Sweetser’s Special Purpose School was featured in a Portland Press Herald article highlighting how Maine students are learning how to make maple syrup.
Here’s an excerpt quoting the school’s Teacher BA, Julia Birtolo:
‘Sweetser students celebrate the sugaring season in a big way: They, too, enjoy the syrup over ice cream, and they cook with it— maple fudge, maple caramel, an especially awesome maple cookie sandwiched with maple cream. Every student who helped produce the syrup gets a small bottle of their own, which they can refill as much as they like, while supplies last. There’s a farmers breakfast and Maine Maple Monday, Sweetser’s twist on the state’s annual Maine Maple Sunday tradition. Moreover, bottles of the school-made syrup raffled off at a school fundraiser can fetch hundreds of dollars, said Birtolo, who started the maple-sugaring program around 1996 when she was hired as an ed tech.’