The Boothbay Regional Student Aid Fund has awarded 63 academic grants to Boothbay Region High School graduates totaling $245,400 for the 2014-15 academic year.

Retiring BRSAF President Ham Meserve and incoming President Sue Norton announced the awards (see box) at the high school’s annual Awards Night June 5.

Included was the BRSAF’s inaugural “Community Leadership” Scholarship honoring a past or current area leader prominent in peninsula affairs. This year’s award honored Marvin Rosenblum of East Boothbay, once an eighth grade teacher in Boothbay’s schools who rose to national prominence in Maine and national educational reform circles. He was also a founder of the BRSAF in 1964.

The annual scholarship will go to a graduating senior exemplifying community leadership among his or her peers. This year’s award went to Benjamin Dewey ’14 of Boothbay who has a long record of youth service with Y-Arts, the Boothbay Playhouse and the Congregational Church. Dewey will be attending the University of Maine at Orono this fall studying engineering.

Of the 63 awards, 22 went to graduating BRHS seniors at the awards ceremony, including Dewey. Another 19 went to graduates starting their sophomore years this fall, 12 their junior years, 11 their senior years and three in graduate school. BRSAF support s BRHS graduates up to six years, including those interrupting or returning from careers.

63 percent attend college in Maine

Forty of BRSAF’s 63 awardees (63 percent) will be attending post-secondary schools in Maine: UMaine Orono (10), UMaine Farmington (4) and UMaine Augusta (2), plus Maine Maritime Academy (8), St. Joseph’s and Colby Colleges (3 each), Southern Maine Community, Central Maine Community and Bowdoin Colleges and The Landing School (two each), and Bates and Thomas Colleges.

Out-of-state schools attended will be as widely dispersed as The Oregon Center for the Alexander Technique in Portland, Oregon, Montana State University, Texas Tech, Cornell University, The American Film Institute in Los Angeles, High Point University in North Carolina, Embry Riddle Aeronautical University in Dayton Beach, Florida, George Washington University in Washington, D.C., and The New School in New York City.

Rosenblum an innovator

Marvin Rosenblum was born in New York City and graduated from UCLA in psychology with three years graduate work in UCLA’s experimental school program teaching students without formal education credentials to become teachers. He was recruited by Boothbay’s schools in 1958 as the grammar school principal and eighth grade teacher and soon became the high school’s first guidance counselor. During his five-year tenure counseling, he raised the percent of BRHS graduates going to post-secondary education schools from 20 percent to 88 percent (last year 95 percent went).

A Ford Foundation fellowship to Stanford, the University of Hawaii and Harvard during 1970 resulted in Rosenblum writing a formal treatise on fast-tracking the education of teachers, of which 10,000 copies were published by U.S Department of Education in response to a growing shortage of teachers nation-wide. Stints as Assistant Commissioner of Labor during Governor Joseph Brennan’s administration (1979-87) and at the Maine State Planning Office were followed by his founding and becoming CEO of the nationally acclaimed Kids Consortium focusing on educational reform. He retired in 2012 to East Boothbay.

Rosenblum is more noted locally, however, for his having founded the BRSAF in 1964 with local community leaders, such as Bud Logan and Dr. John Andrews, and local businesses such as Depositors Trust and Canal Bank – plus an army of fund-raising mothers going door-to-door. Today through the continued generosity of area summer and full-tome residents, BRSAF funds have grown to $4 million, exceeding the combined funds of all student aid funds in the state of Maine

Grants meet 36 percent of ‘unmet need’

BRSAF awards educational grants on just three criteria: graduating from Boothbay Region High School, matriculating at a post-secondary institute acceptable to BRSAF and demonstrating “unmet financial need.” The latter is based on the federal formula used for Pell Grants. BRSAF adds back to “unmet need” commuting costs if the student is not living on campus, such as at community colleges, and 10 percent of student debt, a growing national crisis.

BRSAF currently awards grants ranging from $1,000 to $10,000. They will average $3,900 this coming fall and cover an average 36 percent of a student’s unmet need.

The $245,400 for this fall’s 63 grants was generated from BRSAF’s Annual Giving and 4-5 percent in withdrawals from BRSAF’s $4 million invested funds. (To cover 100 percent of current financial need would require invested funds of $13 million, a long range BRSAF goal.)

Expenses 8 percent of funds raised

Summer and year-round residents have supported BRSAF since its 1964 creation through annual gifts or planned giving. The latter include naming BRSAF as a beneficiary in a will or retirement document, such as a pension, insurance policy or IRA, any of which grants the donor inclusion in BRSAF’s Legacy Society. Most popular to date have been bequests and lifetime gifts establishing Named Funds (currently 60 of 63, see box), set up with minimum $10,000 gifts, outright or over five years. These funds currently range from $10,000 to $312,000 and are merged with BRSAF’s own invested funds, in Vanguard accounts, with principal increasing annually by sharing in total market growth.

Each fund generates annually an educational grant to a BRHS graduate in the name of a family, loved one or organization without further need of contribution, although many donors continue to build their funds over years. Such add-on donations totaled $97,000 this past year, almost equaling last year’s $100,000 raised from Annual Giving.

BRSAF is governed by a 21-person board of local volunteers. Its expenses, primarily printing, postage and insurance, were $13,000 in fiscal 2013-14, or 4.9 percent of $262,000 total funds raised this past year.