Meeting Aug. 9 at the Wiscasset High School, the Regional School Unit 12 Board of Directors adopted a new cost sharing formula based on the cost-per-subsidy-eligible student for all towns.
RSU Finance Committee chair, Jerry Nault initially presented the new formula at a previous meeting.
Nault said he based the data on current budgets instead of on the historical cost, which the old formula used.
He took the subsidy-eligible amount of the operational budget and divided it by the total number of students in the RSU to find out the average RSU-wide cost per subsidy-eligible student.
Under the new formula, each town would multiply that amount times the number of students in their town, to come up with a total amount they needed to pay.
From that total, each town could subtract out the Minimum Required Amount, and the State subsidy they receive; whatever is left to pay is the “total local additional.”
If that amount is higher than the town paid the previous year, they would receive help from towns that had to pay less than they had in the past.
According to Nault, under the new formula some towns win and some towns do not, but an important part of the new formula is the safety net. One new formula provision is that towns cannot pay more under the new system than they paid under the old one.
The first year, towns that find they cannot pay the cost per subsidy-eligible student without having to go over the amount they historically paid, will receive money from a “safety net.”
As it stands, Nault showed there will be towns whose burden would be heavier the first three years of the formula changeover. Those towns would be helped by the towns that would be paying less than they had in the previous system.
This safety net would be extended for three years. By then, Nault said, towns would have adjusted their budgets to accommodate the change.
The committee voted if there were funds remaining, it would be distributed to all towns equally.
Most RSU board members were pleased with the new cost-sharing formula because it was based on solid data, and charged each town the same amount per student.
The next steps will be to have public hearings on the new cost-sharing formula, before an adoption vote in November.
Caron said that teachers who resign to get their pensions, should be required, if they want to be rehired, to commit to five years in the job.
Also, she was not sure that people who retire should necessarily automatically be able to be rehired. There might be other teachers who are able to do a better job, and be more excited to teach, she said.
After the meeting, Caron said, if the RSU spends money to train teachers in workshops and from grant monies, and then these teachers leave, that money is not staying in the school system.
She wanted to table the issue, and revisit it in September, but was outvoted.