FARMINGTON – Concerned parents, teachers, town and state officials were on hand Tuesday evening, for the first presentation of a proposed budget for the Mt. Blue Regional School District.
The proposed cuts are deep ones, attempting to cover a massive, $1.62 million loss of state subsidy. The proposed 2010-2011 budget, which features 12 teaching position cuts as well as cuts within the district’s administration and support staff, stands currently at $22,118,696, a decrease of $1,535,595, or 6.5 percent, from the current fiscal year. Despite that significant cut, the budget’s local assessment would need to rise by $184,238 to cover the loss of subsidy, a 2 percent increase.
“The enormity of the reductions this year,” Superintendent Michael Cormier warned the school board, “is so much greater than anything this district has dealt with before.”
Among the most significant of the cuts are 12 teaching positions, including classroom teaching positions at Academy Hill School, Cape Cod Hill School and Cascade Brook School. The other 10 positions include the Chinese language teacher, who divides his time at Mt. Blue High School and Mt. Blue Middle School, a science teaching position, half a math teaching position, half a business education teaching position and half a Family & Consumer Science teaching position, all at the high school.
At the middle school, the proposed budget calls for eliminating half a health teaching position, which had been reduced from a full-time position two years ago, a general music teaching position and a physical education teaching position.
At the elementary school level, the budget calls for the reduction of a classroom teaching position at AHS, CCHS and CBS, with that decision, Cormier said, being related to reductions in student population. Two foreign language teaching positions at the elementary school level would be cut, ending the district’s elementary program and making the first foreign languages available to students at MBMS. This would end a process that began years earlier, when the board voted to eliminate elementary school-level French.
Half of an elementary school-level strings teaching position would also be cut.
The budget is dependent on a wage freeze, which would need to be approved by three unions, representing the administration, teachers and support staff, before being enacted. Cormier said Tuesday that the administration’s union had already agreed to the freeze, while the teachers’ union and support staff’s union were awaiting a full list of the proposed reductions prior to any sort of negotiation or decision. That freeze is expected to save the district $200,000 if it is approved, savings which have been calculated into the preliminary budget.
At Foster Regional Applied Technology Center, half a drafting teaching position would be eliminated.
Other reductions are also being considered. Two librarian positions, both soon to be vacant due to retirements, would not be filled under the proposed budget, with two Library Tech III being hired instead. Cormier said that the plan would be to have a librarian cover the high school and middle school, while another one covered all of the elementary schools. Those librarians would be assisted in coverage by the techs.
Freshman sports, football and basketball, would be effectively cut by the proposed budget, which eliminates the fees associated with running the two remaining programs in the first-year athletic program. MBMS cross country would not be funded.
All study hall monitor positions would be cut, as would a Learning Lab tech position at the high school. Teachers would be asked to move from the current, daily 80-minute prep period to a schedule of alternating “80-minute prep period” days and “40-minute prep period” days. On days with shorter prep periods, teachers would be asked to either participate in learning labs and monitor study halls. That change would require agreement from the teacher’s association, as it is a contractual issue.
Reductions to supply budgets would include slashing general supplies by 50 percent, reducing textbook funds by $30,000, reducing the budget for supplies associated with world languages and reducing the music department supply budget, along with a 40 percent reduction in library-related supplies.
“This is doable for a year or two,” Cormier said of the supply reductions, “can’t sustain that forever.”
Stipends to several co-curricular clubs would be eliminated, including the ones paying for the MBHS newspaper adviser, the ecology club, the musical director at the high school (that position wouldn’t be utilized in the next school year anyway, as musicals are held every other year), the Skills USA club and Health Occupations Students of America at FRATC, and the MBMS student council.
Support staff positions eliminated would include the remaining two technology integrators at the K-8 level, 1.5 secretarial positions, half on the Assistant Special Education Director’s position (a cut made earlier this year) and 1.5 custodial positions.
The shuttle bus would go from four days of operation a week to two.
“This is going to impact the quality of education we can offer to children,” Cormier said. He went on to note that the administration’s strategy had been to try and maintain core positions, what he termed as the district’s “skeleton,” so that the district could look to reestablish some lost programs when economic conditions rebound.
The subsidy reduction, which struck every district in the state, hit Mt. Blue Regional School District particularly hard, in part due to skyrocketing valuation numbers, up 8.9 percent from the previous year, and falling enrollment numbers, down 2 percent from the previous year.
Rep. Tom Saviello (R – Wilton), Rep. Lance Harvell (R – Farmington) and Sen. Walter Gooley (R – Farmington) were also in attendance, each briefly addressing the audience. Saviello warned those in attendance that next year would be worse.
“I need to caution you,” he said, “next year scares me.”
