Maine legislators, education leaders and school district administrators on Wednesday urged a legislative committee to look into changing how the state’s K-12 schools are funded. 

The Legislature’s Committee on Education and Cultural Affairs heard eight bills advocating for changes in school funding or calling for review of the funding formula. The bills proposed a range of changes to the way the state pays for public education, but the overarching sentiment was that the way schools are currently funded is inadequate and inequitable, and changes are needed.

The state uses a complicated formula to figure out how much money to allocate to school districts across Maine. As a whole, the state funds 55 percent of what it deems essential programs and services, but that money is not evenly distributed across school districts.

Every year, the state decides funding for each of the state’s 277 school districts based largely on student enrollment and district property values, as well as the number of economically disadvantaged students and English language learners in a district, and other factors. The formula assumes that communities with higher property values should be able to contribute more to public education and thus require less support from the state.

But some say the reality is more complicated, and that the current funding formula is inequitable.

Lewis Collins, superintendent for the school district serving Jonesport and Beals Island in Washington County, said nothing is more frustrating for his local school board members than hearing the state say it is paying for 55 percent of public education.

While technically accurate, it doesn’t reflect the reality in his district, he said. The state will pay less than 20 percent of essential program and services costs for the district, and only about 10 percent of the total school budget for the coming school year.

Property values in Jonesport and Beals Island, which boast beautiful coastlines of granite cliffs and rocky beaches, have skyrocketed in recent years. But median incomes in the region have not. The median household income for Beals Island is $53,750 and for Jonesport is $43,750. The state’s median household income is $63,182.

Although the communities’ median incomes are below the state average, the district still gets far less than the average 55 percent funding from the state for education.

Collins said the formula needs to be changed to consider median income along with property values.

“Ability to pay has much more to do with your income than it does with your location,” said Collins in testimony supporting a bill introduced by Rep. Valli Geiger, D-Rockland. L.D. 951 would add median income to the funding formula. “Everyone knows that. It’s truly not a difficult concept to grasp and it’s high time the Legislature makes that fix to the formula.”

Although not everybody testifying Wednesday advocated for changing the funding formula, all who spoke in favor of any of the eight bills implied that the state is not or may not be funding schools fairly or adequately, and that the issue should at least be investigated further. Although multiple people gave testimony neither for nor against some of the bills, there was no testimony opposing any of them.

State school districts spent an average of $15,647 per student in the 2021-22 school year, but that number varied greatly, from below $10,000 in some districts to over $25,000 per student in small island communities.

In Lewiston, for example, where the median household income was $48,069 in 2021 and the median value of owner-occupied homes was $157,500, the school district spent $15,802 per student in the 2020-21 school year. In York, which had a median household income of $101,352 and a median home value of $451,000 in 2021, the school district spent $20,945 per student.

Providing equal education to students across the state means revisiting how money is provided to lower-income communities,  to reduce or eliminate significant gaps in per pupil spending such as those between Lewiston and York.

“Most us recognize that quality pK-12 education requires significant investment,” said Surrette in testimony supporting L.D. 889, sponsored by Sen. Joe Baldacci, D-Bangor, which would provide additional funds to school districts where the average income is below the state average. “If we want schools with up-to-date infrastructure, well-paid teachers, and high-quality curriculums, it means we need the funding to do that.”

Of the eight bills proposed Wednesday, six advised altering the state’s funding formula, one suggested providing additional funds beyond the state’s normal allocation to some districts, and one recommended the state study the equity of the formula.

The last time a comprehensive analysis of the state’s funding formula was completed was in 2013. The report found that using property taxes in the funding formula was likely to make the funding system inequitable.