The budget development process for RSU 12 is a thoughtful and transparent effort that invites community participation at every step. Starting in the fall, principals and directors work with staff to develop school budgets while the district’s business office calculates projected salaries, benefits, and tuition costs. By early February, draft budgets are reviewed and refined by the administration.

March is a critical time for community engagement. The RSU 12 Finance Committee hosts budget presentations at town select board meetings, allowing citizens to learn about the proposed budget and share feedback. These meetings are essential to the process, allowing residents to voice their priorities and influence the final budget proposal.

In April, the Finance Committee reviews the community input and recommends a finalized budget to the RSU 12 Board of Directors. After approval, the detailed budget and supporting documents are posted online for public review. In May, residents receive the budget book by mail, and a public budget validation meeting is held to discuss the final proposal.

The process concludes in June with the budget validation referendum, where voters in all towns have the final say. The RSU 12 Board then certifies the results.

RSU 12 is committed to transparency and ensuring taxpayers have every opportunity to participate. Budget meetings, forums, and deliberations are available on the RSU 12 YouTube Channel for those unable to attend in person. We encourage all residents to engage in this critical process, share their feedback, and vote to shape the future of our schools. Your involvement makes a difference!

RSU 12 offers a district-wide preschool program that operates five days a week and includes transportation services. This exceptional program provides a unique educational opportunity for our students, featuring research-based curricula delivered by highly skilled educators. The success of this initiative has been made possible through substantial funding from the Federal PreK Expansion Grant, allowing RSU 12 to support our youngest learners robustly.

Our program collaborates seamlessly with Head Start, ensuring efficient operations and exclusive funding through annual reimbursements from state subsidies and Head Start federal allocations. We have established a highly effective, innovative, and cost-effective program by pooling resources from various sources, including Head Start federal funds and Maine education reimbursement subsidy funds. Significantly, this invaluable educational opportunity for our 4-year-olds is available without imposing local costs on taxpayers.

Numerous studies, including the High/Scope Perry Preschool Project, the Chicago Parent Centers, and the Abecedarian Project from the 1960s and 1970s, highlight the lasting positive impact of quality pre-K programming on the future lives of young children. These projects meticulously tracked short- and long-term progress, providing compelling evidence of the sustained benefits of early childhood education.

We appreciate our dedicated and innovative PreK staff who greet our PreK students daily and design learning experiences that lay the groundwork for their future.

The district’s MTSS (multi-tiered systems of support) coordinators from each school have been working together to align our intervention practices. We are also working to identify ways to make the identification of students in need of intervention and the provision of those interventions as efficient and effective as possible. These meetings have resulted in improved practices, communication between staff members, and forms for tracking student progress. 

The Educator Advisory Committee, made up of teacher representatives from all grade levels and content areas, has been working to align our universal assessments with our new Reading and Math programs. Our hope is to ensure that we have adequate information to support our students while minimizing student time spent taking assessments. This effort is designed to maximize learning time and minimize any redundancy of effort by teachers.

It’s nice to finally have some snow for the students to play in during their recess time. We’re really hoping that the rain on Wednesday doesn’t wash it all away. Here at Chelsea we are busy preparing for our Winter concert, which is now scheduled for next Monday, December 16. That will be an exciting day here for our students as we are also planning a whole school field trip to Johnson Hall to watch the movie The Wild Robot. The students all really enjoyed the book and not everyone had the opportunity to see the movie. It’s a lot of planning to get all the staff and students to Johnson Hall, but everyone is excited and I believe it will be a wonderful experience! 

The staff is also enjoying the 12 Days of Cheer leading up to the winter break. We are trying to relieve some stress by doing simple things that bring some joy. Today we enjoyed a book swap day to have some fun new reads during break. Tomorrow will be hot cocoa day where staff can make a nice warm cup of cocoa during their prep or lunch. Later we have days such as dress like a snowman, Festive Socks day, Check the Hall, Deck the Halls and a cookie swap day. We’re keeping things as routine as possible for students with some extra fun tossed in. 

