Feb. 10 is shaping up to be a showdown between the Commissioner of Education and the Joint Standing Committee on Education and Cultural Affairs.
The dissatisfaction between the appointed commissioner and the elected lawmakers speaks to the growing political rift between those intent on consolidating all schools in Maine under new, regional umbrellas and those who believe a one-size-fits-all approach does not necessarily create state educational funding equilibrium or educational excellence.
In a wave of mounting tensions, the Dept. of Education this week released its preliminary 2010-2011 funding levels for Essential Programs and Services and General State Aid to education. It did so a month ahead of schedule. Proposed funding levels are $92 million less than state funding in 2009-2010. That reality – as well as knowledge that $59 million federal education allocations through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act used to stabilize falling state share of education costs will diminish next year – has municipalities reconfiguring school budgets.
Along with the EPS funding levels, however, the Dept. of Education removed some $5.9 million in penalties from schools that have yet to comply with the 2007 school consolidation law and redistributed the funds to schools that had consolidated – or were already large enough to avoid consolidation.
Although the state funding levels are preliminary and subject to legislative approval, the redistributions surprised and enraged some members of the Joint Standing Committee on Education and Cultural Affairs.
“I can see gigantic printout politics based on whether you were a compliant unit,” Rep. Ed Finch (D-Fairfield,) and a member of the education committee said Monday. He could envision lawmakers saying, “I don’t want my district to lose any of that penalty money.”
Rep. Finch was quoted by the nonprofit Maine School Management Association (MSMA), which has been issuing legislative updates to school districts throughout the state.
The consolidation law is silent on penalty funds, according to Senator Carol Weston (R – Waldo), who on Tuesday questioned the penalties and the timing of the early distribution of EPS funding figures, just one week before the committee was set to take its final vote on key bills associated with the 2005 school consolidation law.
Redistributing penalty monies in 2010-2011 also likely came as a shock to superintendents of newly organized Regional School Units, who believed they would receive all the penalty funds to help defer costs of consolidation. That did not happen and the funds were, at least on paper, re-distributed to all consolidated schools, even those districts that were not subject to reorganization under the law.
“Yesterday’s announcement regarding the $5.9 million in penalties shocked many on the education committee,” committee co-chair Senator Justin Alfond (D, Portland) said. “The committee’s concerns revolve around the timing of this decision, the Dept. of Education’s decision making process, and whether this is equitable for our students. Coupled with the General Purpose Aid to Education cuts, essentially this is a double whammy for districts that didn’t consolidate.
“This decision is going to frustrate many legislators and communities across the state,” he said.
That frustration is apt to be vetted in the five bills now pending in the legislature. Each pertains to the 2007 consolidation law and shows cracks in the law.
Commissioner of Education Susan Gendron is not interested in viewing the bills.
In a sternly worded letter to the Joint Standing Committee on Education and Cultural Affairs, Gendron last week warned the committee any effort to make changes to the bill would slow progress.
“It is essentially saying to the 123 communities that are non-conforming, ‘shut up and comply,'” Rep. Peter Johnson, (R-Greenville) said during a committee meeting recorded by MSMA.
“It’s saying what is needed is for us to get out of the way and let the law work,” he said. “I think that’s the last thing we should do.”
In her letter Gendron pointed to those districts that had consolidated as examples where new programs and reduced costs are flourishing.
That argument does not carry weight with all legislators, who believe consolidation can equal less state education subsidy than already offered, particularly for more rural schools or those schools already organized in units other than those desired by the law.
L.D. 1734 “An Act To Require the Department of Education To Calculate Subsidy on the Basis of Membership in a Regional School Unit or an Alternative Organizational Structure and as if the School Administrative Unit Had Not Reorganized as of 2009” is an emergency bill sponsored by Representative Andrew O’Brien (D, Lincolnville).
