A new prekindergarten program planned for next year at Great Salt Bay Community School coupled with rising special education needs in the community are the major drivers behind the $7,976,984 budget approved by the school committee at its meeting on Wednesday, April 10, said AOS 93 Business Manager Peter Nielsen.
Compared to last year’s budget, the approved budget for the Great Salt Bay Consolidated School District represents a $1,020,669, or 14.67%, increase. The budget contains all expenses for K-8 education for the towns of Bremen, Damariscotta, and Newcastle.
The budget includes $2,120,177 in funding allocated to special education instruction, an increase of $644,853 or 43.71%.
“There is an increased need for special education in schools throughout Maine, and GSB has experienced this,” Nielsen said.
The special education total includes additional educational technicians that the committee determined were necessary to meet the increased need, more funding for school social workers, and an allocation of $300,000 to be transferred into the GSB special education reserve fund, which Nielsen said was depleted this past year.
In future years the committee can consider allocating money to Great Salt Bay’s other reserve accounts, such as the transportation reserve and facilities capital reserve funds, to which the board does not propose contributing this year, said school committee Chair Samuel Belknap.
Another factor in the proposed 14.67% budget increase is the prekindergarten program planned for Great Salt Bay next year. As planned, the proposal would create 32 spots at two full-day prekindergarten programs for area children.
Belknap suggested that investing in early childhood education would help the district in the long-term by reducing local needs for special education services later in life.
“The fact that we, as a community, are deciding to invest more deeply in pre-K is another way to address some of these longer-term needs,” Belknap said. “One of the most effective ways for a community to defray long-term special educational costs is investing in early childhood education … there is a wealth of data that every dollar spent comes back to a community tenfold when you make early childhood investments.”
Beginning in the early 2000s, researchers studying early childhood education began to find data suggesting that prekindergarten and similar early childhood programming can help reduce the need for special education services in student populations, improving outcomes for students and reducing the cost burden on towns and school systems associated with providing special services.
A 2005 review by the Pennsylvania Department of Education concluded that a broadly-implemented early childhood education program, such as public pre-K, could prevent about one-quarter of students from enrolling in special education down the line.
The prekindergarten will also receive extensive subsidy from the state, said Belknap, who called moving forward with the prekindergarten program a “no-brainer.”
The total budget allocated for regular instruction totals $3,290,969, a $500,806.95 or 17.95% increase over last year.
The budget allocated for other instruction totals $172,767, a $19,166 or 12.48% increase over last year.
The transportation/buses and facilities maintenance cost centers both are proposed to decrease. The transportation/bus funding request totals $421,222, a decrease of $17,811 or 4.06% compared to last year. For facilities and maintenance, the budget is $668,869, a decrease of $149,915 or 18.31%.
GSB is able to draw funding from the $1 million facilities bond approved by voters last year, said Nielsen, reducing the taxpayer impact of facilities with this budget.
Bremen’s contribution to the budget is $1,242,469, an increase of $316,986 or 34.25%. Damariscotta is set to contribute $2,907,741, an increase of $421,651 or 16.96% over last year, while Newcastle’s contribution is $2,027,449.45, an increase of $230,199, or 12.8%.
The GSB district-wide budget meeting, at which constituents of Damariscotta, Newcastle, and Bremen can vote on the budget, will be held on Wednesday, May 15 at 6:30 p.m. at Great Salt Bay Community School. For more information, call 563-3091 or go to greatsaltbayschool.org.
