April 16, 2007
Solid B average | Walt Warner, executive director of the Maine School of Science and Mathematics, gives the Limestone magnet school a mixed report card
By Kerry Elson
The Maine School of Science and Mathematics is all about numbers. Founded in 1994 by the state Legislature, the publicly funded charter school in Limestone draws high school sophomores, juniors and seniors from across the state to take classes most other public schools don't offer, such as differential equations, linear algebra and multivariable calculus. The school's original mission was to train the state's next leaders and bring new life to the town, whose population plummeted from nearly 10,000 in the early 90s, before the Loring Air Force Base closed in 1994, to less than 2,500 in 2000.
But numbers also have given the school a hard time. Funding has been difficult to come by, with Gov. Angus King vowing twice during his administration to close the school altogether to save money. Since 1997, the school has been hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt to the local school district, borrowing to fund financial aid for students' room and board, which the state doesn't cover. And two years ago, MSSM had a total of just 87 students spread over three grades, well short of its original goal to have 150 students per class after its first decade of operation.
The school might have closed two years ago, says Walt Warner, executive director, who was hired in 2005 after former director Dottie Martin resigned following years of school funding troubles. Warner tried to stabilize the troubled institution by trimming spending and recruiting students heavily. This spring, he's also asking for a double-digit increase in state money. "We were going to improve or we were going to shut down," Warner says. "We didn't have anything to lose."
To Warner, who previously was assistant headmaster at a private school in Baton Rouge, La., keeping MSSM afloat was crucial. For a rural state like Maine, Warner says, MSSM is the most cost-effective way to provide advanced classes. Many school districts in the state are small, and some schools might have just one math teacher. "No school can afford to have a teacher spending a fourth of his teaching load with one or two kids," Warner says. So a number of rural states like Maine, including Idaho, Louisiana and Arkansas, have created magnet schools, catering to advanced students from school districts across the state.
But magnet schools don't just save school districts money, supporters say; they can also push gifted students farther academically. "Gifted students thrive in the presence of the gifted," says Bruce Vogeli, an education professor at Columbia University Teachers College in New York. "In the presence of average students, either they dominate the class or become disinterested because they get stuff faster than others." It's also important to group gifted students together, Vogeli says, "so they don't get the idea that they're the smartest people in the world."
MSSM has its critics. Some have called it elitist, and others have argued that the state can't afford to spend money on such a small pool of students. For the nation's 100 magnet schools that specialize in math and science, such skepticism is common, according to Vogeli. "The problem is that people wonder why the government is spending money on a special opportunity for special students, not for average students," he says.
Warner, however, counters that the state benefits from sending its best and brightest to Limestone because it makes leaders out of those who might not have the opportunity otherwise. "The kids who come here would rather be talking about quantum physics than going to a party on a Friday night. In their sending schools, they are marginalized socially and culturally," Warner says. "If you create an environment where a student goes from the margins to the mainstream, that allows them to develop their leadership potential."
For examples of MSSM leadership, he says, just look around; the state economist, Catherine Reilly, graduated from MSSM in 1997, and Jeremy Usher, founder of the Damariscotta Web design firm Firefly LLC, graduated in 2000. Other graduates are doctors, teachers and engineers in the state, according to Warner. MSSM plans to market these graduates heavily in coming years, to persuade state Legislators and taxpayers that MSSM is worth the investment.
Still, MSSM is far from financially stable, and Warner is first to admit it. This spring, he and the school's board of trustees began drafting MSSM's 30-year strategic plan, which includes building a $30 million endowment, boosting total enrollment to 400 students and creating a sabbatical program for faculty.
With that effort in mind, Mainebiz asked Warner to complete a report card on the school's efforts so far. Warner graded in five areas: funding, student attraction and retention, faculty attraction and retention, student achievement, and alumnae contributions to Maine. So far, according to Warner, MSSM is maintaining a solid B average.
Funding: B-
As with most of these categories, MSSM has come a long way since 2005, Warner says. The school should get an "A+" for effort, Warner says, but MSSM is far from its goal of receiving more state money for financial aid and building its endowment to $1 million by next year.
