Nov. 21 is a day that will likely be reviled for months to come as school systems across the state adjust to a statewide $27,046,649 cut in spending between now and June 30, 2009.
On Nov. 21 the Maine Department of Education released a detailed list of cutbacks towns and cities can expect as a result of the emergency budget curtailment ordered Wednesday by Gov. John Baldacci.
The spreadsheet shows five-digit cuts in the majority of towns, with many reaching into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Portland will be hit the hardest in raw dollars with the loss of 12.3 percent of its state aid for education, which equates to $1.836 million. Smaller towns with smaller budgets are hit equally hard. Baileyville, for example, faces a loss of 28 percent of its state funding, which is 2.7 percent of its total budget. That 2.7 percent of total budget is the high-water mark, and many municipalities’ losses fall between 1.5 percent and 2.5 percent.
A document posted with the list of cuts, states the amounts may be adjusted in a supplemental budget that is expected to be among the Legislature’s first orders of business when it convenes in January. The document also states that municipalities will be exempt from the requirement that they spend a certain amount on education under the Essential Programs and Services (EPS) provisions. That means that the reductions can be achieved through spending cuts as opposed to asking taxpayers for more funding, if schools systems choose that route.
Dept. of Education Commissioner Susan Gendron stressed that unlike what has happened in the past, this $27 million cut in general purpose aid to education means an actual reduction of that amount in school spending. In the December 2007 curtailment, Baldacci covered a $20 million revenue shortfall by delaying the last general purpose aid payment of fiscal year 2007 from June to July.
Curtailment does not allow reducing budgeted payments to municipalities, so Baldacci will include the $27 million cut in a supplemental budget he’ll present to the Legislature in mid-December. Gendron hopes for quick approval so the cut can be spread over several payments to municipalities.
If the Legislature rejects the supplemental budget, municipalities will receive full payments through June, but the $27 million cut will fall in the 2010-2011 biennial spending plan, which begins July 1, 2009. That budget is already plagued with chasms of revenue shortfalls, which will result in cuts in services or tax increases, or both.
“We want to make sure school systems are able to take the appropriate steps,” Gendron told the Joint Standing Committee on Appropriations and Financial Affairs Thursday. “Most superintendents have already frozen their budgets.”
Asked after the meeting if there are any alternatives to more substantive cuts in education programs in the next biennium, Gendron said she’s hopeful that these tough times will force more regional collaboration and greater efficiencies.
“The next step is ‘what else can we do regionally?” said Gendron. “We really have to look at doing things different.”
In a letter Gendron sent to superintendents last week, Gendron struck an ominous tone.
“We must all be mindful that revenue projections are changing,” she wrote. “There will be a new projection (Nov. 21) and additional projections in the coming months – all of which could further affect funding for all of state government.”
(Statehouse News Service)
