Transcription of Gabe Weiss for the show Foundations of Education #272
Lisa Belisle: Today in the studio, I have with me Gabe Weiss who is the President of the Yarmouth Education Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to enriching the overall educational experience of students in the Yarmouth school department. Thanks for coming in today.
Gabe Weiss: Thank you for having me.
Lisa Belisle: You live in my hometown. I obviously benefited from a Yarmouth education and my children benefited from and are benefiting from a Yarmouth education. Tell me why you got involved.
Gabe Weiss: Well, education is important to me. My parents are both teachers, and so I grew up in an academic family. When I moved to Yarmouth, I was looking to get involved and do some kind of community service and found out about the Yarmouth Education Foundation, met with the executives of the foundation and just really hit it off and thought that the mission was a wonderful one. I just volunteered my time initially and then was asked to join the board, and then a few years later, I was asked to become the president.
Lisa Belisle: This is a relatively young foundation, as education foundations go.
Gabe Weiss: That’s right. I think we’re in our sixth year now. We still have one founder who’s on the board and a few other founders who are still involved. Really, yeah, the founders are still around town in Yarmouth and they all have children who are still in the school system, so it’s nice to be able to actually see these people who really did all the hard work to get it off the ground, and it really is doing well.
Lisa Belisle: You and I were just talking the most recent fundraiser, which is the Blue Jeans Ball?
Gabe Weiss: Correct.
Lisa Belisle: Is there a different name? I want to make sure we get it right for the people who want to go next year.
Gabe Weiss: It, historically, has always been Blue Jeans Ball. The idea being that this is Maine, this is Yarmouth, and so we want to do something casual, not too fancy. Don’t want people to feel like they have to get dressed up. It is our big fundraiser, it is our only fundraiser event of the year. This year we called it the Blue Jean Disco because it was a disco theme, and we had Motor Booty Affair play as our band.
Lisa Belisle: You said you managed to get 280 bodies into the AMVETS Hall.
Gabe Weiss: That’s right. We almost hit the 300 person capacity, so we had a really successful event. I think we grossed almost $70,000. I’m not sure what the net came out to be, but yeah, a lot of people. We had a silent auction with a lot of heavy bidding, and really it was good to see everyone turn out from the community.
Lisa Belisle: What types of initiatives has the education foundation spearheaded or gotten behind in the past for the school system?
Gabe Weiss: We’ve done a wide variety of things ranging from bringing iPads to classrooms in the kindergarten and 1st grade to bringing artists in residence to the high school. A big one that we just funded last year is a shellfish upweller. That’s a structure that essentially cultivates clams, and it’s down at the town landing, and so we have students who are studying the clams, their growth cycle, and then we’ll be reintroducing them into a clam-flats of Yarmouth.
Lisa Belisle: Now, that’s interesting and unique. I was aware of the artists in residence. I think the iPads is a great idea. How did you come up with the shellfish upweller?
Gabe Weiss: This is really our great teachers in the Yarmouth school. I mean, we depend on them to bring forward interesting and innovative grant ideas. The teachers who brought this one forward are Morgan Cuthbert and Jay Harrington. They’ve actually gotten a lot of press with this particular grant. They came up with the idea, they really feel passionately about the Maine ecosystem and the problems that have been introduced by green crabs, so they are trying to find ways to study these things, teach the students about them, and also maybe even eventually provide ideas for solutions for Yarmouth and for Maine.
Lisa Belisle: I believe that Morgan Cuthbert was a Teacher of the Year within the last couple of years.
Gabe Weiss: That’s right. I think he was a finalist this past year for Teacher of the Year. Yeah, selected for Cumberland. That’s right.
Lisa Belisle: You have children in the school system?
Gabe Weiss: I have two. I have two boys. One is in kindergarten and the other one is in 3rd grade.
