Robert Staples, chairman of the Regional School Unit 73 board of directors, holds a kindness rock at Thursday night’s meeting at Spruce Mountain High School in Jay. Directors were asked to take one of the decorated rocks to help with the elementary and high school students’ Kindness Rocks project. Pam Harnden/Livermore Falls Advertiser

JAY — Brightly painted rocks may be showing up in unexpected places in the coming weeks in an effort to brighten someone’s day and show people care.

Anyone finding a rock is asked to move it to a different location or give it to someone to keep the Kindness Rocks project rolling along.

Spruce Mountain School District Librarian Amy Ryder explained the program to Regional School Unit 73 board of directors Thursday night.

Each year elementary students read Maine Chickadee Award-nominated books, she said.

“This year, the main character of one of the books was a rock,” Ryder noted. “We had seen painted kindness rocks around, and thought this would be a valuable project for our students to do together. The idea is, students paint slogans or artwork onto a rock that might brighten someone’s day.”

When a rock is found, the finder places it somewhere else for another person to find.

“Potentially, the rock made by our students could travel a great distance and be enjoyed by many people,” Ryder said. “It seemed like a great project, but also a lot of work for Spruce Mountain Elementary School alone. So we recruited the best helpers we have: (high school) students. They love to help us prep materials to use with our younger students.”

Several older students volunteered to clean the rocks, paint a base coat on them, and seal labels explaining the project on the back, then elementary students decorated them, she said.

“The high school students also decorated some, because they could not miss out on the most fun part,” Ryder noted. “Then we sealed them and gave them back to the kids to place into the community. We painted over 300 rocks altogether.”

The students are excited to know their kind words or art could make a difference in the community and could potentially spread much farther than the district towns, Ryder said.

“In order for the kindness to spread, our rocks now need to get out into the community and beyond,” she added. “This is where you can help us. We are inviting the Spruce Mountain school board to join us by placing one of our kindness rocks somewhere. We hope to show our students that their kindness traveled far beyond the school and positively impacted our community.”

Rocks painted by high school students and staff were offered to directors.

Ryder encouraged anyone traveling during vacation to take a rock with them and leave it to extend the project’s reach beyond local communities. RSU 73 has schools in Jay and Livermore, with students also attending from Livermore Falls.

Director Phoebe Pike said she remembered high school students helping while she was in elementary school and then being an older student helping younger ones. Seeing both sides of the coin has stayed with her, she noted.

“This sense of community is wonderful,” Pike said.

“I know how far that interaction with high school students go,” Director Elaine Fitzgerald said. She still stays connected with students who helped her classes while a teacher, she said.

In other business, directors approved an eighth grade trip to the Museum of Science in Boston on May 25. Eighth grade students have spent their entire middle school career in the shadow of the pandemic, Principal Caroline “Carrie” Luce said. The celebratory trip, not based on academics, is wonderful, giving students something to look forward to, she noted.

Grants will provide admission for the 99 students, another grant will help with busing, and money was put in the budget for trips, Luce said.

The Museum of Science at any age is fabulous, Fitzgerald said.