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Mid Coast Adult & Community Education met most state targets and is expanding bus-driver training with RSU 12 partnership
Summary
Ray, director of Mid Coast Adult & Community Education, told the RSU 12 board the collaborative met three of four state performance targets, is restarting bus-driver training (January crash course and March full class), and is exploring regionalization and expanded workforce programs.
Ray, director of Mid Coast Adult & Community Education, briefed the RSU 12 school board on the program’s recent performance and planned workforce offerings. "Our program met three out of four performance targets last year," Ray said, noting the program fell short on enrollment growth but achieved measurable skill gains and data-match targets.
Ray described an upcoming bus-driver training model targeted at people who already hold a commercial driver’s license: a one-day "crash course" planned for Jan. 25 focused on passenger and school-bus endorsements, and a March class that includes CDL instruction plus passenger and school-bus endorsements. Ray emphasized that classroom instruction can be guaranteed by the adult-ed program, but range and road training requires participating school districts to provide range time and oversight. "I can guarantee the classroom time," Ray told the board, "but I don't want to enroll 20 people if they're not going to be able to go out and actually do the range and Road training."
Ray said RSU 12 currently employs several drivers trained through the program; the presentation named RSU 12 among participating districts and highlighted cooperation with Booth Bay, Wiscasset and others. Ray also described ambitions to regionalize adult education to expand offerings (for example, medical assistant or dental assistant training) and to build revenue-generating workforce programs over time that could support community needs.
Board members and staff discussed implementation challenges: coordinating district schedules for range training, limiting enrollment to match district capacity, and potential cost-sharing for range/road components. Ray said the program has a waiting list for training and must balance outreach with the practical limits of arranging range time with districts.
Ray concluded by noting an advisory-board meeting and a budget review process that will bring a proposed budget to RSU 12 in March for approval.
