JAY — With a week to spare before school begins, the Regional School Unit 73 Board of Directors on Thursday filled a position vacated in late July with the resignation of the principal of Spruce Mountain Elementary School.
Robin Crockett was unanimously chosen by the board, exactly four weeks after the board accepted the resignation of Patrick St. Clair, who took a job teaching in another district.
She begins work on Monday, Aug. 24.
Crockett takes over a week after her first interview for the Spruce Mountain job. She has taught fourth grade at the Academy Hill School in Wilton, an upper-elementary school in Regional School Unit 9, the Mount Blue District. The past three years, she has been working for nonprofits.
“I wanted to get leadership experience,” she said about leaving RSU 9. “But education was always (in) my heart,” she said Thursday night.
Crockett has a Master of Science in Education in Educational Leadership from the University of Maine Farmington.
Crockett, who lives in Belgrade with her husband, Justin Crockett, has been certified to teach in four other states: Hawaii, California, New Mexico and Washington.
She is a native of Santa Clarita, Calif. Her husband graduated from Mount Abram High School in Salem Township, the high school in Maine School Administrative District 58.
During her three years away from education, Crockett worked in leadership roles at the Travis Mills Foundation, a rehabilitation service in Belgrade for wounded military veterans, and at Fedcap, a contractor with the Maine Department of Health and Human Services,
Fedcap provides job training, education and other support for people enrolled in the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program as they prepare to live self-reliantly after leaving TANF.
Justin Crockett is a retired U.S. Air Force chief master sergeant. The couple has two children. Lily will be a first-year student this fall at the University of Southern Maine, and Evan will be a junior at Messalonskee High School in Oakland.
Robin Crockett said after the board meeting, “I’m looking forward to meeting the students and staff and having a wonderful school year.” Answering a question, she said the only staff members she had met so far were those on the search committee.
That committee, Superintendent Scott Albert said after the meeting, screened four applications for the position and interviewed three candidates. Crockett was interviewed on Monday, Aug. 17.
“I’m excited,” Albert said about Crockett’s upcoming role as principal.
When St. Clair resigned last month, Albert had said that if Spruce Mountain Elementary began the term with no principal, he would oversee faculty and staff and the dean of students would oversee pupils.
On Aug. 7, St. Clair finished his 14 years in Spruce Mountain. He had taught for seven years and had been principal of the elementary school for seven years. He left for a job teaching fifth grade at Jefferson Village School in Jefferson.
In other business, the board heard a report from TJ Plourde, principal of Spruce Mountain High School, on changes in class structure and in the student handbook.
Credits required for graduation will remain unchanged for seniors in the school year that begins on Aug. 27, he said.
But, for the school year 2027-28, SMHS will reduce the number of elective credits needed to seven from eight and the total number of credits needed to 23 from 24, he said. At the same time, the number of social studies units required for graduation will rise to three from two.
Lowering the total requirement to 23 will bring Spruce Mountain into line with other high schools in the region, he said.
“We’ll still have kids who take 30 to 32 credits, though,” he said.
Admission to advanced placement, college and honors courses will require administrative approval by the principal, guidance counselor and the subject teacher, he said.
Updates in the student handbook for this year, he said, involve excused absences and the dress code.
Students who accumulate more than five unexcused absences will need to set up a plan with a counselor to make up for the lost school days.
Book bags must be stored in students’ lockers, he said. Back packs were already required to be left in lockers, but some students had maintained that a back pack and a book bag were different, so Plourde said book bags were added to the requirement.
The dress code was also modified so that every student’s “upper body must be fully covered” by clothing, he said. Clothing must also cover “the buttocks and private areas,” he said.
Students wearing clothing that does not meet those criteria will be allowed to change clothes and return to class or will be required to go home.
The principals in three of the district’s four schools reported enrollment figures for the first day of school: Primary school, 310 to 315. Principal Darcy Shink said enrollment was still going on; middle school, 264; high school, 414. No figures were presented for the elementary school because it has had no principal since Aug. 7.
Special Services Director Cherie Parker said 329 students have Individualized education plans, the same number as at the close of the 2025-26 school year. Of those, 79 are in the primary school, an increase of nine; 75 are in the elementary school, down from 84 last year; 73 are in the middle school, same as last year; the high school has 102, same as last year.
Albert told the directors that for the first time since 2023, Spruce Mountain has given raises to substitute teachers. Most will receive $10 more a day. One-day subs without a college degree will be paid $140 a day; those with two years of college, $145; and those with degrees, $150.
Long-term substitutes without a degree will receive $150 a day, non-certified subs with a degree will receive $175, and certified-teacher subs will receive $263 a day.
Smaller increases, ranging from $5 a day to $1 an hour were instituted for educational technicians and for food service, custodial staff, bus drivers, secretaries and bus monitor substitutes.
In two meetings in the past eight days, the board approved hiring seven teachers. On Aug. 13, it hired Beth Brown, who comes to the primary school from Greene, as a kindergarten teacher; Alison Littlefield, who has been an educational technician in RSU 73, as a second-grade teacher; Patricia Stevens, who comes to the high school from Massachusetts, as a world language (Spanish) teacher; and Allison Caron and Shawn Giguere, both of whom have been ed techs in RSU 73, as special-education teachers at the high school.
On Thursday, the board also approved the hiring of Jillaine Murphy as a music teacher in the elementary school and Marcia Martin as an alternative-education teacher in the middle and high schools.
Finally, Plourde told the board school sports will begin on Saturday, Aug. 22. Bus drivers are negotiating for a new contract, and as of last week, none had signed up for the voluntary extra trips. However, the district has assigned drivers to those trips, a driver told Monitor Local, and Don Crockett, business agent for Teamsters Union Local 340, which represents the drivers, said requiring drivers to take extra trips is the district’s prerogative.
