CAMDEN/ROCKPORT — More four-year-olds in Camden and Rockport will have the opportunity to participate in a public school pre-Kindergarten program this coming year. Special education will also be provided, and down the road, the Camden-Rockport school K-8 district (Maine Administrative District 28) anticipates expanding its program to three-year-olds.

The expansion does not come, however, without some tension in a community that has, since the 1980s or even earlier, been home to not just a public school system, but independent schools offering private tuition education, including Montessori and Waldorf schools, and private preschools, such as PeoplePlace, Stepping with the Stones, and the Penobscot Bay Area YMCA.

Those entities, each with unique philosophical backgrounds in early childhood development, have existed alongside each other over the decades, as Maine, unlike other states, did not actively fund public pre-K schooling. 

That has changed, and since 2022, the state Department of Education has ramped up funding for pre-K, but has been leaving it up to school districts to establish their individual programs. The DOE calls it Public Preschool.

"The first years of life are a critical developmental time in forming the basis for learning and social interaction," the Maine DOE said. "Investments in early learning have powerful long-term paybacks. The pandemic heightened the difficulty that many Maine parents/caregivers already faced in struggling to locate pre-kindergarten or child care."

Both RSU 13 (Rockland area schools) and RSU 40 (Waldoboro area schools) have pre-K programs, and in 2023 Camden-Rockport established its own smaller Nature-Based Pre-K Program focusing on outdoor learning. 

Now, however, Camden-Rockport intends to expand its pre-K opportunities with one new classroom at the Camden-Rockport Elementary School, and one more program component classroom at an independent entity, if the district can find a partner selected from interested private schools.

The SAD 28 School Board heard more of those details Dec. 17 at a regularly scheduled meeting, when members considered pre-K options, costs, and were updated about the district's ongoing plans to reduce staff in other classrooms as student enrollment shrinks (In September, School Administrative District 28 (Camden-Rockport K-8) Superintendent Maria Libby reported a 15% decline in enrollment since 2019, attributed to decreases in kindergarten enrollment, according to board meeting minutes. This year, there are 43 Kindergarten students, in 2024 there were 32).

The decision to increase the Camden-Rockport pre-K capacity was made, in part, with the 2023 Maine DOE directive that, with a 2028 deadline, all school districts are to oversee special education for eligible resident four-year-olds.

"This year, we signed a document with the state, and committed to taking on four-year-olds in special ed," said Libby, in a Jan. 8 phone conversation. "We've had a pre-K program but we were not responsible for our special ed kids."

For the past 10 years, the state has talked about transitioning pre-K special education purview to public schools from the Dept. of Education, "and it is finally happening," she said.

SAD 28 anticipates 36 to 40 Camden and Rockport four-year-olds will be enrolled for full-time and publicly-funded attendance. Parents will not have the option of enrolling their children on a part-time schedule.

Last week, Assistant Superintendent Jamie Stone circulated a request for proposals to the private entities, including the Penobscot Bay YMCA, and independent schools, such as Riley, PeoplePlace and and the Children's House Montessori School, to collaborate with a SAD 28-funded classroom in their facility.

Why?

"There are a few reasons," said Libby. "We are sensitive to the fact that private preschool programs depend on their three- to four-year-olds to help fund their infant programs. And we know we are going to have an impact by offering universal pre-K. If we took them all in-house, we siphon off all that income on those private providers, and it could have a negative inability to offer infant care as a community resource."

Libby said SAD 28 wants to strike a balance. 

"If we partner with somebody it will have less of an impact," she said.

She added that having a third pre-K classroom at a private facility would cost the district less than adding a third classroom at CRES. That classroom would be a "third component" of programming, not simply a third classroom of the district's pre-K program.

"It is space in somebody else's programming that we pay for," she said.

The developing structure will provide for publicly-funded pre-K enrollment, with 30 spaces available at CRES.

"We will likely take all of the students who need special education in our two classrooms," she said. "We're expecting that to be about eight kids."