Lisa Belisle: At the same time you managed to graduate from Hamilton College and you have law degrees from the UMaine School of Law and the Pantheon-Sorbonne University in Paris. You are an in-house corporate attorney at WEX, you’ve been living and working in Boston, London, Paris. Somehow, you managed to come out of your educational background okay.
Gabe Weiss: Yes. Somehow I did and I think that still mystifies some people. My parents were academics, both teachers at Colby College, so I was raised in an environment where I was expected to perform in school and to push myself and to do extra reading and work hard. That is not always the case. I had great friends, still do, in central Maine whose parents just didn’t hold education in such esteem. I guess I would say I’m one of the exceptions to the rule. Although, I will say the education I got at Messalonskee High School was excellent. They have a great arts department. I always felt very happy and supported there. I just think there is a much higher concentration of that kind of opportunity in places like Yarmouth.
Lisa Belisle: Well, I agree with you as someone who’s lived in Maine all of her life and worked with patients all over the state. I think that there’s an interesting combination of things that one needs in order to move forward educationally. It is parents, and there is also the kind of cultural and educational milieu… I think you can do well in lots of different settings. It is a little easier in places like Yarmouth.
One of the things that I think about a lot, actually, is that we have interesting pockets of really significant wealth in parts of the state, and then in other parts of the state, not so much. Having grown up in Yarmouth, I really value that we have this great education, but I know that we have a significant advantage because places like Yarmouth, Cape Elizabeth, Kennebunk, there’s just more money to be put into this. I don’t know if that’s a question so much as like a statement. If you’ve got Messalonskee that maybe doesn’t have the people, the same type of demographic. It’s an uphill road, I would guess.
Gabe Weiss: Absolutely. I’ve actually had the same thoughts. I think that, as I said, I was very lucky in the particular nature of my parents’ profession and the opportunities that that allowed me. As I said, that was kind of the exception to the rule up there. Whereas in a place like Yarmouth, you really do have many more highly educated and wealthy professionals who are able to bring their kids to Europe and expose them to that so that maybe they do have an interest in getting a law degree in Paris, eventually, or something.
If there were one thing that I would really like to see the Yarmouth Education Foundation do, it would be to figure out a way to provide opportunities for students who are less advantaged. Yarmouth, as concentrated as it is with the families that I was just describing, it still is diverse. There still is island community and, in fact, there have been a lot more recent immigrants to the U.S. moving up to Yarmouth. I think that there is a need, an increasing need.
The way we operate is we make grants based on applications that are made to us. We don’t just go out and decide where to deploy the funds that we raise. What I would really love to see is for someone to come forward with grants, maybe something to do with English as a second language or other opportunities that really are geared toward helping those less fortunate. We’ve had discussions at the board level about, is there an opportunity for us to somehow use our funds to help other communities? Now, that’s obviously not part of our core mission, but if there were a way to just give back to some other places in Maine that don’t have these opportunities, that would be wonderful.
Lisa Belisle: I think that you raise a really important point, and having lived in Yarmouth off and on for decades, I mean you’re right, it’s not all doctors and lawyers and high-income-earning people. There’s a broad range of people. Sometimes I believe the people who live in Yarmouth, they don’t have parents who are making a lot of money, I think sometimes it can be really hard for them, and they can feel really disadvantaged within that school system. It sounds like that’s a discussion that you’ve been having recently at the Education Foundation level.
Gabe Weiss: Yeah, I think that’s absolutely right.
Lisa Belisle: What is it about your background in law that makes you interested in this?
Gabe Weiss: Well, I don’t know if it’s the background in law, necessarily, although law is a highly academic pursuit, so I’ve just done a lot of school. In that sense, I know about education systems. I’ve also spent part of my educational career, academic career in Europe, so I have that perspective as well. Again, growing up the son of two professors, it’s just a big part of me. I think that more what it is is that the legal profession in Maine, especially when I first moved back to Maine, I was working at one of the law firms in town, the law firms in Maine, I think, do a wonderful job getting their associates involved in the community.
