PUBLIC HEARING TESTIMONY
IN OPPOSITION TO
LD 1298: An Act To Adjust the Special Education Funding for Minimum Subsidy Receivers, Rep. Dostie;
...adjusts the subsidy for special education for those school administrative units that are minimum receivers of state subsidy by reducing the transition percentage for special education costs to 25%.
Monday, April 13, 2009
Senator Alfond, Representative Sutherland, distinguished members of the Joint Standing Committee on Education and Cultural Affairs:
My name is Brian Hubbell. I am the chair of the Mount Desert Island Regional School System, an Alternative Organization Structure constituted of eight municipalities of Bar Harbor, Cranberry Isles, Frenchboro, Mount Desert, Southwest Harbor, Tremont, Swan's Island, Trenton, and the four-town CSD that administers the Mount Desert Island Regional High School.
As I am unable to attend today's public hearing in person, I would like instead to offer this written testimony in opposition to LD 1298: An Act To Adjust the Special Education Funding for Minimum Subsidy Receivers
- Every debate about school funding will pivot on disagreements about the relative validity of the components of income and property wealth to measure a community's ability to support its schools. In opposing this bill, I do not mean to widen any fronts in inter-regional fighting about who is wealthy enough to absorb additional cuts in state and federal funding. Times are difficult and schools in all regions are facing hard choices.
- By formula, Maine's minimum receivers of GPA are schools where the ratio of property value to the number of students is high. Because of this, minimum receivers are frequently rural areas with low year-round populations and seasonal fluctuations in employment.
- What counts to year-round residents is NOT the value of the median property, but what proportion of their income is paid out in real dollars to support schools -- both through their sales and income taxes which fund GPA and through the property taxes that make up the difference of what isn't returned through GPA.
- GPA estimates distributed to this Committee on 3/26 show the mean distribution of GPA at $4560 per pupil.
- In comparison, per-capita incomes and subsidy in some of these minimum receiving regions:
|
|
per-capita
income
|
per-pupil
subsidy
|
per-pupil
local share
|
ratio of per-pupil local share
to per-capita income
|
Bar Harbor
|
$23,730 |
$678 |
$12,993
|
55%
|
Greenville
|
$16,638 |
$372 |
$11,881
|
71%
|
Jonesport
|
$14,135 |
$1,305 |
$7,642
|
54%
|
Rangeley
|
$19,052
|
$302
|
$11,701
|
61%
|
- ...and contrasted with the higher income regions:
|
|
per-capita
income
|
per-pupil
subsidy
|
per-pupil
local share |
ratio of per-pupil local share
to per-capita income |
| Cumberland |
$33,644 |
$5,124 |
$5,912
|
18%
|
Falmouth
|
$36,716 |
$2,602 |
$8,805
|
24%
|
Scarborough
|
$26,321
|
$1,725
|
$7,124
|
27%
|
Topsham
|
$21,135
|
$5,508
|
$6,595
|
31%
|
Yarmouth
|
$34,317
|
$1,555
|
$10,862
|
32%
|
- With layoffs from the major employers of Hinckley Yachts and the Jackson Labs, with home building at a standstill, and with the lobster market utterly uncertain, MDI is suffering as much as all other areas of the state.
- Moreover, distributing the ARRA stimulus funds through EPS precludes the substantial part of any federal benefit from reaching MDI's schools and those of other minimum receivers.
- The state has already cut educational aid below its commitments to minimum receivers. The original promise to cover 100% of all units' actual costs of special education has repeatedly been scaled back: first to 84%, then to 50%, then this most recent session proposed 45%. Now this bill proposes 25%.
- Such disproportionate cuts in GPA are inequitable.
