We are flattered by the recent press coverage. Rarely does a small private school receive so much attention. As you might imagine, as news travels, the issues tend to get clouded. So please let me set the perspective.

Five things you should know:

1. The North Atlantic Regional High School has been a state-authorized, state-recognized private school for 15 years. The school is fully accredited by the National Private Schools Association.

2. We are a truly private school because we receive NO public funds. As a truly private school, our standards are adopted by our team of certified teachers and administrators.

3. Last fall, the Haitian Refugee Center in Miami approached the school and asked if we could help their high school students. These students had earned all of the necessary graduation credits from their local public high school; but they could not pass one reading portion of the mandatory Florida EXIT EXAMS (FCAT). They had been in America for 2 to 4 years.

NARS administrators flew to Miami to review the situation, and found that most of these students had GPA’s over 3.0 and had exceeded Maine’s graduation requirements. Therefore, the students simply registered with our school, transferred their public school credits, and were awarded the high school diploma each had earned. There was no need for any of them to come to Maine, since their transferred credits were received from the legal documents issued by their public high school.

4. Education officials in Florida are not pleased that students have found a way to avoid Florida's FCAT EXIT EXAM requirements. But, since Maine does not require any EXIT EXAMS, the students who applied and fulfilled the Maine graduation requirements had earned their diplomas.

5. This is a CHOICE issue. High school credits earned belong to the students. Where do the students want to apply their credits? Students own their credits and can use them at any school that will accept them, including out of state schools. This has always been the practice of transferring credits between schools, and there is nothing unusual about the practice. If families do not like what is going on in public school, they can move their students (and their credits) to a private school.

What brought our school into the news recently was the resourcefulness of these students: they had found a way to avoid FCAT -- Florida’s single-test, high-stakes exit exams -- by transferring to our Maine high school. Simple. Legal. Clear. Choice.