Greenville ranks high on Best School Districts in Maine list

By Mike Lange
Staff Writer

    GREENVILLE — A national marketing firm has ranked Greenville Consolidated School 21st in the state out of 86 ranked schools, awarding the local system a B-plus grade.

    Best Public School Districts ranks 8,738 school districts based on “dozens of key statistics and 4.6 million opinions from 280,000 students and parents,” according to the organization’s website. “A high ranking indicates that the district contains great schools with exceptional teachers, sufficient resources, and a diverse set of high-achieving students who rate their experiences very highly.”
    Greenville Consolidated School, with less than 200 pupils, was the highest-ranking small school in the state. The top five were all from southern Maine: Yarmouth, Falmouth, Cape Elizabeth, Brunswick and Regional School Unit 51, based in Cumberland.
    “I’m quite proud of our school, of our staff and especially our students,” Interim Superintendent Dave Morrill told the Observer. “Our students have a history of doing well, as evidenced by other ratings such as the Washington Post, where Greenville has consistently been ranked high in the state due to — in a large part — the students and faculty stepping to AP (advanced placement) courses.”
    Greenville High School was one of only six schools in Maine to make the Washington Post’s “Most Challenging Schools List” in April 2014. The newspaper divided the number of advanced placement, international baccalaureate and advanced international certificate of education tests given at each school by the number of seniors who graduated in the spring to determine the ranking.
    Morrill noted that Greenville students have a high school completion rate of over 94 percent over 3-year average “and the vast majority continues onto college. In fact, over 68 percent of our current senior class has been accepted into post-secondary opportunities, with several students still waiting for their acceptance letter.”
    Best Public School Districts also gave Greenville Consolidated School high marks for its zero-percent dropout rate, a 9:1 student-to-teacher radio, 72 percent math proficiency and 67 percent reading proficiency.
    Although Greenville’s cost-per-student is much higher than the national average — $22,160 compared to $11,965 — the school’s revenue is adequate to offset the cost, according to the survey.
    The only failing grade given to Greenville Consolidated School was due to something it can’t control: student culture and diversity. The school — like most of the surrounding communities — is 98 percent white. So it was tagged with a D-plus in that category.