The Bangor School Department is piloting a new program this year that would give high school students the option to learn completely online, according to the superintendent.
The program, which will be tested this year with a single class of about 20 students, aims to offer students a more flexible learning plan, superintendent Marie Robinson said.
This flexibility may help a generation of students who have struggled to recover academically in the years following the COVID-19 pandemic. Chronic absenteeism has skyrocketed nationwide since 2020 and it remains a challenge in Bangor schools, Robinson said, although she didn’t yet know the specific rate for the most recent school year.
Bangor High School will run the pilot program through an online learning company called Edmentum. Bangor graduation coaches will act as facilitators, meeting regularly with the students in the program over Zoom, Robinson said.
To start, one cohort of about 20 students will participate, and the school department will evaluate the results at the end of the year and consider whether it wants to expand the program.
A recent study of Los Angeles public schools, which opened 60 virtual schools in 2023, found that although remote learning largely resulted in lower test scores, a subset of students did better in virtual school than in-person school.
The initiative at Bangor High School is part of broader changes in the school’s approach to improving graduation outcomes. Two graduation coach positions, first added using pandemic relief funds, have thus far focused on supporting juniors and seniors, but the school department is “looking to offer that support sooner, as opposed to later, before kids fall through the cracks,” Robinson said.
“We’re looking now to bridge that gap from eighth to ninth grade, because the research really points to that transition being pivotal in terms of graduation rates,” she added.
This year’s graduation rate was around 90 percent, according to Robinson, which is the target graduation rate set in the school department’s 10-year strategic plan published in 2020. But it’s a decrease from the previous year, which saw the school’s highest-ever rate at 92 percent.
Strategies for improving the graduation rate and attendance are one piece of a broader emphasis on belonging in Bangor schools this year, Robinson said.
This focus is “really an overarching umbrella that, in all reasonableness, should support academic achievement, graduation rate [and] chronic absenteeism,” she said.
Other initiatives of the school department include a district-wide calendar, a podcast aimed at helping families understand what’s going on in schools and newsletters from each school to help families feel more connected, according to Raymond Phinney, the school department’s director of community relations and safety.
Robinson also has plans to open up new funding options for Bangor schools.
Robinson previously led RSU 89 in northern Penobscot County before joining the Bangor School Department last year. In her previous role, she formed a partner nonprofit organization for the department, she said. She is considering doing the same in Bangor, which she said would expand the available grant funding options that could help support the school budget.
School budgets have faced uncertainty across the country after the Trump administration said in June that it was withholding education grants that had already been approved by Congress. The federal government later said it would release the frozen funds following bipartisan backlash, including from U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine.
The Bangor School Department’s Title I funding was cut by about $41,000, but that loss “hasn’t tremendously impacted positions,” Robinson said. The Title I money being targeted by the federal government supports migrant education programs.
Other grants that were eventually restored include Titles II, III, and IV, which fund teacher and principal training, academic enrichment and English language learning. Had those funds been cut, it would’ve cost Bangor schools nearly half a million dollars, Robinson said.
Budgets are tight on the local level, too. During the city’s budget process this year, Bangor asked the school committee to make additional cuts after it first approved a spending plan in April.