Before I came back to Maine, I was working at large New York law firms where the expectation was just to sit at your desk and bill as many hours as possible. We were not made aware of opportunities in the community, and we are not encouraged to go out and get involved. Whereas, when I started at the law firm in Maine, it was made clear to me right away that I needed to go find organizations, boards to join. That was really a part of my work.
Being given that encouragement and the opportunity to go out and find what in the community looked like a good community service endeavor for me was really just such a great opportunity. I was able to do a little looking into what was in Yarmouth and found the Education Foundation, and it was just a good situation, I think.
Lisa Belisle: Now, as the president of the Yarmouth Education Committee and previously working on the board, what have you been surprised by? What have you learned that you really didn’t think that you would learn going into it?
Gabe Weiss: Well, I’ve learned first that it’s a very competitive world, and school systems outside of Maine and outside of the U.S. really are pushing the limits of education. We can always be doing more. When we get applications for grants in the stem field, biology, those we feel are critical, and our mission is to fund things that are outside of the school curriculum, but you start to wonder, well, should this be outside of the school curriculum or should this actually be something that every student is learning, and why are they not? Why does it have to come through as a grant application?
I mean, we’re very fortunate in Yarmouth to have such great teachers who think of these things who are out there listening to conferences about education and new things in education and bringing these forward. I think that really the importance of giving the students these opportunities can’t be ignored. The other thing I’ve learned is how somewhat political all of this can be. You have to be very diplomatic in how you interact with teachers and administrators and parents.
Lisa Belisle: Well, explore that a little bit for me. Why such a need for diplomacy? What is it that so brings emotions to the surface or strong thoughts about or feelings about the subject?
Gabe Weiss: Well, in Yarmouth, people pay a high rate of tax, property tax. They’re going into it already saying, “Well, we’ve already given a lot so that our children can go to this wonderful school system.” The Yarmouth Education Foundation goes out and says, “Can you give a little more?” We’re soliciting money in the community. Then, we have to be really good stewards of this money and think very hard about how to give it back in the form of the grants that we make. You have teachers who come forward with applications, and I know, from my experience, that being a teacher is very time consuming. It’s hard to prepare a nice grant application when you’re teaching and grading papers and doing all these other things. Not to mention you have your own family.
Sometimes, a grant proposal comes to us that doesn’t really fit into our mission. When I say that, I mean it maybe is something that the school budget should cover or maybe just the application wasn’t presented or written in such a way that it’s convincing enough for our committee to want to fund it. Then the problem becomes, well, do you fund something that may or may not really fit into our mission because you’ve told parents, whose money you’ve taken, that this is what you’re going to do with it. You, on the other hand, have trouble saying no to a teacher because you don’t want to have a chilling effect on them wanting to make applications.
Lisa Belisle: How do you handle that?
Gabe Weiss: As diplomatically as you can. I find that just really being as transparent as possible is the only way that I can do it. If something doesn’t quite fit into our mission, I go right to the applicant, and I say if the committee wasn’t able to approve this for funding, I say exactly why. I say, “We will look forward to hearing from you again, and we also want to help you. If there are ways that any of our board or committee members can assist you and give you a little coaching in the grant writing piece, then we’d be happy to do that,” because it really is a relationship. We depend on the teachers for their ideas for these grant proposals so we want them on our side.
Lisa Belisle: Do you feel supported by the administration?
Gabe Weiss: Absolutely, yeah. Andrew Dolloff is our new superintendent, and he has experience working with education foundations, I believe, in Scarborough and Kennebunk, although, don’t quote me on that. He knows what our mission is, he knows how we operate, and we work very closely with him, and he’s been wonderful to work with.
Lisa Belisle: For people who have wondered about what Education Foundation, what the main purpose is, it sounds like you’ve described a mission, a specific mission or vision for your organization. Elaborate a little bit on that for me with regard to just education, in general, and Yarmouth, specifically.