Rep. O’Brien, is one whose constituents argue the consolidation law, if applied in the five-town districts of Camden, Rockport, Lincolnville, Hope and Appleton – and the elementary and middle school School Union 69 serving Lincolnville, Hope and Appleton from a central office – would lessen state school subsidy.
“My goal is to prevent the loss of subsidy, which will occur if Union 69 (Hope, Appleton on Lincolnville) and the Five Towns comply with reorganization,” Rep. O’Brien said.
O’Brien said these districts stand to lose more if they reorganize under the current consolidation mandate than if they decide to simply take the penalties.
Commissioner Gendron and her staff did not offer testimony during the Jan. 25 public hearing on the five bills pertaining to the consolidation law.
“What is needed now is for us to get out of the way and let the law work,” Gendron concluded in her letter to the committee.
“We aren’t going to stand aside,” Senator Carol Weston (R., Waldo), said.
Weston’s term expires this year; however, she recalls both the creation of the Essential Programs and Services funding formula and the warnings that came with it.
Funded at 100 percent, the program worked well for all schools and helped ensure a fundamental base for eight learning standards that comply with the Maine State Learning Result benchmarks, she said.
Funded less than 100 percent, and the smaller and more geographically rural districts would suffer higher burdens of education costs.
Sen. Weston said while all legislators have a responsibility to balance the budget, they “have a larger and greater responsibility, as well.”
She touted bipartisanship on the education committee and noted discontent that the EPS formula was increasingly being used as a spending cap.
While EPS funds help support core programs, schools that spend above EPS do so to cover costs associated with everything from Advanced Placement Programs to sports. These decisions are within individual districts and have little bearing on how the state assesses the quality of core education afforded by EPS, she said.
The SPO released its annual assessment of L.D. 1, the 2005 law designed to increase the state share of education costs, reduce property tax burdens, and reduce government spending at all levels. More recently the law has become the battle cry for reducing growth in all levels of government and consolidating programs and school districts.
The SPO gave municipalities a passing grade – touting overall reductions in spending levels – in its 2009 assessment, but panned local spending on education.
Of note, the report did not analyze trends in state aid to education, a key component of the LD 1, and instead focused on Essential Programs and Services.
LD 1 was an effort to ensure the state funded General Purpose Aid to education by 55 percent. The state, with the release of 2010-2011 preliminary funding numbers, funds just 43 percent of education costs. That number rises to 46 percent with the inclusion of federal funds.
Either way, LD 1’s goal of funding 55 percent of education costs with state dollars is falling behind expectations.
The Maine School Management Association, a nonprofit organization, believes Essential Programs and Services, once designed as a funding model, was hijacked by LD 1 in 2005 to become a spending cap. Whereas LD 1 set allowed growth for spending in municipalities and state government, the cap set by LD 1 froze education spending by using only the minimal guidelines afforded in EPS.
According to MSMA, a majority of school districts were over EPS when the cap was adopted in 2005. The trend continues, with 80 percent of the state’s schools funding above EPS in 2007, and 82 percent funding education above in 2008.
The goal of the school consolidation law was to reduce the state’s 290 school districts to 80 by July 2009; 214 districts remain. Eighty districts reconfigured to create 27 new regional districts, yet 123 other districts rejected consolidation.
Another 62 districts were exempt from the law.
The education committee is working on a carry-over bill from 2009, L.D. 570, An Act To Improve the Laws Governing the Consolidation of School Administrative Units, and will consider more than a dozen proposed changes this week, with a plan to vote a final bill on Feb. 10.
EPS formula
Essential Programs and Services is a funding formula passed by the legislature in 2003 to ensure minimum local program funding for career preparation, English, health and physical education, mathematics, science and technology, modern and classical languages and history. Advanced placement programs, lunch and some sports and extra-curricular activities are not calculated in EPS funding.
The EPS funding helps determine a per-pupil rate for providing a basic education, yet the per-pupil rate differs by district. For instance, a district with more faculty with advanced degrees is offered a higher EPS rate than those schools with faculty holding minimum teaching certification.
