I was disappointed to read the misstatement of fact published in the article titled “Board considers flash drives,” published in the April 28 edition of the Current. The opening sentence of the article, discussing technology options in the Cape Elizabeth High School, states that “… the Town Council has refused to allow the schools to spend $58,500 to continue a one-to-one laptop initiative at the high school.” The misstatement is a disservice to your readers in Cape Elizabeth and unnecessarily perpetuates a myth that the Town Council controls how the School Board spends its budget. I respectfully request that the Current print this letter and print a correction of its error.
The Cape Elizabeth Town Council has made no such pronouncement or imposed any such restriction on School Board spending. To the contrary, as a matter of long standing policy, the Town Council has steadfastly avoided directing the School Board on how to spend any of its allotted budget dollars.
On April 25, the Town Council held a public hearing on the budget recommended by the Cape Elizabeth Finance Committee. The recommended budget includes a Fiscal Year 2006 (7/1/05 to 6/30/06) budget for the schools of $17,502,204. The recommendation from the Finance Committee does not include any suggestion or requirement as to how the School Board spends its $17.5 million budget. The School Board will spend the money as it sees fit, based on priorities that it creates, and presumably based on what it determines are the most important needs for students in Cape Elizabeth. Whether the School Board chooses to spend $58,500 on student laptops is purely a School Board decision. At this point, the School Board has apparently determined that there are other initiatives more important to Cape students than expanding the laptop program. The Town Council fully respects the School Board’s decisions on spending priorities.
On Sept. 13, 2004, 5 of the 7 current sitting Town Councilors approved a resolution committing themselves to limit spending in the next three years to a level not more than the rate of the Consumer Price Index (“CPI”), with the exception of voter approved debt and an allowance for additional school enrollment and population growth. At a meeting on Feb. 3, 2005, which was attended by members of the School Board, the Finance Committee voted to recommend that the Town Council adopt 3.3 percent as the appropriate measure of the increase in the CPI. At its meeting on February 14, 2005, the Town Council adopted the recommendation of the Finance Committee to use 3.3 percent as the spending limit increase, with the exception of voter approved debt and additional school enrollment and population growth.
With knowledge of the Town Council’s 3.3 percent target spending increase, the School Board submitted its proposed budget to the Town Council requesting an additional $58,500 “outside of” its budget proposal, to be used for technology. The $58,500 requested was over and above the $546,343 3.3 percent CPI increase in the School Board’s budget. When the Finance Committee reviewed the proposed school budget on April 13, it voted unanimously not to provide any funding “outside” the budget, and recommended that the Town Council adopt a school budget based on a 3.3 percent spending increase over last year’s school budget (plus an additional $400,000 to pay voter approved debt on the recent Pond Cove construction project and the current high school renovation project).
The decision on whether to fund laptops for high school students has always been and remains the sole province of the School Board – not the Town Council. The School Board is welcome to use any part of its $17.5 million budget on laptop computers, and the Town Council will support that decision.
David Backer
Member, Cape Elizabeth Town Council and
Finance Chair
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