Gabe Weiss: Our mission is to support educational opportunities that enrich students’ academic experience but that fall outside of the school budget. That is our broad mission. We can do that in the form of supporting arts, languages, science, technology, math, biology. It can also be health.
For instance, one grant application that came through a few years ago was an extremely well-researched and well-presented application about the value of clean water and hydration. The applicant had done quite a bit of research about how dehydrated students don’t perform as well, don’t think as well. We granted, based on that, some new, very modern water fountains that students can use to refill water bottles so that they’re always hydrated and so that their learning experience is enhanced, just generally.
I forget what the question was, though. I apologize.
Lisa Belisle: Well, actually I think you answered it. What is the mission and the vision of the Education Foundation?
Gabe Weiss: Yeah, it’s broad and, I would say, fluid. It’s always exciting when we have our grant cycles, and we see these applications come in because there are usually one or two that we never thought of, and they really are innovative and not what you’re expecting, but are things that we really feel could make a difference. I would say that our mission is very similar to, I believe, most other education foundations in the state and out of the state in that sense.
Lisa Belisle: One of the things that interests me most about education foundations is that I believe that although we have great teachers here in the state of Maine, I would say, broadly, I think it tends to be a very specific way that we educate children, older children, even really adults. It tends to be kind of linear and visual, some auditory. There’s not so much kinesthetic. I think it’s complicated because people have different learning styles across the board, and I’m guessing that someone like you succeeded very well within the educational system because your learning style fit very well, and that’s how you were taught.
What I like about the Educational Foundation is, if you provide opportunities that are outside of what is normally done, then maybe you’ll get a kid who, say, is more musically inclined, maybe you’ll get a kid who has a strong artistic sense and really resonates with the artist in residence. Maybe you’ll get a kid who likes to stick his fingers in the mud and really learn more about the shellfish. That, for me, feels really exciting.
Gabe Weiss: Yeah, I agree. I think that, hopefully, we get more and more grants that do that. I think that by and large, we have gotten a lot that offer those kind of opportunities. We even just had a pilot program, I think, last year of the stand-up desks that are increasingly popular at the workplace. There was a lot of research done about how students can really benefit from those as well, and students have a different way of being in the classroom and might need to move around, just like adults do. We piloted a program for some stand-up desks, and I think that they’ve actually been working really well.
Lisa Belisle: I also wonder, if we start to think about education in a slightly different way where it’s not just that everybody has to go on to a university, everybody has to have an advanced degree, but as long as we get the type of educational background that we need to succeed in the world and feel happy, maybe it’s an expanded vocational experience or some other hands-on experience, I wonder if this can be something for the education foundations in our state to be considering.
Gabe Weiss: I think that’s a really good point, actually. Especially now-a-days when more and more people are starting to make a determination, a cost-benefit analysis, before just immediately saying, “I need to go to college,” and saying, “Well, what else is there out there for me?” Maybe it is more important to see the education K-12 as one thing that isn’t necessarily leading to the next, that you know what that’s going to be.
I will say that I think that the Yarmouth community and the Yarmouth school system and the teachers do a wonderful job teaching students, not just the importance of academics, but how you treat others and how you interact with the world around you and the importance of hard work and being a good citizen. I think that that is really a part of what Yarmouth is, and that’s what I’ve seen with the teachers in the school system.
Lisa Belisle: Well, that is a very good point to end on and I completely agree with you. I absolutely have noticed that very same thing coming through with my brothers and sisters, my own children, myself, so yay. Good job, Yarmouth teachers, and Maine teachers. I actually think Maine teachers, in general, as I’ve said, are very good.
I’ve been speaking with Gabe Weiss, who is the president of the Yarmouth Education Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to enriching the overall educational experience of students in the Yarmouth school department. For more information on the Yarmouth Education Foundation, visit our Show Notes page.
Thanks for coming in today, Gabe.
Gabe Weiss: Thank you for having me.