In 2005, MSSM was just scraping by. It owed the state $200,000 for money it borrowed to provide financial aid. The endowment was a mere $105,000. The school's appropriation from the state that year ˆ $1. 62 million ˆ wasn't enough to cover expenses. MSSM's board of trustees, a governor-appointed group, was hesitant to ask for more state money, fearful legislators would strike funding altogether, says Warner.
Warner trimmed spending by freezing faculty salaries for this year and leaving vacant administrative positions unfilled. The debt has since shrunk to $114,000, and Warner hopes to pay off the debt completely by 2010. Meanwhile, he's asked the state education department to boost MSSM's appropriation in its budget by 10%, to roughly $1.71 million. The bonus would not only cover the $11,700 tuition, but also financial aid for the $6,407 room and board fee, which in the past the school had offered by dipping into the academic program budget. Warner is confident the increase will pass: The Legislature's education and cultural affairs committee last month voted unanimously to support it, he says.
But the state money alone won't cover all costs, Warner says, so the school is ramping up fundraising. This year, the school's annual fund drive raised $87,000, up from a modest $15,000 in 2004. Warner and the board of trustees hope to raise the figure to $200,000 during the 2007-08 academic year. They also plan to launch a $1 million capital campaign this year to fund the school's endowment, which is currently at $140,000.
Jim Patterson, MSSM founder and board member, hopes the new money will come partly from alums, now that MSSM has a couple hundred graduates in the workforce, as well as from local businesses.
Student attraction and retention: B-
MSSM had 165 students in 1996, spread over grades 10-12. Founders originally hoped enrollment would grow to 300-450 students by 2005, but the school hasn't met that goal. So far, total enrollment has ranged from 105 to 165, falling to a low of 87 students in 2004. Some students leave, too, because they can't complete the coursework or because they miss living at home.
And the school isn't exactly flooded with applications. Last year, MSSM received 85 applications for all three grades for the current school year. Sixty-nine of those applicants enrolled ˆ students can start at MSSM in grade 10, 11 or 12 ˆ bringing the total student body to 130. Warner estimates that the school turned away an additional 15-20 students before they completed the application process, having seen their grades and test scores. Warner also points to the school's attrition rate, which has dropped from 15% to 10% in the last two years, with a few students per class leaving each year. Students have come from every county in the state, with highest numbers from Aroostook, Cumberland and York Counties.
While the school's remote location can be a turn-off for some, others say it helps them focus. "There's a lot less civilization around, which is good in some ways because it helps you focus on your studies and the community you're living in," says Kristina Yurko, an MSSM junior from Freeport, five hours away. Yurko says she "fell in love" with the school when she visited four years ago with a friend, attracted to the tight-knit community and the opportunity to take more advanced classes than at Freeport High School. Yurko gets homesick sometimes, she says, but visits family once a month, when MSSM has long weekends for students to return home.
In 30 years, Warner says, MSSM is projected to have a total of 400 students, equally distributed in grades 10-12. He hopes to boost enrollment not only by recruiting students more heavily, but also by adding more academic and extracurricular offerings. The school is working to offer students internships at the Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, and include more field trips to places like Portland and the Common Ground Fair in Unity.
Faculty attraction and retention: C+
Finding good teachers who stick around hasn't been easy for MSSM. Teachers need to be highly trained to teach multivariable calculus and linear algebra to 16-year-olds, Warner says, and not everyone wants to move to Limestone, with its small population and limited options for entertainment.
Funding shortages have pushed faculty to leave, too. From 2001-2004, six "very, very fine" teachers left MSSM, Warner says, "because they were not happy with the direction the school was taking," with school leaders cutting administrative positions and academic program funds to make up for the $200,000 budget shortfall. But faculty positions are filling: This year, Warner has hired two additional teachers, bringing the total number to 12. One hire was a teacher who left several years ago because of the school's "direction" problems. "She called and said she heard the school was doing better," Warner says.
The school also is working to revitalize downtown Limestone, part if its effort to appeal to future faculty and staff hires. Since last July, MSSM has worked with the Limestone Development Foundation to draft a new, 10-year strategic plan for boosting business development. Plans include opening a new hotel, expanding the local wildlife refuge and building biking trails downtown.
