MILLINOCKET, Maine – Faced with declining enrolment and revenue, the high school in this remote Maine town has pinned its hopes on an unlikely source of salvation: Chinese teenagers.
Never mind that Millinocket is an hour’s drive from the nearest mall or movie theatre, or that it gets an average 236 centimetres of snow a year. Dr. Kenneth Smith, the schools superintendent, is so certain that Chinese students will eventually arrive by the dozen – paying $27,000 a year in tuition, room and board – that he is scouting vacant properties to convert to dormitories.
“We are going full-bore,” Smith said recently in his office at the school, Stearns High, where the Chinese words for “hello” and “welcome” were displayed on the dry erase board and a Lonely Planet China travel guide sat on the conference table. “You’ve got to move if you’ve got something you believe is the right thing to do.”
Recently, Smith left for China, to spend a week pitching Stearns High to school officials, parents and students in Beijing, Shanghai and two other cities. He has hired a consultant to help him make connections in China, lobbied Millinocket’s elected officials and business owners to embrace the plan and even directed the school’s cafeteria workers to add Chinese food to the menu.
But Millinocket’s plan may be unprecedented among public schools, even as they scramble for new sources of revenue.
“This is the first we’ve even heard of it,” said Alexis Rice, a spokeswoman for the National School Boards Association.
There is one hitch. Under State Department rules, foreign students can only attend a U.S. public high school for a year, a system that Smith considers unfair, given that they can attend private high schools for four years. He is pressing Maine’s congressional delegation to seek a change to the rules, but in the meantime, he intends to recruit a handful of Chinese students to attend Stearns next year.
They would come to Millinocket for a year, Smith said, then perhaps transfer to a private school or enrol in a U.S. college or university.
Smith, a native of Maine who has only rarely travelled outside of New England, conceded that he did not know much about China. But from what he had heard and read in recent months, he said, two things were clear: China had a large middle class with money to spend, and its students wanted to study here.
“They want to learn English, and they want a college education,” he said. “If we can get them into a college here, they will have achieved their major goal.”
Smith is so certain of success that it almost feels wrong to ask: Why would Chinese parents spend $27,000 to send their children to Stearns High, which is housed in a 1960s building, has only one Advanced Placement course and classroom maps so outdated they still show the Soviet Union, and where more than half of the 200 students are poor enough to qualify for free lunches?
“Our performing arts program is one of the best anywhere,” Smith said. “We have a tremendous music department and small classes with plenty of room. In China, you’re elbow to elbow.”
Fair enough. But why Millinocket, a town of 5,000 that fell on hard times after its paper mill closed in 2003? Vacant storefronts pock Penobscot Avenue, the main street, and the most popular hangout for teenagers is a supermarket parking lot.
“We’re a community full of assets,” Smith said, pointing to Mount Katahdin, Maine’s highest peak, which looms just beyond the town, and the abundant hunting, fishing and snow sport opportunities that the locals love. “There’s the beauty, No. 1, and the fresh air. And the roads are good.”
Private schools, of course, have drawn students from abroad for decades, and a number of them in New England have recruited heavily from Asia in recent years.
“All of a sudden they have 60 Chinese kids in these tiny villages in Vermont,” said Suzanne Fox, the consultant who is working with Smith.
Fox, whose company, Fox Intercultural Consulting Services, helps businesses and schools build connections in China, said she had persuaded Smith to start slowly.
“I’ve had to rein him in a little bit,” Fox said, adding that his new goal was to recruit perhaps five students next fall instead of 100. In the coming months, Fox will make frequent trips to Millinocket to teach students, teachers and community leaders about Chinese culture. Smith has also sought advice from a Chinese exchange student who he said was spending the year “with the undertaker’s family” in neighbouring East Millinocket.
“I asked her what she most wanted to do while she was here,” he said. “She told me she wanted to go to Florida and see Disney World, go to Boston and shop, and climb Mount Katahdin.”
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