Thanks to a bipartisan effort by local legislators, the SAD 61 school district will receive nearly half-a-million dollars more in state aid for next year.
For the second year in a row, the school district lost the most education subsidy in the state – $712,000 – under the new Essential Programs and Services (EPS) funding model while other local school districts, like Windham and SAD 6, saw million-dollar increases. Because of the second effort by legislators, district taxpayers will now see an estimated decrease of about $260,000 in state aid.
An additional $453,000 approved by the Legislature this week will shoulder part of that loss, and now legislators are calling on the Department of Education to look closely at how the new model affects rural school districts like SAD 61.
The Department of Education says that the loss in education subsidy for SAD 61 is due to a half-a-billion dollar spike in real estate values and a decrease in enrollment at district schools.
After realizing the loss SAD 61 would suffer this year, five local legislators – Sen. Bill Diamond, Rep. Richard Cebra, Rep. Philip Cressey among those in the Lakes Region – sought out Department of Education officials to convince the state agency why SAD 61 needed more support.
“From the beginning, the Department of Education was receptive to the idea,” said Sen. Diamond, D-Cumberland County. “The struggle was getting (the additional money) into a budget that was pretty tight.”
In the end, legislators negotiated an additional $453,000 in state aid for the SAD 61, tucked into the overall state budget.
Superintendent Frank Gorham plans to use this money to reduce the property tax commitment of the four towns that contribute to the district (Casco, Sebago, Naples and Bridgton).
With the additional aid, the average increase in local tax contribution from these towns is roughly 2 percent more than last year, just under $100,000 more in most cases.
Though pleased by the extra support, Gorham is worried that, if things don’t change next year, the school district will lose more state aid. He warns the district can’t continue to sustain these losses.
To cope with this year’s loss, the school district not only flat-funded its budget, but cut staff and programs at all levels of education.
Rep. Richard Cebra, R-Naples, is pleased by the bipartisan effort to get SAD 61 more support for education. But he believes education subsidy is skewed when it comes to rural districts and needs to be changed.
He disagrees with the idea of using property values, which fluctuate with the real estate market, to calculate a community’s ability to pay for education. With lakefront property now in high demand, water-logged SAD 61 is left short on subsidy every time, he says.
“What’s the state going to do if the real estate bubble pops?” Cebra said. “That’s not the way (to measure subsidy).”
Jim Rier of the Department of Education says the EPS model is meant to assess how much money is needed by a school district.
“Its job is to predict the cost of education and the teachers and staff needed to support that education,” Rier said. “In general, it matches up quite well.”
He admits that the EPS formula doesn’t seem to match SAD 61’s need. He and others will continue to fine-tune the model and make possible changes to better address the needs of rural districts.
However, he sees the funding mechanism, and not the analysis of educational need, as the driving force behind these subsidy losses. Increases in real estate values have not only had an adverse effect on SAD 61’s funding, but other rural districts as well, he says.
Meanwhile, local legislators have vowed to keep an eye on the issue so SAD 61 doesn’t suffer a similar loss next year.
“We feel at least that we’ve taken the big sting out of this year,” Diamond said, “which could have been devastating to the school district.”
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