Student achievement: A+
MSSM kids sweep math competitions in Maine, though Bangor High School's "Team Red" math team can give them a run for their money, says Tad Johnston, a math specialist at the state Department of Education. MSSM students are "powerhouses in the math competitions," Johnston says. Nationally, too, MSSM scores well. Last June, a team from MSSM won the U.S. Department of Energy's National Science Bowl, besting teams from seven other states in a contest to build the best hydrogen-powered car. The average SAT score for the class of 2007 is 1809 (on a scale of 800 in reading, writing and math), while the average score of 2006 graduates statewide was 1526.
Virtually all MSSM grads ˆ school administrators put the figure at "98%-100%" ˆ go on to college; by comparison, the statewide figure was 49% in 2004, according to the Maine Compact for Higher Education in Augusta. This spring, MSSM seniors were accepted to the University of Maine, Colby, Bowdoin, Yale, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Cornell, among others.
Graduates' contribution to Maine: A
About a third of MSSM's 530 alumnae are still in college or graduate school, but those who are in the workforce are repaying the state's investment, Warner says. Graduates are doctors, nurses, engineers, teachers and computer programmers.
The school regularly encourages students to pursue careers in Maine, says Warner. For Catherine Reilly, the state economist who studied economics at Loyola College in Maryland before returning to Maine, those efforts worked. "I think that my experience at MSSM made me more likely to come back because I was more aware of what the state had to offer," she says, referring to guest speakers from the state's science and business communities who spoke at MSSM while she was at the school. "[The MSSM education] certainly helps me in my job now, to have spent time up in the County, to know what issues they face up there."
Reilly has become MSSM's poster child, attending receptions with legislators and speaking on its behalf. But the school is just beginning to track other alumni, so it can prove whether graduates are, in fact, returning the state's investment. Touting alumni contributions to the state is crucial to gain public support, according to Vogeli at Columbia University. "The returns are evident when you have distinguished scientists filling Maine universities, filling science jobs, when graduates are in business positions," he says.
But not all MSSM graduates return to Maine. Marcel Woodman, a 2000 MSSM graduate from Hodgdon, in Aroostook County, is working as a systems engineer at a healthcare equipment company in Franklin, Mass. Woodman stayed in Massachusetts partly because he went to college there, at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and because his girlfriend wanted to reside there. He has no immediate plans to move to Maine, but he's prepared to never say never. "I wouldn't rule it out," he says, "if the opportunities came to work there."
But numbers also have given the school a hard time. Funding has been difficult to come by, with Gov. Angus King vowing twice during his administration to close the school altogether to save money. Since 1997, the school has been hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt to the local school district, borrowing to fund financial aid for students' room and board, which the state doesn't cover. And two years ago, MSSM had a total of just 87 students spread over three grades, well short of its original goal to have 150 students per class after its first decade of operation.
The school might have closed two years ago, says Walt Warner, executive director, who was hired in 2005 after former director Dottie Martin resigned following years of school funding troubles. Warner tried to stabilize the troubled institution by trimming spending and recruiting students heavily. This spring, he's also asking for a double-digit increase in state money. "We were going to improve or we were going to shut down," Warner says. "We didn't have anything to lose."
To Warner, who previously was assistant headmaster at a private school in Baton Rouge, La., keeping MSSM afloat was crucial. For a rural state like Maine, Warner says, MSSM is the most cost-effective way to provide advanced classes. Many school districts in the state are small, and some schools might have just one math teacher. "No school can afford to have a teacher spending a fourth of his teaching load with one or two kids," Warner says. So a number of rural states like Maine, including Idaho, Louisiana and Arkansas, have created magnet schools, catering to advanced students from school districts across the state.
But magnet schools don't just save school districts money, supporters say; they can also push gifted students farther academically. "Gifted students thrive in the presence of the gifted," says Bruce Vogeli, an education professor at Columbia University Teachers College in New York. "In the presence of average students, either they dominate the class or become disinterested because they get stuff faster than others." It's also important to group gifted students together, Vogeli says, "so they don't get the idea that they're the smartest people in the world."
