It’s a perennial sign of the school year to come: a School Union #98 ad in the Ellsworth American seeking a part-time music teacher and a part-time physical education teacher at the Islesford school. There usually isn’t fierce competition for either position.
Selena Dunbar, administrative assistant at the Union #98 Superintendent’s office, said a part-time island position with a sea commute just isn’t enticing for teachers in the job market.
“It’s really hard [to fill],” Dunbar said. “It’s only one day a week.”
She said the positions often remain open throughout the school year.
While it’s difficult enough to find someone willing to commute one day a week to the island, it’s nearly impossible to find someone both willing to commute and with the proper qualifications. Federal and state guidelines are very specific about who can fill such slots.
“I don’t know if they can make concessions,” Dunbar said.
She said the Union #98 school board soon would meet to try and come up with a solution to the persistently-vacant positions.
Ruth Kermish-Allen, education outreach coordinator for the Island Institute, said some island schools have trouble filling part-time positions, while others do not. Often, it depends on the size of the island and the accessibility of its ferry schedule.
“Like everything with the islands, it varies,” she said.
The Vinalhaven school system usually can find personnel for part-time, special education and physical therapy positions, said the school’s business manager, Kathy Warren. With a year-round population of roughly 1,200 and a summer population four to five times that, there’s usually someone on the island to fill a school vacancy.
“There’s a fairly good pool on the island with teacher training,” she said. “We’re lucky to have an active bunch of graduates.”
The school also benefits from being able to contract out for speech and physical therapy help with the island’s medical center and assisted-care facility.
“We’re pretty well covered,” Warren said.
But smaller island communities often don’t have the same luxury. Kermish-Allen said these island schools often use community members with real-world experience to fill teaching positions in fields like foreign language or music.
But this solution often runs counter to state and federal education mandates calling for specifically-trained individuals, particularly in special education, and can lead to conflict between islanders and the mainland.
Frenchboro Elementary recently experienced such a problem. The national Title I funding program requires a specific reading test be given to all elementary students. In the past, the island school turned to a qualified Frenchboro resident to administer this test, but this year, Union #98 administrators decided, for the sake of uniformity, to have the same Title I personnel administer the test across the union. This meant trying to get mainland Title I testers to the island.
Erica Davis, a teacher at Frenchboro, said this policy change was both costly and unsuccessful. First, she said, the Title I testers didn’t want to take the traditional evening ferry back to the mainland, so the Frenchboro school board paid $170 to charter an earlier boat back.
Then, two of the Title I testers were uncomfortable with boat travel. Several times, predictions of stormy weather caused them to cancel, leaving the school board to pay for an empty chartered boat. Before they found a day deemed safe for travel, the school year ended.
“They didn’t come and the kids didn’t get the testing,” Davis said. “It’s frustrating because we could have got the testing done ourselves.”
Davis said situations like this make islanders look inward to solve educational problems.
“People out here tend to stop relying on services on the mainland of any kind,” she said.
Davis and her family are a perfect example. Before they moved to Frenchboro, Davis’s daughter was enrolled in a special education reading recovery program. Technically, the Frenchboro school was mandated to continue the program, but Davis instead chose to become a certified reading recovery instructor herself and continue her daughter’s program at home.
“Special education people have way too much of a caseload anyway,” she said. “I knew that getting someone out here on a regular basis would just be a nightmare.”
Ultimately, though, Davis said smaller class sizes in island schools more than makes up for any occasional lack of special services. She said with a small student population, she and her co-teacher usually could provide enough individualized attention to navigate around any special education obstacles.
“I take them where they are and move forward,” she said.