From a bike rodeo and Halloween parade to staff training and student problem-solving circles, the school year is in full swing.
The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by Paradis Ace Hardware.
MOUNT DESERT—The Mount Desert Elementary School Board received the memorandum of understanding for the school resource officer during its October 1 meeting and will act on it at its next meeting.
The memorandum (MOU) details the expectations of the current school resource officer (SRO) Elias Burne, who replaced Tim Bland after Bland left the Bar Harbor Police Department. Burne is also the SRO for Conners Emerson School in Bar Harbor and the Mount Desert Island High School.
Southwest Harbor and Tremont schools do not currently have a school resource officer.
The memorandum is usually reviewed every year, School Superintendent Mike Zboray said. He said he’s requested to meet with Bar Harbor and Mount Desert Police Chief David Kerns to talk about the school year and MOU and then Officer Burne meets with each school principal about his visitation schedule.
“He does a really good job of communicating with the principals,” Mount Desert School Board Chair Brian Henkel said.
When asked, Zboray explained that Pemetic Elementary in Southwest Harbor used to have regular visits by former Southwest Harbor Police Chief Alan Brown.
The Tremont school, he said, was historically serviced with the Hancock County Sheriff’s Department and deputies would come in periodically. The school in Trenton still has that happen.
Recently, he said, the Southwest Harbor Police Department began covering Tremont and also hired someone who could serve as the SRO for both of those schools.
There are ongoing conversations with Southwest Harbor Police Chief John Hall about the school process for school resource officer.
“They are going through that more formal process,” Zboray said.
Mount Desert School Board member Gail Marshall asked about how often Burne visits the Mount Desert school and what he does when there.
“We have him one day a week,” Principal Heather Dorr said. He is usually there at student arrival. “He plays with the kids at recess. He visits at lunch time.”
He also checks in with Dorr.
Dorr said she surveyed her staff about the position when it first started.
“Elias really makes himself available for what is needed and interacts at the level that he is invited to by staff,” Dorr said.
A Mount Desert Island native, military veteran, MDI High School football coach, Burne is employed by the Town of Bar Harbor.
Building relationships and trust with not only the students but also the staff is a primary goal for Burne, he said in an interview last year. He also sees himself as a role model and confidant if needed and says that one of his goals is to provide anyone in any of the schools with another human being to talk to if they have the need or desire. It doesn’t have to be negative or important, he wants to hear anything people have to say to him.
“Elias has hit the ground running and has spent a lot of time over these opening weeks building and strengthening relationships with the students at the high school. It’s common to see him engaged in games of frisbee or shooting baskets with students or just having a conversation about sports or weekend plans. He’s been doing a great job of getting to know our school and the people who make it such a great place to be,” Mount Desert Island High School Principal Matt Haney said in 2024.
“I am not in the schools to be an authoritarian; I am there to assist the school staff and be a safety net in case of a real threat or an emergency. As far as criminal investigations involving students, that will not be handled by me. That will be handled by a different police officer, outside of school hours whenever possible,” Burne had said.
According to the National Association of School Resource Officers, “A school resource officer (SRO) is a carefully selected, specifically trained, and properly equipped law enforcement officer with sworn authority, trained in school-based law enforcement and crisis response and assigned by an employing law enforcement agency to work collaboratively with one or more schools using community-oriented policing concepts.”
Conners-Emerson School in Bar Harbor first began hosting a SRO in 2010 under former Police Chief Nathan Young’s tenure. The presence of a school resource officer at the high school was debated in the winter of 2016-2017 and then became a reality there as well.
“Having been present at the birth of this protocol, which I want to remind folks is predicated on the American Civil Liberties’ Union best practice polices,” Marshall said, “do you think that the staff is clued in sufficiently or needs a periodic reintroduction to what the proper boundaries are for having a police officer in the building.”
Staff was mostly interested in having Elias’s support about lockdown, evacuation drills, and emergency response procedures, Dorr said.
“Some teachers indicated interest in having Elias come in and read to the kids, just be a person at school who is a safe, trusted adult,” Dorr said.
“I always have issues and problems with singling out members of the law enforcement community as opposed to other important members of the community to be safe, trusted adults. I think the school we are in loco parentis so this is one of their homes,” Marshall said. “My starting point is, ‘Is it normal to have a police officer in your home?’ Unless, like me, he was your father. I respect that times are what they are. I personally don’t believe police officers in the school provide personal safety. I’m always wary of security theater.”
Dorr said the school is partnering with the Mount Desert Police Department to offer active shooter training to staff.
