LEWISTON – The school budget for 2015-16 has been approved by the School Committee and the City Council. Now it goes to voters.

Polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday at the Longley Elementary School gym.

The proposed budget is $64.7 million. Most of that, $45 million, comes from the state; the remaining $19 million from local taxpayers. According to the Maine Department of Education, Lewiston is the top receiver of state money for education, followed by Regional School Unit 6 in Buxton, and then Auburn.

Lewiston gets the most because of the high number of students and the city’s property values.

The proposed budget would require a 5.7 percent increase in property taxes; $81 more a year on a $150,000 home.

Superintendent Bill Webster is aware some say that’s too much. But Lewiston has no choice if it doesn’t want to lose state money, Webster said.

State laws requiring towns and cities to raise a minimum amount for the Essential Programs and Services formula; when districts raise less than required, the state will withhold money for education.

Until recently there’s been a waiver on that law, but the waiver is being phased out.

“The public needs to know that this budget is the minimum that needs to be raised locally,” Webster said. “If we raise anything less, the penalty on Lewiston is very significant. We’d lose $2.40 for every $1. It would be devastating to Lewiston public schools and the city of Lewiston.”

According to a flier mailed to every household in Lewiston, if $475,000 were cut from the budget, Lewiston would lose $1.14 million from the state, enough to pay for 36 positions.

There are two major areas of higher spending in the budget: more teachers and programs for special education to keep pace with a growing number of special ed students; and more teachers and ed techs to reduce class sizes among kindergarten classes.

The number of special ed students in Lewiston is growing, along with the costs, which are jumping 10.9 percent. “Whether the budget is passed or not,” Lewiston has no choice but to provide those services, Webster said.

Typically, Lewiston has about 470 kindergarten students each year. Of the incoming kindergarten students, 85 4-year-olds are already receiving special ed services from the state, and 12 or 13 of the 85 have severe needs.

“That’s one of the challenges. They’re already identified before we even see them,” Webster said.

Lewiston’s budget proposes to build more in-house autism programs for those with severe disabilities. The goal is to serve students in Lewiston and avoid sending them out of the district, which is more expensive. A new autism class is being added at Geiger Elementary and the high school.

“Our goal is to provide programs at least equal to what they would otherwise get out of district,” Webster said.

The budget also adds two teachers and seven ed techs to have the appropriate student-to-teacher kindergarten ratios of 20-to-1. A new kindergarten class will be added at McMahon this fall.

Overall, for most Lewiston students “this budget maintains our present level of support of programs,” Webster said. If Lewiston was spending what’s recommended by the state, “we could easily spend $1 million to $2 million more.”

bwashuk@sunjournal.com

State pledges funding to support autism resource

AUGUSTA – Responding to a growing number of children with autism, the Maine Department of Education is committing over $150,000 to the state’s first autism institute, the department said in a press release.

Those funds are in addition to the $209,802 the department and the University of Maine’s College of Education and Human Development contributed to open the Maine Autism Institute for Education and Research in 2014.  
 
Autism is a developmental disability with varying degrees of severity that affects a person’s ability to communicate, to reason and interact with others. An estimated 1 in 68 children are being diagnosed with autism.

The funding will help the institute’s efforts to build statewide capacity to improve outcomes for youngsters with autism and expand training for school district teams to help increase success for autistic students.

About 9 percent, or 2,776 students, identified with disabilities in K-12 public schools have been diagnosed with autism.
 
Some 28 teams have been established, and applications are being accepted to add up to a dozen more.

Lewiston School Superintendent Bill Webster said Thursday he was unaware of the institute, and was surprised they had not contacted him considering the high number of autistic students and programs in Lewiston schools.
 
Triggers to disruptive behaviors in autistic children include change and transitions, lots of noise and crowds, “things that are most prevalent in schools,” Deborah Rooks-Ellis, an assistant professor of Special Education at UMaine and the institute’s director, said.
     
For more information about the Maine Autism Institute for Education and Research, visit www.maineautisminstitute.org or www.facebook.com/maineautisminstitute.