CARIBOU, Maine — Caribou Community School’s fifth-graders on March 8 will be joining PreK-fourth grade in attending school under a slightly altered “green” model, in which they attend school on all days but Wednesday.
RSU 39 (Caribou and Stockholm) Superintendent Tim Doak said they are prepared to green as soon as state guidelines allow for individual group sizes of 100, as opposed to 50, in one setting or area.
“When the group size was at 100, we were able to safely feed 88 kids, all six feet apart, in our cafeteria while the rest of the students rotated eating in classrooms,” Doak said. “That’s four different lunch schedules, and it worked. But when they went from 100 to 50 on Nov. 20, there was no way we could have done it with the size of our school.”
With other Aroostook schools in the green model, Doak said community members have questioned why the Caribou Community School is still yellow.
“When we have 750 kids in one building, we’re no longer like a typical County school,” he said. “We’re more like Gorham, Ellsworth, Biddeford, Yarmouth or Cape Elizabeth, because those schools run between 700 and 1,000 students.”
In talking with officials from these schools, Doak said they’re also feeling pressure from community members concerned about the yellow model.
“We don’t blame parent groups,” he said. “This has been going on for a long time, but the biggest piece was moving the individual group sizes down to 50.”
Doak said that he and other superintendents are caught between following state guidelines and ensuring that parents and community members are happy.
Under the yellow model, the school brings in one group of students for Monday and Tuesday, everyone attends remote learning on Wednesday as the school undergoes a deep clean, and then the other half of students attend on Thursday and Friday.
Currently Prek-4 is able to attend four days a week, and Doak said on March 3 that he will be sending a letter that fifth graders will also be able to return for four days a week starting on Monday, March 8.
“I think that’s honestly as much as I can do, and if I allow grades six through eight to go back to green then we won’t meet the safety standards,” he said.
And while Doak said he understands the frustration that parents are going through with childcare amid the pandemic, he said these decisions are being made on a state level — not by the superintendents. If parents have concerns with the guidelines, he suggested they reach out to the organizations responsible for making these rules, like the Maine CDC, the Maine Department of Education or Gov.Janet Mills’ office.
The Caribou Community School, a $54 million dollar facility that was a decade in the making, opened less than a year ago and is packed with state-of-the-art modern features such as smart TVs and wireless microphones and speakers systems in classrooms.
“I think the sad thing is that we haven’t really been in there full time,” Doak said, adding that students were briefly in the building full time in early November.
“It’s a learning environment like no other,” he said.
Both Doak and Caribou Community School Principal Leland Caron said the teachers particularly enjoy the smart TVs.
“They are doing everything we thought they would and more. The picture quality is just tremendous,” Doak said. “It’s amazing what we can do now with teaching and learning, not just research.”
Previously, PreK-8 was broken up into three buildings: Hilltop Elementary School, Teague Park Elementary School and Caribou Middle School. Caron, who previously worked as the middle school principal, said that if these buildings were still up today, the students would likely be able to learn under a green model.
The Caribou Community School is well-equipped to handle the pandemic and ensure student safety, the principal said.
“The ventilation system and air system we have in this building is amazing for airflow,” he said. “Our building is set up to separate students a bit more. Our cafeteria, if we were allowed to have 100 people, would easily allow us to go back to the green model with everyone sitting six feet apart and eating lunches. The limitation of groups of 50 pulls away some of the advantages of our building.”
As a result, he said it may be difficult to bring in grades six through eight while continuing for four days a week.
There are still some aspects of the school project that need to be completed, with the larger pieces being soccer fields and a playground, in addition to contractors wrapping up smaller items on the punch list in the building on Wednesdays while all students are learning remotely.
Doak said it would likely take a year until the entire project is completed.
