriculum revamping, Raye forced through a bill to appropriate $433,877 in funding to the prop up the school.
But just before the Legislature closed the session, lawmakers whittled down the school's additional appropriations to $25,000. Baldacci then upped that sum to $210,000, after promising in a press conference The Boat School would not close. "It's an opportunity that I am not going to allow to get out of my grasp," he told the Bangor Daily News at the time.
After that close call, Raye gathered a group of interested parties to secure the long-term future of The Boat School. In fall 2006, he began speaking to officials from the Maine Community College System, the city of Eastport, the nonprofit Friends of the Boat School, Husson College, the University of Maine and the Maine Maritime Academy.
"There was a lot of concern that the Community College System had ceased to be a responsible steward of the boat school and I think that has to do with the fact that they didn't place a priority on it," explains Raye.
But WCCC president Cassidy says it's not a matter of priorities, it's a matter of basic business — The Boat School has been losing money. Cassidy says rates of attrition in the two-year program are stuck at an abysmal 50%. This fall, only five senior class members will return to Eastport to complete their two-year degree.
Despite The Boat School's challenges, Eastport City Manager Bud Finch thinks not only also will it be a moneymaker for Husson, it will be a critical economic anchor for Eastport's newest business park. Finch lobbied at the State House to get The Boat School back in his city's hands, and is leading a coalition of the Maine Marine Technology Park's current tenants that collectively, he says, will pay for rent and improvements to the property. The city of Eastport, Finch says, will not have to pay to maintain the business park.
Still, Finch has heard from skeptics worried the school will be an economic albatross. "My response was, basically, ask us in two years," he says. "Because we truly believe we're going to be competitive. It's difficult and it's a lot of hard work, but we're up to the challenge. I may eat my words, but we'll see."
The "best little secret in Maine"
The current tenants of Maine's Marine Technology Center include the Eastport Port Authority, the United States Department of Agriculture and the Maine Sea Grant program. The Florida-based Ocean Renewable Power Company is negotiating a lease with Finch to share a warehouse used by The Boat School, with plans to build a prototype energy turbine there and test it off the coast of Eastport.
Finch regards the technology center as one of his most promising projects. He anticipates the facility will be self-sufficient by 2010 and support over 50 new jobs. Revenue from the facility, he says, can "by design" only be used for economic development in Eastport. This sharing will lower overhead for Husson because, unlike WCCC, it will split the $400,000 cost of operating the entire business park with other members of the park.
"What the city gets out of this is a gold bar of economic development education and an open door to the entrepreneurial business," Finch says. "The opportunity is that if we help the start-ups here they might stay here and it could create jobs. If we don't blow it, it could be really big."
Critical to not blowing it is to stop money from bleeding out of the boat school.
After all, according to industry trends, The Boat School should, theoretically, be profitable. The Maine market for quality boat craftsmen appears to be robust: A recent study commissioned by Maine Built Boats, a collective of Maine-based boat builders, found the 400-year-old trade in Maine generated $335 million in sales in 2006 and employed 2,500 people. And the industry is positioned to grow, if boat builders take advantage of increasing national demand for bigger boats. (For more on the study, see "Navigation tools," page 24.) "The industry has been hungry for employees for the last 30 years," says Susan Swanton, executive director of the Maine Marine Trade Association. "Boat building is pretty much the core. If you don't have boats being built than there's not much for the repairer to repair or the marinas to store or the sail maker to make sails for."
"There's no reason this place ever should have ever come close to shutting down," says Dean Pike, a 1980 graduate of The Boat School and a faculty instructor since 1981. "I think a lot of it is people still don't know the place is open. We're still the best little secret in Maine, I think."
A local anchor
Bill Beardsley, president of Husson College, believes The Boat School will anchor Husson's new plan to expand in the St. Croix River Valley, which includes Calais, Eastport, two Passamaquoddy reservations and part of New Brunswick, Canada. In December, Husson opened Unobskey College in Calais, which will offer graduate and undergraduate programs and likely share resources and support staff with The Boat School. The Eastport Boat School and Unobskey, Beardsley explains, will allow Husson to establish itself as a critical educational resource in the area — exactly the kind of economic development force that would attract philanthropic and federal rural development grants.
This fall, Husson will share the boat school facility with Washington County Community College. WCCC will oversee the second-year class, and Husson is responsible for recruiting and training the first years. The following academic year will be all Husson's.
Husson is retaining the same faculty used by WCCC, and Beardsley says six new students are confirmed for the fall, and another four could join them pending tuition payment of $8,000 a year. All but one of those students, Beardsley says, are from Maine. In four years, Beardsley says he expects The Boat School to enroll between 60 and 70 students and operate on an annual budget of $500,000.
But this year, Beardsley admits the college will lose $50,000 operating The Boat School. Husson has had only since May to recruit students, a process the college usually staggers over the course of a year. Given a proper recruiting schedule, Beardsley believes, like WCCC's Cassidy, The Boat School's location in Eastport will set the school apart.
"We're going to sell it for its unique location," he says, pointing to the maritime history of the town and its intimate size. "There are pros and cons to being in Down East, we're trying to figure out how we market the pros."
Beardsley says the college's operating cost will be about $100,000 in the first year. That's because WCCC will still run half of the program and the school will receive a $110,000 grant from the governor's discretionary fund for infrastructure improvements.
To beef up thinning student ranks, Husson plans to spend around $40,000 a year marketing The Boat School at boat shows, area high schools and over the Internet. The Internet is an important publicity medium, Beardsley believes, because it allows Husson to inexpensively target potential students outside of Maine. In mid-August, Beardsely met with one of Husson's recruiters to discuss wooing students from Europe.
Why will Husson succeed where the state faltered? Beardsley says Husson has a reputation for successfully engaging rural areas like Eastport: Enrollment since Husson expanded into markets like Presque Isle has doubled over the past seven years.
Currently, 2,700 students are enrolled in the private school's undergraduate and graduate degree programs at its four campuses in Maine. Husson has managed to thrive by offering relatively low-cost degree programs designed for working students. The Boat School, Beardsley predicts, will be Husson's next rural victory. "This is what Husson does best," he says. "We're very entrepreneurial."
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