Finally, we are looking into the possibility of starting a Girls on the Run group here at Chelsea. This group helps girls in grades 3-8 build confidence, address negative issues, and deepens vital physical, mental, emotional and social life skills. We’re eager to learn more about how to make this happen for our students.

The holidays are here and the kids have been excited to have some snow to play in!  The Christmas concert this week  brought family and friends together to dress up and sing holiday songs.  Our 7th and 8th graders wrote their own version of the 12 days of Christmas to sing and gave a great laugh for all!    

For our yearly Christmas fundraiser, our student council members collect donations for a  local animal shelter.  The council students take a field trip in January to deliver the donations and spend some time with the animals.  This is a highlight for many and many of the adults wish they could go! 

We held our parent-teacher conferences in November.  This is a great time to meet parents and the students show off learning examples.  We also held our Scholastic Book Fair during this time which helps us buy new books for the library.  

This year, our  Learning Commons’ teacher, Diane Carrillo, completed a  community project inspired by the artist ThankYouX. Each year Mrs. Carrillo comes up with a unique way for every student in the school to collaborate on a display to be enjoyed by all. ThankYouX is world famous and has exhibited paintings and sculptures in London, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, and Hong Kong. He was handpicked by Snapchat to paint their Los Angeles offices.  Our Palermo School student mural is 13 feet long and 3 feet high.

Our December at WHES is always a busy time.  We start our boys and girls basketball season this month with Whiteifeld and Chelsea again forming a “unified” team program that allows us to fully field both varsity and JV teams for boys and girls, something neither school could accomplish without us joining together.  The logistics of bringing players from both schools together for practices and games is challenging but we  are working closely together and are getting creative in our procedures that allow this program to thrive.

Our WHES Sunshine Committee started the holiday season out with a Holiday Crafts Fair that drew a large number of vendors to the school and the participation from the community was excellent.

The WHES Winter Concert was postponed due to weather concerns on the evening of December 5th and we are rescheduled for Thursday, December 12th.  This is a major event for us drawing an extremely large crowd of delighted parents and highly enthusiastic performers and is a genuine highlight.

Finally, our Sunshine Committee sponsors two wonderful events during the last week before vacation.  The first is the staff’s PotLuck Christmas Luncheon on December 18th and this is followed by a movie with popcorn and hot chocolate for all students on the 20th.  Both of these events are greatly appreciated and enjoyed by students and staff and put a wonderful cap on our pre-holiday school season.

I’m proud to report that Windsor School was again ranked among the top middle and elementary schools in the state of Maine, according to U.S. News and World Report.  We placed among the top 40% of elementary and middle schools in the state of Maine, making it BOTH a U.S. News Best Elementary School and a Best Middle School.

December has brought plenty of excitement to the halls of the school.  Our basketball teams have their first games under their belts, and are looking forward to the season.  We’re grateful to those that take the time to coach our teams, as it is a real time commitment, but so worth the outcome.  

The holiday season always starts for us with the annual Barnes and Noble Night.  Our students and staff love this event in which we effectively take over Barnes and Noble for two hours.  Staff members join our middle school student leaders in running games, reading stories, wrapping paper, and of course face painting.  This is such a great community event and also raises money for our learning commons collections.  

The student leaders mentioned above are from our Student Council and National Junior Honor Society.  They do many things around the school such as mentoring, planning dances, and recycling.  This year the NJHS students are also planning a community movie night.  We are excited for this to be an annual event for the Windsor community.  

We are once again celebrating the festive season by enjoying a different activity every day, called A December to Remember.  Each day staff can wear different holiday attire, enjoy treats in the staff room, or compete in a game.  It’s a great way to make what can be a hectic time of year a little bit more fun.  

A special congratulations goes to Ben D’Alfonso, an eighth grader, who won the Lions Club Peace Poster Contest.  Ben’s poster will be entered into the national contest.

RSU 12 serves the towns of Alna, Chelsea, Palermo, Somerville, Westport Island, Whitefield, and Windsor.

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