Having received my glossy, expensive Annual Report, I would like to take issue with the Superintendent’s boast that “…academic achievement on state testing was particularly strong last spring.”  

Focusing on Camden Hills Regional High School (CHRHS), too many students are not meeting the standards.

Looking at the State of Maine Assessment Results from Spring 2023, 22%, 36% and 34% of our tenth graders did not achieve grade level standards in ELA(English Language Arts), Math and Science. 

With 63.5 teachers for 748 pupils that means we are failing to provide sufficient skills despite a student to teacher ratio of 11.8, a prosperous, supportive community, and beautiful facilities. Finances? After a 10.4% budget increase, there will be over $17 million for projected students,  which means we are spending approximately $22K per student. Plenty of money, perhaps too much.  

The PSAT results were worse. Twenty-nine percent of 11th graders did not meet the benchmark for reading and writing. How are students to communicate,  learn and prosper without these skills? 

In an era of increasing technology, why are we not mobilizing the school resources to address the disaster that 62% of the students who were in Grade 11 in the Fall of 2023 did not meet the standards for Math? Yes, you read that correctly, only 38% of CHRHS 11th graders met the math benchmark as measured by their PSATs.  Wake up CHRHS leadership!

The only academic department to enjoy its own page was the art education department and in case you did not understand the school’s priorities, there was artwork embedded on nearly every page of the Annual Report. 

News Flash: The art sector is not where the jobs will be. 

Art is great, but it is not the essential academic skills. Our students deserve the tools to succeed in careers of their choice and the school system is leaving far too many CHRHS students behind.

Sobering results on standardized tests discourages graduating students from going outside our community to seek out more advanced education  and is a secondary effect of failure to train our students. School leadership needs to honestly address their weaknesses, and get excited, motivated and organized to address their record of chronic academic underachievement. 

Jonathan J. Beitler lives in Camden