OXFORD — The Oxford Hills School District has received a $7,424 tuition bill for one student to attend the Fiddlehead School of Arts & Sciences in Gray this year.

Officials say that may just be the tip of the financial iceberg.

With four new charter schools awaiting approval from the Maine Charter School Commission to open next fall, school officials are holding their collective breath that the schools do not draw any more students than the district can financially handle.

Under current law, the per-pupil state funding follows each charter-school student who leaves the district.

“We all realize the impact on our budget,” SAD 17 Finance Committee Chairman Joseph Vaillancourt recently told his fellow directors as they reviewed the first charter school tuition payment, which was unforeseen in June when voters approved a $35.9 million budget for the 2013-14 school year.

The bill for the first-grade student, dated Sept. 23, included the basic EPS rate of $6,137 plus $530 in transportation costs and other miscellaneous fees. It will be paid in four installments.

The amount was charged to the contingency fund, but Vaillancourt warned that by next year, the SAD 17 district may have to add a new budget item to accommodate more tuition payments.

“Some items are beyond our control,” he said.

Gov. Paul R. LePage signed legislation in 2011, making Maine the 41st state to allow charter schools. Five public charter schools are open and the commission can authorize up to 10 through June 30, 2022. Local school boards can authorize additional public charter schools.

The Maine Charter School Commission approved the Fiddlehead School of Arts & Sciences on Feb. 5 as one of Maine’s first public charter schools. It opened this fall with 42 students in pre-kindergarten, first and second grades. The plan is to add a grade each year up to grade five, according to its website.

While that plan allows more SAD 17 students an opportunity to attend the charter school, the real threat may still be coming as the Maine Charter School Commission begins its review of four new charter school proposals including one based in Lewiston-Auburn, one in Windham and two statewide online schools.

According to its proposal, the Lewiston-Auburn Academy Charter School hopes to open in September with 180 students in grades 7, 8 and 9 with a focus on STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) education. At full capacity, it will house 360 students in grades 7 through 12. No site for the school has been announced.

By Jan. 30, 2014, the commission will decide whether each of the applicants — Lewiston-Auburn Academy Charter School in Lewiston, Many Hands Montessori School in Windham and online schools Maine Connections Academy and Maine Virtual Academy — will move on to the public-hearing stage.

Public hearings will allow the commission to receive comments from the public on the expected impact of the proposed charter schools on students, parents and the communities to be served.

On March 4, a decision will be made on whether to enter into a contract with each applicant or to deny the proposal.

If those applications are approved, “I suspect we could be greatly impacted,” SAD 17 Superintendent Rick Colpitts said.

He said several issues are at play: the enrollment of preschool students, the impact of charter schools on special education costs and the inability to budget accurately in the spring when student enrollment numbers are not known until the following September.

In July, the Oxford Hills School District expanded its voluntary pre-kindergarten program which began in partnership with Community Concepts in 2007 and includes both community and Head Start slots on a limited basis.

If the charter schools accept preschool students, the district could be responsible for paying the bill for many students who might otherwise not be eligible to attend preschool in the SAD 17 district, Colpitts said.

And because charter schools are much smaller, they probably are not able to provide the wide range of special education services the district can, Colpitts said, and therefore would be more likely to send the student to outside placement for service — at a much higher cost than the district could, Colpitts said.

“We offer a wide breadth of special education services, but we do so economically,” he said.

When a charter school places a child in an outside, special-needs program, “We don’t have a place at the table to have that conversation with them,” Colpitts said. “SAD 17 has to pay the bill, and yet we have no role in the conversation.”

The budgeting process is also a problem.

In addition to students enrolled in SAD 17 schools who may wish to attend charter schools, 112 Oxford Hills students are home-schooled, Colpitts said. The district does not get reimbursed by the state for those students, he said.

“Yet if (home-school students) choose to attend a charter school, SAD 17 will now be liable for the tuition costs,” he said. “There’s no way for me to predict this.”

After the state went through a process several years ago to reduce the number of school districts statewide to decrease costs, Colpitts said it now seems “unfair” for the state to drain those remaining districts of resources to start new smaller schools.

Colpitts said he was not worried about competing with charter schools for students. He is confident that the Oxford Hills School District will continue to offer a top-quality education to its students.

But budgeting for unexpected tuition costs, along with other factors, such as the lack of a supplemental budget this coming year, will take a toll, he said.

“I’m not rushing into it,” Colpitts said. “We have done our projections; we’re guessing it will be another tough year.”

ldixon@sunjournal.com

SKOWHEGAN — SAD 54 voters are paying for the notoriety of having the state’s first elementary and secondary charter schools.

This year, it has cost them $780,000.

“We’re like the poster child,” Superintendent Brent Colbry said. He said the school district likely is the first to be hit hard by the two-year-old initiative when the two local charter schools opened in 2012. “We’ve been at it since the beginning. It’s been a challenge.”

The first elementary charter school in Maine — the Cornville Regional Charter School in Cornville and the state’s first secondary charter school — the Maine Academy of Natural Sciences in Hinckley, built on the old campus of Goodwill-Hinckley Home for Boys and Girls — immediately drew students from SAD 54. In fact, it drew lots of kids.

Voters in June approved adding about $661,000 to the district budget to pay for an estimated 72 students who would be attending the nearby charter schools.

But by September, the enrollment figures at Cornville Regional Charter School and the Maine Academy of Natural Sciences in Fairfield had climbed to 85 and the district’s budget to pay for those students had risen to $780,000, Colbry said.

Like other school officials across the state, Colbry and his staff have grappled with the process of determining how much money they need to set aside each year to pay the district’s share of students attending charter schools. Budgets are set months in advance of school openings.

Colbry said the district was not completely surprised that 70 of the 85 students enrolled in the two local charter schools chose to leave the district. The kindergarten through grade six facility was the first elementary charter school in the state. It opened two years after Cornville Elementary School was closed by Regional School Unit 54 in 2010 to cut costs. The town of Cornville raised enough money to heat and maintain the building that now houses the charter school.

The 85 students included 11 who receive special education services. And while the students’ needs were met within the confines of the charter school curriculum, the cost was about double what the district paid for a charter school student not receiving special needs services, Colbry said.

While educators guessed the first year what the enrollment would be, they were able to better estimate the impact this school year with the assistance of charter school personnel who kept them informed of incoming district students.

“We have a good relationship with them,” Colbry said.

With an initial cap of 60 students in 2012, that rose to 90 this year with a full build-out at 120, Colbry said they can now come within a reasonable estimate of how many students they will have to pay for.

“We’ve got one more year,” he said until the charter school reaches capacity. Besides Cornville, the district includes Canaan, Mercer, Skowhegan, Norridgewock and Smithfield.

“It will be the same process,” he said of next year’s budget. “Talk with (charter school personnel) and take an educated guess.”

This year’s charter school enrollment has not been without impact to everyone in the SAD 54 district, Colbry said. Teachers have agreed to freeze salary increases for two years; programs and staff have been eliminated.

“It”s been a challenge,” he said. “No doubt about it.”

ldixon@sunjournal.com