MSSM has its critics. Some have called it elitist, and others have argued that the state can't afford to spend money on such a small pool of students. For the nation's 100 magnet schools that specialize in math and science, such skepticism is common, according to Vogeli. "The problem is that people wonder why the government is spending money on a special opportunity for special students, not for average students," he says.
Warner, however, counters that the state benefits from sending its best and brightest to Limestone because it makes leaders out of those who might not have the opportunity otherwise. "The kids who come here would rather be talking about quantum physics than going to a party on a Friday night. In their sending schools, they are marginalized socially and culturally," Warner says. "If you create an environment where a student goes from the margins to the mainstream, that allows them to develop their leadership potential."
For examples of MSSM leadership, he says, just look around; the state economist, Catherine Reilly, graduated from MSSM in 1997, and Jeremy Usher, founder of the Damariscotta Web design firm Firefly LLC, graduated in 2000. Other graduates are doctors, teachers and engineers in the state, according to Warner. MSSM plans to market these graduates heavily in coming years, to persuade state Legislators and taxpayers that MSSM is worth the investment.
Still, MSSM is far from financially stable, and Warner is first to admit it. This spring, he and the school's board of trustees began drafting MSSM's 30-year strategic plan, which includes building a $30 million endowment, boosting total enrollment to 400 students and creating a sabbatical program for faculty.
With that effort in mind, Mainebiz asked Warner to complete a report card on the school's efforts so far. Warner graded in five areas: funding, student attraction and retention, faculty attraction and retention, student achievement, and alumnae contributions to Maine. So far, according to Warner, MSSM is maintaining a solid B average.
Funding: B-
As with most of these categories, MSSM has come a long way since 2005, Warner says. The school should get an "A+" for effort, Warner says, but MSSM is far from its goal of receiving more state money for financial aid and building its endowment to $1 million by next year.
In 2005, MSSM was just scraping by. It owed the state $200,000 for money it borrowed to provide financial aid. The endowment was a mere $105,000. The school's appropriation from the state that year ˆ $1. 62 million ˆ wasn't enough to cover expenses. MSSM's board of trustees, a governor-appointed group, was hesitant to ask for more state money, fearful legislators would strike funding altogether, says Warner.
Warner trimmed spending by freezing faculty salaries for this year and leaving vacant administrative positions unfilled. The debt has since shrunk to $114,000, and Warner hopes to pay off the debt completely by 2010. Meanwhile, he's asked the state education department to boost MSSM's appropriation in its budget by 10%, to roughly $1.71 million. The bonus would not only cover the $11,700 tuition, but also financial aid for the $6,407 room and board fee, which in the past the school had offered by dipping into the academic program budget. Warner is confident the increase will pass: The Legislature's education and cultural affairs committee last month voted unanimously to support it, he says.
But the state money alone won't cover all costs, Warner says, so the school is ramping up fundraising. This year, the school's annual fund drive raised $87,000, up from a modest $15,000 in 2004. Warner and the board of trustees hope to raise the figure to $200,000 during the 2007-08 academic year. They also plan to launch a $1 million capital campaign this year to fund the school's endowment, which is currently at $140,000.
Jim Patterson, MSSM founder and board member, hopes the new money will come partly from alums, now that MSSM has a couple hundred graduates in the workforce, as well as from local businesses.
Student attraction and retention: B-
MSSM had 165 students in 1996, spread over grades 10-12. Founders originally hoped enrollment would grow to 300-450 students by 2005, but the school hasn't met that goal. So far, total enrollment has ranged from 105 to 165, falling to a low of 87 students in 2004. Some students leave, too, because they can't complete the coursework or because they miss living at home.
And the school isn't exactly flooded with applications. Last year, MSSM received 85 applications for all three grades for the current school year. Sixty-nine of those applicants enrolled ˆ students can start at MSSM in grade 10, 11 or 12 ˆ bringing the total student body to 130. Warner estimates that the school turned away an additional 15-20 students before they completed the application process, having seen their grades and test scores. Warner also points to the school's attrition rate, which has dropped from 15% to 10% in the last two years, with a few students per class leaving each year. Students have come from every county in the state, with highest numbers from Aroostook, Cumberland and York Counties.
