The SAD 44 School Board voted unanimously Monday to approve a draft budget of $10,661,322 for the 2016 fiscal year.

That is up from last year’s $10,564,225 by just under 1 percent.

However, a drop in state aid will mean more of an increase to the towns.

Superintendent David Murphy noted that the Finance Committee had pared an additional $2,052 from the preliminary draft budget presented at the board’s April 13 meeting.

The budget relies on approximately $8.2 million to be raised locally from taxes and $2.4 million in non-local revenue, which includes tuition received for students living outside of SAD 44 and $514,000 in carryover from prior budget years, as well as $182,269 in state aid for education.

Tuition for an anticipated 50 to 60 Andover students who will attend district schools, in addition to a one-time payment of $130,000 for Andover’s share of debt incurred while it was part of SAD 44, will help to increase the amount of non-local revenue in the budget by $615,000 for FY ’16.

Murphy said that in order to determine the amount of tuition revenue the district can expect, he sent a letter to the families of all Andover students who currently attend grades K-4 at Crescent Park School to let them know that they have the option of continuing to attend CPS next year.

Under state law, when a town withdraws from a school district, students who have been attending schools in that district may continue to attend for at least one year, with the town responsible for their tuition.

After the first year, permission to tuition students to the district is granted on a case by case basis through a superintendent agreement.

“In year one, we will charge our actual costs for tuition purposes for any students who are attending SAD 44 from Andover,” Murphy said. “After the first year, it reverts back to the maximum tuition rate allowed by the state.

“In our case, for grades K-8, we’re about on par with what the average [tuition] rate is, and we’re just a little bit higher than that at the high school level.”

As of Monday, the district had heard back from all but one family who received the mailing, and all of those responding said they planned to send their children to CPS next year.

Murphy said a similar mailing was sent to parents in Grades 5-11 late last week and he expects to receive their responses in the next week or so.

IMPACT ON TOWNS

The expected loss in state aid is $396,774, Murphy said, and the projected increase to the local share is $396,991. The state aid loss now means SAD 44 has lost more than $2.5 million in state aid in less than 10 years, Murphy said.

With the withdrawal of Andover, the local funding for the budget will now be spread over only four towns. The average amount of the cost increase is just over five percent, but it will vary among the member towns.

Bethel will see an increased cost of 3.7 percent, or $104,030. Costs to both Greenwood and Newry will increase by 4.28 percent, adding $43,656 to Greenwood’s share and $125,379 to Newry’s.

Woodstock will see the largest increase, 11.56 percent, or $123,584, because the upcoming fiscal year will be the first in which the value of the Spruce Mountain Wind Project has been figured into the school funding formula, increasing the town’s total valuation by over $10 million.

Greenwood Director Larry Merlino said he would have preferred a budget that was five percent lower than the previous year’s as a starting point. Then, he said, the Finance Committee could have added back in the items they felt could not be cut without harming education in the district.

Merlino said he believes that rural areas suffer an unfair impact as a result of cuts to state educational funding and due to federal mandates, particularly in the area of special education.

Both Murphy and Finance Committee Chair Bonnie Largess of Newry encouraged board members who are not on the Finance Committee to attend budget meetings to observe the amount of work that goes into trying to hold the budget down.

“Not until I was on the Finance Committee did I understand what was going on,” Largess said. “I encourage people to come to our meetings. In March, we meet every Thursday for about five hours.”

TELSTAR ADMINISTRATOR QUESTIONED

Bethel director Tim Carter questioned spending $70,000 for a principal at Telstar Middle School, and the need for three full-time administrators for a total student population of about 400 at the Telstar complex.

“If we put anything in there, I would like to put a teaching principal in the middle school, or an assistant principal, not a full-time principal,” he said. “It would save money.”

TMS Principal Clark Rafford, who is retiring at the end of June, disagreed. He said the middle school principal handles many issues beyond those related to education.

“Come walk in my shoes, and see what I have to deal with, non-educationally, every single day,” he said. “If you cut that position, it’s going to be the kiss of death to the Telstar Middle School.”

“One of the reasons the district moved to a full-time principal, rather than an assistant principal,” Murphy said, “was that there was a feeling at the middle school level, not only with the staff, but with the families as well, that they weren’t necessarily getting the same level of support as the high school was.”

One half of Rafford’s salary for the current school year is paid with funds from the TIF4 grant, and he spends half of his time working as an educator effectiveness coach.

That move freed up funds that enabled the district to hire former TMS math teacher Mark Kenney last fall as a full-time TMS dean of students.

Murphy said at the time that the person hired for the dean of students position would assist Rafford, while gaining experience that could position him to continue as an administrator at Telstar for the 2015-16 school year.

“Ideally, the person we would attract could be certified as either a dean or a principal, giving the board some opportunity to decide which route you want to go,” Murphy said then.

Kenney, who earned a master’s degree in school administration from St. Joseph’s College, is certified to be either a dean or a principal.

Largess said the Finance Committee had discussed the administrative structure at Telstar and “we felt that we definitely did not want to jeopardize the middle school.”

LD 1082

Murphy told the board that LD 1082, the proposed bill that would eliminate exemptions to the statewide school funding formula for SAD 44 and SAD 6, was scheduled for a work session on Tuesday of this week. He said he planned to attend the hearing, as did the district’s attorney, Richard Spencer of Drummond and Woodsum.

After listening to Spencer’s testimony at the April 15 public hearing on LD 1082 before the Legislative Committee on Education and Cultural Affairs, Murphy said he asked the attorney to prepare a statement summarizing his position.

“Basically, what Dick says is that regional school taxes are taxes that are imposed on folks by the school district,” Murphy said.

“They just happen to be collected by the towns, because that’s a natural process that is already in place. He points out that taxes that are applied to a home in one town are the same as the taxes that are applied to a home in another town.”

Spencer says that most rural Maine towns are members of a school district because they do not have enough students or enough taxable property to operate their own school systems.

“Although the taxes that support Maine’s SADs and RSUs are collected by the towns, the courts have made it clear that they remain regional taxes and not town taxes,” his statement says.

“In reality, it is not the town that is paying the taxes to support the SAD or RSU, it is the individual taxpayers.”

Murphy said that Spencer addresses concerns behind both the proposed funding formula legislation and Newry’s threat of withdrawal.

“Common sense requires that all of the taxpayers in the region be taxed in the same manner to support a regional school system that benefits all of them,” the statement continues, concluding, “The present system is not only fair to the taxpayers, it also leads to greater educational opportunities for all of the students who live in the SAD’s member towns.”

For the complete text of the statement, go to www.bethelcitizen.com

AD ED POSITION REDUCED

Directors approved the FY ’16 Adult and Community Education budget of $157,310, an amount that is $763 lower than in the previous year. Of the total, $85,000 is the local funding share, and the remaining $72,310 comes from revenue generated by the program.

Murphy said ACE Director Jean Waite had reduced her own position from full time to 75 percent, adding more clerical hours and instructional hours, in order to maintain program services.

The Board also unanimously approved a feasibility study, at a cost not to exceed $8,600, for a possible wood pellet boiler system at Crescent Park School. The study will not bind the district to any final decision, but Maintenance Supervisor Ron Deegan said it would show whether the project would save money.

Dr. Robert Hasson, Deputy Executive Director of the Maine School Management Association, presented a one-hour workshop to directors, intended to serve as orientation for new board members and as a refresher course for those who have been in their positions for a long time. Hasson reviewed the roles and responsibilities of school board members and the function of the committee structure.