Soon after Millinocket’s struggling paper mill closed for good in 2008, former school board member Shelley Farrington gathered a group of parents together to discuss opening schools to foreign students. The international student program would expose Millinocket children to new cultures, boost the town’s declining school enrollment and generate revenue in a way that wouldn’t rely on the town’s shrinking tax base. “We needed to find a way to generate revenue outside of the taxpayer,” said Farrington, an ed tech at the town’s Granite Street School.