American Reinvestment and Recovery Act funding, federal stimulus money used by the state to offset cuts, will be gone next year. Without it in 2010-2011, Cormier noted, the $1.62 million projected loss of subsidy would have jumped to $2.2 million.
The school board will meet two days a week, for at least the next two weeks. They will meet on Tuesday, April 6 and April 13, at 6 p.m. at the MBMS cafeteria, and on Thursday, April 8 and April 15, at 7 p.m. Public comment will first be taken for the classroom cuts, with a public presentation on each proposed cut being given by up to three people.
At some point, people are going to have to realize that inflation is a fact of life for government too. Things cost more, therefore the need for revenue is greater. The Reagan era “solution” of tax freezes or cuts must end or Maine must be willing to sacrifice our most valuable asset – kids – for a new four wheeler or a vacation to Europe depending on which end of the economic spectrum you’re on.
We’ve squeezed the dollar about as much as it will squeeze with this governor. And property tax owners can no longer pick up the slack so Augusta and Washington can look good. That little political game can end.
Yes- some things are better done by government. They are known as shared responsibilities and include education. Either our kids are more important than our toys or they aren’t.
If you feel a tax cut or freeze is more important than good schools and decent roads lets consider privatizing all services and simply eliminate government and taxes.
What was the amount of tax increase for the proposed rebuilding of the Mt. Blue High? Maybe we should have used those funds to take care of this budget issue. Maybe we should cut a few of the state run jobs instead of selling our children’s future down the drain.
These cuts are horrible, with all of the cuts being made the education of students will diminished. The class sizes will increase in all schools and this limits the interaction that students can have with the teachers. This is definitely a problem in every school but particularly in elementary schools where students are highly teachable and need closer relationships. It is sad that the strings in third grade is getting cut because this is where students can get the love of music. I started violin then and I have stuck with it. I think that this opportunity helped make me the student I am today. I am very disappointed and worried for the younger student s because due to the budget cuts they will not get the education they deserve.
The majority of the cost of running a government run union controlled school is payroll. Union contracts cripple a school from making the hard choices that need to be made to run an efficient, effective, and achieving school. Why don’t you deal with that before trying to squeeze more money out of taxpayers?
What is that old Dire Straits song, “Money for Nothing”. This budget proposal is very sad. The loss of jobs and the loss of educational experiences for the students of RSD #9 will be hard to recover from. I don’t know of many community members who could be in favor of such far reaching cuts. However, the real question is, are we willing to put our money where our mouths are, ore do we want our “Education for Nothing”. For far to long, taxpayers have wanted something for nothing. That just doesn’t work in a society with inflation. For far to long, State Governor’s have run on the motto, “no new taxes”. I love living in Maine and the fact that we are not Boston or New York and we still have that community feeling. However, there is a cost to living in Maine…We have less people. It only makes sense to me that if you have less people paying for the same services other bigger states have, we are going to have to pay more. I am sure someone out there has some economic/mathematical formula that shows this isn’t the case, but in my simplistic dollar for dollar thinking, it does. So, the bottom line is, if we want a great education for the kids of RSD #9, we are going to have to pay for it ourselves, and I for one am willing to pay that cost.
Cost next year, or 5 years from now, are going to be far and away different than any time before, and that’s where the budget gets stuck. Is it an electronic library, of a physical space? Is it an electronic tablet with memory for books and course curriculum, or a twenty-pound book sack? Why haven’t the schools changed to become as efficient and as practical as the age we live?
Please be aware that everyone, whatever his or her position, seems much more credible when using a real name than when writing anonymously, especially on an issue like this one with so very much local impact.
I would like to invite Mark to come to my classroom with 12 hours notice — just so I can tidy up and sign you in with the office, of course — and see the sorts of efficiencies that are going on since the implementation of the one-to-one laptop program at MBHS. Better yet, I’d like him to see what many of my colleagues are doing in their classrooms far exceeding my efforts.
I’d also direct him to the American Library Association and take a look at the data collected through independent research on how school libraries — physical spaces operated by professionally certified librarians — impact student achievement in measures ranging from traditional standardized assessment tests (such as SATs) to non-traditional standards-based assessments.
And remember, as well, that digital media requires management and professionals to manage, troubleshoot, fix, acquire, and remove. Even the most efficient and practical education has a cost. It’s heartening to see so many of the above individuals recognizing this.
Dan wrote: “Even the most efficient and practical education has a cost. It’s heartening to see so many of the above individuals recognizing this.”
I had a cost saving measure put in place once, and I was surprised to find that the entire school could agree, as it was our way of celebrating “Earth Day.” The student body knew we had to do something and act on it. We sorted through conservation measures, from cleaning up the campus, to closing down the school cafeteria for a day. It saved on energy and freed up the kitchen crew to do a scrub down.