George Stevens Academy, a private high school in Blue Hill, plans to open its board meetings fully to the public next month for the first time and talk with area towns about options for shared governance.
The town academy is essentially the area high school for seven Blue Hill peninsula towns — Blue Hill, Brooklin, Brooksville, Castine, Penobscot, Sedgwick and Surry — but families in those towns have school choice allowing them to send their children elsewhere, which has for years contributed to declining enrollment and financial challenges at GSA.
The governance changes, unusual for a private school, were announced this week by its board of trustees. They come shortly after the high school launched an effort to try to stabilize enrollment by seeking formal contracts with sending towns in place of free school choice.
The contract initiative is now on the backburner after Head of School Dan Welch suddenly announced he would resign at the end of the school year to take another job, the board said in a letter to local school committees and select boards.
“The Board sees this transition as an opportunity to ensure that the school’s leadership and governance structures are fully responsive to the needs, expectations, and priorities of the communities GSA serves,” according to the letter, which also said the school’s core remains strong and is already seeing renewed enrollment as it increases communication and recruiting.
Towns have also made clear that they want to see stronger working relationships with the school based in “transparency, trust, and shared understanding,” the letter said. Some parents met the contract proposal with resistance when it was announced in January, also citing memories of the rollout of the school’s requests for additional tuition money from towns in 2019.
In response to that and Welch’s departure, the board has decided to open its meetings, to talk to sending towns about shared governance models, to start a transition committee of faculty and staff, and to hold a community forum in the spring to discuss the school’s future. The board aims to present a three- to five-year plan by the end of June.
The school opened the first half-hour of board meetings to the public last June; in 2022, an advisory committee formed for town representatives to weigh in on its increasing budget.
Towns that approved contracts to send their students there would have received a seat on the board, the school said in January.
“GSA has long been a regional asset, and its future is strongest when it is shaped by and accountable to the communities it serves,” board members wrote.
