A year ago last June the Good Will-Hinckley school was in a dark place. State and federal funding and policy changes and cutbacks had taken such a large toll that the 120-year-old institution was forced to suspend its residential operations. Students were relocated into foster homes or reunited with their parents. The school also laid off about 100 employees.
A year ago last June the Good Will-Hinckley school was in a dark place. State and federal funding and policy changes and cutbacks had taken such a large toll that the 120-year-old institution was forced to suspend its residential operations. Students were relocated into foster homes or reunited with their parents. The school also laid off about 100 employees.
"And many of those employees had been with Good Will-Hinckley for a long, long time. That was a very, very painful process for us," said Kathryn Hunt.
She's the chair of Hinckley's board, which has been involved in an aggressive strategic planning effort ever since.
"We approached the courts and asked for permission to tap into our endowment, which they granted and in our strategic planning process we interviewed all of our members; we reached out to hundreds of people both in Maine and across the country; took a good, hard look at the trends in residential programs across the nation and really needed to reformulate a more contemporary future for Good Will Hinckley," said Hunt.
That future will include new partnerships while still serving Maine's most at-risk children, according to Hunt. Children in need of stable homes, education and basic safety. Since the residential operations were suspended, Good Will-Hinckley has continued a day program for about two dozen students. There are now plans to expand and possibly replicate that program. And Helen Pelletier of the Maine Community College System says preliminary discussions are underway to sell or lease part of the 2400 acre campus in Hinckley, between Skowhegan and Waterville.
"Kennebec Valley Community College has doubled in size in just the past decade to 2300 students and as a result it's using pretty much every square inch of its property in Fairfield," said Pelletier. "So, with the Good Will Hinckley campus only seven miles away it offers a very interesting opportunity to explore possible expansion."
Such an arrangement would allow Hinckley's endowment to be re-paid. There are also discussions to allow Good Will Hinckley to partner with the Community College System in a way that gets at-risk youth into the college pipeline either through special courses on-site or through bolstering the high school experience. But there are no immediate plans to offer residential services for children. And incoming president and executive director Glenn Cummings says that has been difficult for some alumni to accept, alumni who have deep emotional attachments to Good Will-Hinckley.
"At the most recent board meeting last Saturday many of them really did express a tremendous amount of opportunity and potential for the organization to succeed but they also expressed a deep and sincere sadness about what the school had meant to them and knowing that the school would not look exactly like that in the future," said Cummings.
Cummings is leaving his post as the U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Education to lead Good Will Hinckley. Part of his job in Washington D.C. focused on improving access to community colleges. He previously served as Dean of Institutional Advancement at Southern Maine Community College; was elected Speaker of the Maine House of Representatives and sponsored the bill to create the state's community college system. Cummings says he's confident that the Good Will-Hinckley has turned a corner, is financially stable and in a strong position to lend its experience and expertise to other organizations that work with troubled kids.