“ALICE is a civilian active shooter response training program delivered with a trauma-informed approach,” Dorr said of the program, which stands for Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, Evacuate.
“Officer Soren Sundberg is trained to deliver that training,” Dorr said.
Eight staff members have said they will participate.
“Active shooter scenarios are scary and hard to think about. The approach is centered on if you are prepared, you are less scared,” Dorr said.
There will be two sessions. Two hours of classroom learning, which everyone has to take to do the second part, which is the practical application. That application requires role play.
“The role playing is really interesting because you do it in gradations,” Henkel said. As a town staff member, he participated in an earlier training. “Soren is great. Elias was there, too.”
Sundberg will present on the program next month, Zboray said.
TOWN MANAGER
The Mount Desert Town Manager Alex Kimball sat in with the Mount Desert Elementary School Board, October 1,
“Our new town manager and Mustang, Alex Kimball,” said Brian Henkel as he introduced Kimball.
Kimball said it was his first time passing through the newer wing of the school.
“I’ll be working with you folks quite a bit as that gets spent down,” Kimball said of the recent bond for school repairs. “I just wanted to put a face to it.”
OTHER BUSINESS
Dorr presented a quick video about the bike rodeo that the school’s parent-teacher organization had hosted with the Bicycle Coalition of Maine.
“The bike rodeo was a huge success,” Dorr said.
They are also hoping to organize a Bike/Walk to School day.
Dorr said that new special education teacher Lynne Hundhammer had officially joined the staff a week early.
Students in third through fifth grades participated in a problem-solving circle to review and discuss possible revision of current playground expectations.
“They felt that some of the expectations were interfering with their opportunities to have fun.” Dorr said.
Each class selected classroom representatives to share the opinion of their class. Guiding questions asked students to consider which expectations felt fair (even if they didn’t like them), which expectations felt too restrictive, possible alternatives to have fun but reduce the risk of injury, and expectations that felt the most important.
“Good practice for town meeting,” Marshall joked.
The grades will reconvene to discuss some compromises.
It was a good opportunity for students to advocate what they’d like to see at recess and for the nurse to talk about things that can cause injuries, Dorr said. “It was just a really great experience.”
The PTO is supporting teachers through classroom grants. The organization recently granted $300 for a “Within the Whale” experience for students in second-fifth grades.
“It ties into a third grade ocean study,” Dorr explained and it helps students get a good sense of the size of whales and learn about them.
Third grade students are studying a collection of books by author and illustrator Chris Van Dusen so they can write their own “If I Built A Town” story.
“This month-long learning experience will include comparing texts, identifying story elements, exploring Northeast Harbor town features, exploring illustration styles and meeting Chris Van Dusen,” Dorr wrote in her report.
“They’ll be creating their own If I Built a Town books,” Dorr said and the students will also head to the Tremont school and meet with Chris Van Dusen.
Third and fifth grades are partnering with the Maine Outdoor School for outdoor classes linked to in-class learning.
The art teacher, music teacher, and three MDES students will be presenting last year’s solutionary project focused on reducing single-use plastic at the GLOW (Global Learning for an Open World) conference, November 20, 12:00-12:50 p.m.
“It is an entirely virtual conference,” Dorr said.
The school is organizing a viewing party so classmates can view the celebration, too.
The school’s fifth grade has been scoring lower since 2023 on the Maine Through Year Science Data. This year the school came in with 7% scoring at or above state expectation (down from 25% in 2024 and 44% in 2023). Those numbers can be influenced by class size. For example, this year’s 7% is one student.
Still, the teaching team and Dorr are looking at how to strengthen science education for fifth graders.
Of note, is that the eighth graders had 74% scoring at or above state expectation.
Bronwyn Kortge, has been hired for a combined MDES/Pemetic/Tremont show choir, with MDES hosting. This year’s show will be The Lion King. Plans are in place to compete at the state middle school festival at the end of March.
Upcoming Dates
- October 24th: All-School Meeting facilitated by 8th Grade. 8:20 a.m. and is 20 minutes long.
- October 31st: Halloween Parade–step off is at 10:30. This is an early release day.MDI Man Chosen as New School Resource OfficerShaun Farrar·September 17, 2024Read full story
Goodbye, Officer Tim
UPDATED: Bar Harbor and Mount Desert School Boards Approve Another Year with a School Resource Officer
Disclaimer: Shaun Farrar once worked at the Bar Harbor Police Department. Carrie Jones (me) shortly worked as an emergency services dispatcher for Mount Desert.
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