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Blue Hill’s Remarkable High School
The George Stevens Academy has an
aura, partly because of its premises. The buildings go back to
1803.
From A Rock-Bound Paradise,” by Connee Jellison |
Thirty-six years
after he started teaching at the George Stevens Academy, John Greene
has a unique perspective on the town’s most enduring school.
But even his
decades there as a history teacher, and now the assistant
headmaster, come up short in the academy’s timeline.
Still in its
original buildings on Union Street, the Academy has been a part of
town history since its earliest years. Just 40 years after the town
was first laid out in 1762 for veterans of the French and Indian
War, the Blue Hill Academy was incorporated in 1803.
Then came the
George Stevens
Academy, which merged with Blue Hill Academy in 1898 and dropped the
Blue Hill name.
Today, many of the
380 students come from Blue Hill Peninsula families that attended
George Stevens for generations before them.
Most of the
students come from the eight towns the academy primarily serves,
Blue Hill, Surry, Brooklin, Sedgwick, Brooksville, Penobscot, Orland
and Castine.
When Greene first
arrived in 1966, there were only 215 students. Most of those were
from Blue Hill, Brooklin, Penobscot and Brooksville.
“Most small towns
lost their high schools in the ’60s,” Greene said. “So it was a new
experience for them to be sending their kids into another town. That
was a big transition.”
But the real
genesis of today’s George Stevens Academy is rooted in the 1970s.
Then, five of the Peninsula’s eight towns voted to form a new school
district (and send their students elsewhere). That three voted
against such a plan kept
George
Stevens
Academy
intact.
As a result, the
academy went out of its way to satisfy parents’ demands, expanding
the school with new buildings, staff and programs. That outreach
resulted in a larger and more diverse student body.
“The real
foundation for George Stevens as we know it today was laid about 25
years ago,” Greene said.
Changes occurred
that brought more prestige to the school. That, in turn, produced
some well-known commencement speakers over the years, including
Buckminster Fuller, Sen. George Mitchell and, more recently,
Governor Angus King.
Program-wise, the
Academy has had for 32 years an independent study stint that kicks
in every March. Juniors and seniors have the chance to spend two or
three weeks outside of the classroom, either in job-shadowing
situations as local as the Blue Hill Memorial Hospital, or in
activities as far-reaching as medical missions to Bolivia.
Just five years
ago, in 1997, the school had as many as 430 students. That is its
capacity. Enrollment has dropped since, just as enrollment and a
school-aged population has dropped for most all area schools. |