While the school's remote location can be a turn-off for some, others say it helps them focus. "There's a lot less civilization around, which is good in some ways because it helps you focus on your studies and the community you're living in," says Kristina Yurko, an MSSM junior from Freeport, five hours away. Yurko says she "fell in love" with the school when she visited four years ago with a friend, attracted to the tight-knit community and the opportunity to take more advanced classes than at Freeport High School. Yurko gets homesick sometimes, she says, but visits family once a month, when MSSM has long weekends for students to return home.
In 30 years, Warner says, MSSM is projected to have a total of 400 students, equally distributed in grades 10-12. He hopes to boost enrollment not only by recruiting students more heavily, but also by adding more academic and extracurricular offerings. The school is working to offer students internships at the Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, and include more field trips to places like Portland and the Common Ground Fair in Unity.
Faculty attraction and retention: C+
Finding good teachers who stick around hasn't been easy for MSSM. Teachers need to be highly trained to teach multivariable calculus and linear algebra to 16-year-olds, Warner says, and not everyone wants to move to Limestone, with its small population and limited options for entertainment.
Funding shortages have pushed faculty to leave, too. From 2001-2004, six "very, very fine" teachers left MSSM, Warner says, "because they were not happy with the direction the school was taking," with school leaders cutting administrative positions and academic program funds to make up for the $200,000 budget shortfall. But faculty positions are filling: This year, Warner has hired two additional teachers, bringing the total number to 12. One hire was a teacher who left several years ago because of the school's "direction" problems. "She called and said she heard the school was doing better," Warner says.
The school also is working to revitalize downtown Limestone, part if its effort to appeal to future faculty and staff hires. Since last July, MSSM has worked with the Limestone Development Foundation to draft a new, 10-year strategic plan for boosting business development. Plans include opening a new hotel, expanding the local wildlife refuge and building biking trails downtown.
Student achievement: A+
MSSM kids sweep math competitions in Maine, though Bangor High School's "Team Red" math team can give them a run for their money, says Tad Johnston, a math specialist at the state Department of Education. MSSM students are "powerhouses in the math competitions," Johnston says. Nationally, too, MSSM scores well. Last June, a team from MSSM won the U.S. Department of Energy's National Science Bowl, besting teams from seven other states in a contest to build the best hydrogen-powered car. The average SAT score for the class of 2007 is 1809 (on a scale of 800 in reading, writing and math), while the average score of 2006 graduates statewide was 1526.
Virtually all MSSM grads ˆ school administrators put the figure at "98%-100%" ˆ go on to college; by comparison, the statewide figure was 49% in 2004, according to the Maine Compact for Higher Education in Augusta. This spring, MSSM seniors were accepted to the University of Maine, Colby, Bowdoin, Yale, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Cornell, among others.
Graduates' contribution to Maine: A
About a third of MSSM's 530 alumnae are still in college or graduate school, but those who are in the workforce are repaying the state's investment, Warner says. Graduates are doctors, nurses, engineers, teachers and computer programmers.
The school regularly encourages students to pursue careers in Maine, says Warner. For Catherine Reilly, the state economist who studied economics at Loyola College in Maryland before returning to Maine, those efforts worked. "I think that my experience at MSSM made me more likely to come back because I was more aware of what the state had to offer," she says, referring to guest speakers from the state's science and business communities who spoke at MSSM while she was at the school. "[The MSSM education] certainly helps me in my job now, to have spent time up in the County, to know what issues they face up there."
Reilly has become MSSM's poster child, attending receptions with legislators and speaking on its behalf. But the school is just beginning to track other alumni, so it can prove whether graduates are, in fact, returning the state's investment. Touting alumni contributions to the state is crucial to gain public support, according to Vogeli at Columbia University. "The returns are evident when you have distinguished scientists filling Maine universities, filling science jobs, when graduates are in business positions," he says.
But not all MSSM graduates return to Maine. Marcel Woodman, a 2000 MSSM graduate from Hodgdon, in Aroostook County, is working as a systems engineer at a healthcare equipment company in Franklin, Mass. Woodman stayed in Massachusetts partly because he went to college there, at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and because his girlfriend wanted to reside there. He has no immediate plans to move to Maine, but he's prepared to never say never. "I wouldn't rule it out," he says, "if the opportunities came to work there."
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