Maine has been moving to public pre-K education for more than a decade, said Libby.

"Maine is one of the few states in the nation whose public schools do not provide services to their three- and four-year-old population," she said. "This has been in the works for a long time."

"We have not done it in this district because, historically, we have a lot of private school options for people for three- and four-year-old programming," she said. "And we have always been sensitive to that fact."

She continued: "On one hand, you can help parents by offering pre-K programming in a public school because they do not have to pay to send their four-year-old some place. That is helpful to parents but it can be harmful to private providers. And we have a concentration of private schools in the Camden-Rockport area, so we have been sensitive that the need has already been met by private providers; but, there are also a lot of parents who cannot afford the private providers."

It has, she said, been a "dynamic tension of should we or shouldn't we, which is why we started with one classroom — to minimize our impact on the private programming.

"But we wanted to be able to offer public pre-K because we do think it is a benefit to parents, and it is a balance," she said. "Now that we have to take on four-year-old services, we are expanding. We think it is only fair to expand in a way that offers universal pre-K."

By partnering with a private entity, the district is "trying to be a good neighbor," said Libby. "We are trying to do the best we can to serve the community."

She anticipates that the expansion of public school pre-K capacity in Camden and Rockport will cost approximately $956,610. Of that, the state will reimburse the district $735,860, leaving an estimated $220,750 for the two towns to fund.

The funding from the State of Maine for the SAD 28 pre-K expansion is broad and helps pay for facility renovations, staff recruitment and training, and other start-up costs linked to establishing new public pre-kindergarten programs, expanding to additional classrooms, or transitioning from part-day/part-week to full-day/full-week.

"Priority has been given to schools that partner with community programs such Head Start or child care, provide longer duration of education, and serve socioeconomically disadvantaged students," the DOE said.

In that partnership model, the district will oversee the services, but necessarily provide all the services. The district is, however, taking on the responsibility to make sure the needs are met, she said. The private entity classroom could include special ed students,

For the four-year-olds, Libby envisions that special education services will take place in an on-site, pre-school program for four year-olds, but that may not be the case for three-year-olds.

The partner would, if all goes as anticipated, also include special education students in its pre-K classroom, "but not high need" students, said Libby, at the Dec. 17 meeting.

SAD 28 has begun its process for shaping a 2026-2027 budget, and at the same Dec. 17 meeting, Libby reported that the district continues its balancing for the 'right size staffing to align with enrollment and needs' and has been analyzing every position in the elementary and middle schools.

She had projected last fall that the 15% enrollment decrease at Camden-Rockport Elementary School would eventually stabilize at approximately 295 students (as of October there were 319 students at CRES).

SAD 28 will be finalizing cuts and then talk with teachers this month who will be affected by those cuts, said Libby. The proposed budget will be presented to the board in mid-February.

Meanwhile, the effort to expand pre-K will continue.

"Early intervention is the best investment a community can make and saves money down the road," Libby said.

She said the combined SAD 28 and Five Town CSD (overseeing Camden Hills Regional High School) boards agreed over the last decade to divert all of the CSD Title One federal funding to SAD 28, "because we so firmly believe that early intervention is so important."

That beefs up literacy intervention at the younger grades, she said.

"We believe it is so much better to spend the money in the early grades with literacy intervention than it is to wait until kids are in high school," said Libby.

In return, SAD 28 gives the CSD a larger share of its Title Two (federal funding to improve the quality and effectiveness of teachers, principals, and other school leaders) money to offset what was directed to the lower grades, she said.

"Our current pre-school kids who are in the classroom come into Kindergarten light years ahead of most incoming Kindergarteners, because they have been in our system, they understand things, they know how to be in school, and they hit the ground running," she said. "I think it is one of the single most valuable places we can put our resources."

Reach Editorial Director Lynda Clancy at lyndaclancy@penbaypilot.com; 207-706-6657