A love letter to the Portland Public School Board and Superintendent

Our Children and Our School

There is no way to *know* Peaks Island School the place affectionally referred to as “Brick School” like knowing it through the experience of living here year-round and raising children who attend our tiny school- where island children have been well educated since 1869. 

I dare say an experience similar to in many aspects to the other fourteen Maine Island communities. 

Here’s the one big exception. In thirteen of the fifteen year-round islands, the folks making decisions regarding their island schools actually live on those islands. A unique and important distinction we have here on Peaks and on Cliff Island is the folks holding the purse strings and making lots of the decisions regarding the school and the education therein do not actually live here and cannot relate to the experience and implications to have one’s children educated in their island school. 

With all due respect to the members of the Portland School Committee and the Senior Administrators at Portland Public Schools, what you cannot know about our community and our school derives from the simple fact that you are not a member of our community. Yet- interestingly, we are members of your community. We are community members of Portland from a different kind of neighborhood not dissimilar from the distinct neighborhood characteristics you live in. If you live on the Hill or in Oakdale, you are not a West ender.  Your experience in town is not that of an island community. It is actually quite different.  By stating this obvious fact, I mean no disrespect and I hope that none is taken. As a sixth generation Portland resident I have lived the difference. My family hales for the Hill. As a kid I lived on Beacon Street. My Grandparents on lived on Read St. Each uniquely their own distinct neighborhoods in one amazing little city by the sea. 

Additionally, I acknowledge and appreciate the fact that many people have a deep affection for this place born out of multigenerational lived experience on Peaks Island. There is a freedom in that familiarity. Free to enjoy the place in the best time of the year often with folks who have been appreciating it sustaining community connections and organizations together for several generations. I acknowledge that reality and I benefit from their experience and commitment to our shared place.   Enjoying this place for even a good part of the year still remains free from the the difficulties that come with living here year-round. It’s the winters that unite us.  Together facing the joys and challenges that are inherently part of year-round island life. These are choices most of us freely make. It’s not a complaint-It’s so worth it. Our summer families and friends bring a vibrancy, a passion, and a historical connection to this place that feels meaningful and really is very important. 

I’ve been a summer kid. We lived on Beacon St and my family summered on Higgins Beach. Later, in the 1970’s my parents moved us to Kennebunkport. My young adult life was spent raising children in the Lakes Region of Maine where my two older children attended a small community elementary school. I worked at the school and served on the local school board and chaired the finance committee. Lots of parallel experiences there too.

However, let me stay focused on my observations of being a year-round resident and parent of four children here on Peaks Island. This is about the broader perspective of what it means to live in a place where children are seen where they are known and where they are valued.  That is not my opinion, it is what I hear from my children as they reflect about what is most meaningful to them in both their educational and their island life.  It is what I’ve experienced as a parent, and what I witness as a parent and how I participate in the lives of my friends’ children.  This is a joint commitment I share with other community members.

Island kids and their families are supported before they ever step foot in the school. Here, they are known by name by Bob Hannigan the store owner, Al the post man, and Stan the Tree-man. Our kids are known and kept safe by the teams of deckhands at the Baylines the Firefighters Public Works crew and the Police. Our children are known buy the teams of people who fix our houses and tend to our pipes, our electricity and our furnaces. As they zoom around on their bikes or tromp around in the woods. Our children are welcomed by Pastor Will, and our elders regardless of their family’s religious affiliation. Our kids know the captains of the barges and the ferries. Our kids ride horses and raise chickens. They are loved up by Rosanne at the library Story Hour and by the team of educators and volunteers at the Children’s Workshop. Our children are passed around as babies into the arms of Island grandparents and who may be missing their own grandchildren and who understand just how much help an extra set of hands can be when children are tired and hungry and the twenty-minute crossing feels like a lifetime. Our kids explore nature, dance, sing, fish, play, compromise and problem solve. Together. Outside. A lot. They are subject to island co-parent cohorts that hold up the examples inherent in the notion that we are better when we work together to support each other. Life on islands promote interdependence and reduce social isolation. It just feels better to know that we are all in this together. 

Our children are cared for by the parents and grandparents who are nurses and doctors on the island off duty and available for consults fielding stressed-out phone calls for the emergent feverish situations that always arise at the worst possible moment- just after the health centers closes and the boat has left the dock. Our kids are coached to ski, swim, skate, and sail, play baseball, tennis, soccer and basketball and ride bikes often before they enter school. They are read to and played with on commutes to town for the necessary mundane trips to the dentist or an exciting vacation with family. Our community see and know all our kids before they ever get to school. There are no lines between generations. Our kids talk to community elders’ teens and visitors. This I venture to guess is also true on the other fourteen year-round island communities. You can’t escape being known. We live community. Not in A community. 

The results of this care and attention are that our kids do not fall through the cracks. Education on Peaks Island is a lived experience. As a community we try to meet our students where they are we build supports for what they need. This happens a lot outside of the school day and the school’s walls. We ask. We wait- we listen, we observe and we explore who our children are and we meet them there to help them discover how be the best people they can be. What we do for one we hope to do for all. We understand that this commitment will make our community stronger and our children more prepared to face the adversity that is certain to come. We’ve got each other’s backs. We also educate to the standard curriculum dictated to us from the department of education for the State of Maine. It’s entirely multifaceted as a lived educational experience- life school- island style. 

You will not see our best in whatever data you are accumulating. We are a statistical anomaly. You will see our best we are dancing together or sharing a community meal together in the school or singing and preforming together at our holiday or summer concerts. You will experience our best when you find us marching down Island Ave toward the senior center the library or the boat. You will see our best when the children sit in rapped attention listening to Reta and Joyce and Elin talk about their experiences at the Peaks Island School in the 1930’s. Or hearing the story from Marty Mulkern about what actually does happen to all that trash at the transfer station? Or standing arm to arm with Scott Nash as he draws and tells kids how they too can mess around and learn to do stuff by simply being curious and giving things a try. We are a community. We know that our primary job is not to achieve the highest test score but to answer to our higher calling of being a decent and good human being. Help shovel our neighbors, deliver groceries, help the littler kids and know- In good times and in hard times the generosity of spirit will be returned. Our community knows our children, loves our children and supports our children. Inside and outside of the school days. 

If you want to assess the available data look backwards. See who has come out of Peaks Island Elementary School and see what those humans are doing. Living lives of purpose, commitment and connection and Afterall- isn’t that actually the goal? 

Kelly Hasson gets it. She’s an islander. She is also a woman of professional dignity, unsurpassed in her leadership skills and qualifications having honed her skills through experience both on and off island. She has the professional chops to have earned your trust. She knows how to do what needs to be done with the resources on hand. She won’t waste your time not will she waste our tax dollars.  Follow her lead. Don’t sell her short. She has built an island-based support team to support the professional educators so that they can do their jobs- the nuts and bolts of mastery of facts and a love of learning them. Lend her support she needs to be the best example of what public education in the state of Maine can be. You will not be disappointed.

My greatest hope is that the seven thousand or so children in the Portland Public Schools can feel as important in the eyes of their community as I know our children on Peaks Island do. Thank you for all you are doing to provide world class free and accessible public education to all of the students young and old in the Portland Public Schools. 

Just one parents experience knowing we are in this together.