In the wake of Jefferson voters’ rejection of an initial education budget for the 2025-2026 school year at the polls in June, they will consider another, higher proposal from the school committee on Wednesday, July 9.
Jefferson School Committee members pointed to what Chair Danielle Bernier called a “perfect storm” of factors to explain the increase, including ongoing staffing challenges and the fact that since the previous budget was finalized, more children have been identified who are entering Jefferson’s school system with particularly high special education needs.
New AOS 93 Director of Special Services Dominic DePatsy said the state of Jefferson’s education budget was emblematic of a nationwide “crisis” in special education that has hit rural areas particularly hard.
As proposed by the Jefferson School Committee, the budget for K-12 education is now proposed at $10,044,358.24, an increase of $1,493,961.66 or 17.47% over last year’s budget.
The total to be raised locally by taxes is $7,153,100.34 as proposed, an increase of $1,316,465.77 or 22.56%.
The proposed budget is $280,552.86 or 2.9% higher than the amount that failed to pass by a two-vote margin earlier this year. That budget was approved by voters during a special town meeting May 21 but failed validation at the polls June 10 by a vote of 90-92.
Rising special education costs account for 78.5% of the year-to-year budget increase, Bernier told the Jefferson Budget Committee at a joint meeting with the school committee on Thursday, June 26.
“This budget, for me – and this huge increase – is really in order for us to stay compliant and legal, to supply the services that we are legally obligated to supply to the students,” said school committee member Wayne Parlin. “That’s what this budget is really all about, and that’s where all the extra cost lies.”
The special education cost center totals $3,232,869.72 as proposed, an increase of $1,234,136.09 or 61.74% from last year.
Currently, 67% of Jefferson’s incoming kindergarten class will require special education services, DePatsy said. Nationwide, about 15% of students receive special education services, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
Jefferson’s numbers may still continue to rise before next year begins, according to AOS 93 Superintendent Todd Sanders, who added that some of the incoming students were still being evaluated.
The prevalence of students with special education needs is rising nationwide, and Maine has one of the highest rates, with about one in five students statewide receiving special services, DePatsy said.
In Jefferson, where the rate of special education also outstrips the state average, the town’s ability to serve those students – as it is legally required to do – is frustrated by a persistent lack of staffing, said Sanders. He noted that he had attended several job fairs to attempt to attract teachers to Jefferson Village School, but had little success attracting candidates to interview.
Staff retention has also been a challenge, said Bernier.
“High rates of teacher burnout, driven by low pay, excessive workloads and a challenging school environment have led to a revolving door of staff turnover at both professional and support staff levels,” she read from a prepared statement at the June 25 meeting.
DePatsy said Jefferson’s wage scale was among the lowest in the area, a factor he believes prevented the school from being able to hire or retain staff.
The result of not being able to provide services in house is that Jefferson must pay more to fulfill its obligation to educate students by finding alternative ways to meet the obligations, the school committee said. Sometimes, this entails hiring contractors, for whom the going rate can be more than double the rate paid to in-house staff, according to information provided by DePatsy.
Other times, the solution may involve sending some students to special-purpose private schools or finding them spots in other public districts where they can get the services they need, whether those are medical, behavioral, or specific types of involved instruction.
The process is often competitive, with students often placed on wait lists, and can also be expensive, DePatsy said. Paying tuition for one such student can cost from $70,000 to more than $150,000 per year, plus thousands for transportation.
Providing comparable services to four to five high-needs students at Jefferson Village School would cost about $93,000 per student, DePatsy said. However, to accomplish that, the district would need staff that they do not currently have, with about three paraprofessionals and one special education teacher required to serve a group of four to five children.
With Jefferson’s ongoing staffing challenges, about 10-11 students are set to be sent to other schools at the beginning of the 2025-2026 school year, DePatsy said June 25.
The school committee also proposed establishing a special education reserve of about $300,000 in fund balance to help defray additional special education costs.
The Jefferson education fund balance currently totals about $600,000, though that amount has not yet been audited this year, said AOS 93 Executive Director of Finance and Operations Peter Nielsen.
The committee also adjusted other budget lines since the last budget proposal, including recommending sharing a contracted school psychologist and an intern school psychologist with Nobleboro to provide all psychological services to the two towns’ K-12 populations.
DePatsy said he was looking forward to working toward a long-term solution for Jefferson’s situation, which may foreshadow coming challenges for other schools in AOS 93 and the surrounding area.
Finding ways to regionalize services, attaining staff, and improving retention will be central to that effort, which Sanders said he hoped would stabilize the education budget.
“The only way we can get the special education budget back under control is if we get qualified staff and we can stop sending these kids to these out of district placements,” Sanders said.
As proposed, the current budget would allow the district to begin working toward that goal, said Bernier.
When it came time to vote on the budget categories at the June 26 meeting, the six members of the budget committee present were divided.
While the school committee voted 5-0 to recommend the budget overall, the budget committee voted 4-1-1, with Lisa Hodgkins voting against and Glenn Gervais abstaining.
Hodgkins said she felt she had to make a statement against the steep increase and register her displeasure with the upward trend in the budget.
Gervais said he could not vote in favor of a budget that would mark such a sharp increase, though he said he sympathized with the struggles of the school committee.
Parlin said he believed the town’s predicament was due to policy failures at the state level.
“Maine has one of the highest special education student population rates in the country. That’s policy driven. For some reason, you create a society that has a higher population of special needs students and behavioral issues that we can’t address the way we should, which disrupts the whole school, which creates a culture and a climate where teachers don’t want to be teachers anymore because they feel ineffective,” he said.
Residents will consider the proposed budget at a special town meeting set for 6 p.m. on Wednesday, July 9, at Jefferson Village School. A secret ballot validation vote will follow. For more information, go to aos93.org/o/jvs or call 506-3044.
