The Maine Legislature’s Committee on Education and Cultural Affairs ceased work on a bill presented by Sen. Chloe Maxmin, D-Nobleboro, at her request after the Regional School Unit 12 Board of Directors released a special resolution opposing the bill.
The legislation, L.D. 1789, “An Act to Modernize Funding of Publicly Funded Tuition Students Attending Career and Technical Education Programs,” would have required districts that send students to publicly funded tuition schools to pay full tuition for students who attend career technical education programs like Capital Area Technical Center or Bath Regional Career and Technical Center.
During a committee work session for the bill on Feb. 15, Maxmin, who represents District 13, requested that the committee not move forward with the bill.
“I am asking the committee to kill the bill,” Maxmin said. “I do feel disappointed in this one. There’s clearly a problem here … I’ve been working really closely with the academies and … I feel like this is a loss for the democratic process and figuring out how to support these students who want to go to CTE centers.”
Currently, tuition districts like RSU 12 and AOS 93 can only be charged two-thirds of the state-determined maximum tuition, around $12,000, per student attending a CTE program. The cost of CTE is subsidized by the state with approximately 5% of the general purpose aid for all Maine schools.
In her testimony to the education and cultural affairs committee on Feb. 10, Maxmin, a Lincoln Academy alumna, said the current tuition structure for CTE students unfairly impacts town academies like Lincoln Academy and Erskine Academy, where most of the student population is publicly funded by tuition.
“For schools like Lincoln Academy, this is costing them almost an extra $250,000 a year. Loss of this one-third hurts all the students, not just those attending CTEs, as it takes money out of pocket from the town academies that otherwise could go towards in-school services,” Maxmin said.
At a meeting on Feb. 10, the RSU 12 Board of Directors unanimously voted to send a letter to the Maine Legislature expressing its opposition to the bill.
In the resolution, the board argued that the additional one-third tuition would be a redundant expense, uniquely felt by districts without high schools, as the reduction in general purpose aid for the district is already reflected in a roughly half-mil increase in the district’s towns’ mil rates.
“It defies logic to pay full tuition to a school for a student who only attends that high school half-time, to impose duplicate cost onto tuition district school taxpayers, and to put those taxpayers into a situation where they pay a high price for their students to access a technical school education,” the resolution reads.
RSU 12 includes seven towns – Alna, Chelsea, Palermo, Somerville, Westport Island, Whitefield, and Windsor. Among the seven towns are four elementary schools – Chelsea Elementary School, Palermo Consolidated School, Whitefield Elementary School, and Windsor Elementary School.
While much of the testimony in opposition to the bill came from RSU 12 representatives and board members, the bill would have also impacted AOS 93.
AOS 93 includes seven towns – Bremen, Bristol, Damariscotta, Jefferson, Newcastle, Nobleboro, and South Bristol. Among the seven towns are five elementary schools – Bristol Consolidated School, Great Salt Bay Community School, Jefferson Village School, Nobleboro Central School, and South Bristol School.
In an email sent Feb. 12, AOS 93 Superintendent Craig Jurgensen said that he shared an estimate that the legislation could cost the system an additional $188,000 and that none of the system’s five school committees took up the bill for discussion.
Jurgensen added that while he believes career and technical education is extremely valuable, he was not satisfied with the process for developing the legislation.
“I do not see a benefit to AOS 93 students in this legislation. If there is a need to change the funding structure, it should be done through looking at CTE programming needs and identifying the goals and outcomes of such changes for students first. If this was done, it did not include requests or input from our board members,” Jurgensen said.
The bill had the support of representatives from Lincoln Academy and Erskine Academy, two tuition-receiving schools with high school students from RSU 12. Other leaders from town academies testified in favor of the bill, as well.
Lincoln Academy Head of School Jeffrey Burroughs said including Lincoln Academy in the development of a cost-sharing agreement with CTE programs would better enable the school’s leaders to advocate for students and the education they receive outside of the academy’s campus.
“The effect of L.D. 1789 is to place our schools into direct partnership with the communities we serve and to allow for our schools to be more responsive to community needs and more effective at helping to support and participate in the essential role of career and technical education in our communities and regions across the state of Maine,” he said.
Burroughs added that Lincoln Academy would support CTE to the best of the institution’s ability, regardless of the bill’s fate.
In a phone interview Feb. 15, Howard Tuttle, RSU 12 superintendent, said that he served on a committee in the fall of 2021 to help address some school’s concerns regarding the funding structure for CTE and that finding common ground with those that believe publicly-funded tuition schools should receive full tuition for CTE students would be “challenging.”
“Certainly, we’re open to discussions,” he said.
Tuttle presented a preliminary education budget to the board of directors at its meeting on Feb. 10 projecting an 8.35% or $2,044,159 increase to $26,522,000 for the 2022-2023 fiscal year. On Feb. 15, the superintendent confirmed that the projected budget will drop substantially with the failure of L.D. 1789.
