Sore knuckles in the District 5 school board race
Two candidates, 10,263 voters, several thousand doors
By Chris Busby
Chris Breen has a thing for statistics, and these days, two stats in particular are the objects of his obsession: the drop-out rate in Portland’s public schools, and the percentage of voters in District 5 with whom he’s discussed the drop-out rate as part of his School Committee campaign.
Breen faces John Coyne, a juvenile probation officer, in the race to replace departing school board member James Dimillo in District 5, which includes the Riverton, Deering and North Deering neighborhoods.
From 1989 to 2004, an average of 173 kids dropped out of Portland’s two high schools every year, Breen said, adding that more ditched Deering High than Portland High, and the rate is about equal between male and female students.
“That’s unacceptable to me,” said Breen, a 35-year-old, divorced father of two. “I don’t comprehend why so many kids can just drop out of public school. This is the exact same thing I was saying in 2001.”
That was the year Breen ran for one of two at-large seats on the Portland City Council. He finished fifth out of six candidates in that race, which was won by current Councilor Jim Cloutier and current Mayor Jill Duson.
Breen may be promoting the same cause that failed to inspire voters four years ago, but he’s doing so with gusto, knocking on thousands of doors throughout the district and keeping a tally of how many voters he’s reached. By Oct. 13, he said he’d spoken with 9,570 of the district’s 10,263 registered voters — or 93 percent, he calculated.
By contrast, Coyne said in mid-October that he was just gearing up to go door to door, to “try to create that positive flow going into the polls.”
Coyne, 37, is the married father of two elementary school children. He’s making his first run for public office because, he said, “I want to continue my involvement with my children, and make sure all the children in the city of Portland get a quality education that’s economically sound.”
Coyne is less focused on the drop-out rate than what could be called the “brain-drain rate” – the high number of high school graduates who leave Portland and never return to live, work and raise families in the city. Coyne believes excellent public schools can be the lure that keeps graduates here or brings them back after college. He also thinks Portland can do a better job “marketing” its schools to parents who are otherwise looking to the suburbs as the best place to give their kids a quality education.
Breen ran as an independent back in 2001, but has since enrolled in the Republican Party, though he adds that he’s “still a Democrat on certain issues.” Coyne is a registered Democrat, though the candidates’ party affiliations have not become a campaign issue thus far.
Breen has a Republican’s eye on the bottom line. Local taxes “are out of control,” he said, and the school budget needs to be cut, due in part to declining enrollment. Asked what areas of the budget he’d trim, Breen said, “at this time, we need to just look at everything.”
“I’m looking for dramatic change,” Breen said of his overall campaign message. This is despite the fact most voters he’s spoken with at the door say Portland’s schools “are great schools.”
“I expected to hear negative stuff,” Breen said.
