SOLON & BEYOND: News from the Solon Elementary School

by Marilyn Rogers-Bull & Percy
grams29@tds.net
Solon, Maine 04979

Good morning, dear friends. Don’t worry, be happy!

My thanks go out to the Solon Elementary School person who sent me the Solon School Newspaper to share with you. Welcome To New Staff: We want to welcome two new social workers to our school. Beth Higgins has worked in RSU #74 for a number of years. This year she will work at Solon, Garret Schenck, and Carrabec High School. Lacey Frost is a new social worker who will work at all four district schools. She previously worked as a social worker at MaineGeneral Medical Center.

Another new staff member at our school is Elaine Jillson, who joins our Special Education Department as an educational technician. Mrs. Jillson worked at Carrabec Community School before coming to Solon.

We also welcome Heidi Day, our new physical education teacher. Mrs. Day has taught P.E. for eleven years at Noble High School in Berwick. She is a Carrabec graduate who got her degree at UMF.

Natalie Costello will work as a math interventionist for the first 12 weeks of the school year through a STEAM Grant that RSU #74 wrote in collaboration with RSU #13 and RSU #59. Ms. Costello will work with students in grades 4-6 to help boost their math skills. She will work in Bingham for the second 12 weeks of the year and in Madison for the last 12 weeks.

At Solon Elementary School, we welcome back Ms. Annie Griffith as our preschool assistant teacher. Miss Annie worked with us two years ago and took last year off to spend with her new baby. We are glad to have her back this year.

Open House will be held at Solon Elementary School on Wednesday, September 26, from 6 – 7 p.m. Enjoy refreshments, visit the classrooms, and shop at the PTO Book Fair.

Solon Elementary School has a very active PTO, which has provided lots of special activities and items for our students over the years. Please consider joining the PTO. For information, contact PTO President Alicia Golden or the school.

The PTO generally meets on the second Thursday of each month, at 6 p.m.

Remember to send in your box tops for education labels! Every box top helps the PTO raise money for school activities.

The PTO is looking for new parents to join them. They look forward to new members from our new families.

Have been very upset about the proposed CMP Corridor lately, and looked up some old clippings I had saved. One of them isn’t too old, it was from the Maine Sunday Telegram, September 24, 2000, and the headline is; Flagstaff: Maine’s most unusual lake. Paved roads, burned trees and other remains of two towns lie beneath the man-made lake’s shallow waters. It was written by Michelle Pavitt, and I am going to print some of her observations. She says she was surprised “to learn that Flagstaff Lake is a man made water body. But I would never have guessed that the lake was the watery grave of two former towns. CMP bought Flagstaff residents’ property, buildings were either moved or simply razed. Before flooding the 18,000-acre flowage area, woods crews clear cut the region, then set unauthorized fires to finish clearing the timber. The land remained in that barren state through the winter of 1950. By spring thaw, the towns were submerged under 12 feet of water.”

Must stop there for now in order to get Percy’s memoir in this weeks’ column. I know how much many of you like his words of wisdom! The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in a period of moral crisis, maintain their neutrality. by Dante Alighieri (ca. 1300).