MDIschools.net

PUBLIC HEARING TESTIMONY

IN SUPPORT OF

LD 1414: An Act To Amend the Laws Governing Spending by School Administrative Units, Rep. Pingree

...allows a school administrative unit to exceed its maximum state and local spending target under the Essential Programs and Services Funding Act by the higher of 5% over the state and local spending target or an amount equal to the unit's previous year's budget multiplied by the rate of growth of the current year's maximum state and local spending target over the previous year's maximum state and local spending target without having to have the amount approved by referendum. This bill creates new referendum language for a school administrative unit that exceeds its maximum state and local spending target.

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, Swan's Island, Tremont, 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 support of LD 1414: An Act To Amend the Laws Governing Spending by School Administrative Units

• In the towns of this region, a substantial functional gap exists between the upper limits of the EPS funding model and the lower limits of what taxpayers expect in school programming. 
  
• Some of this results from a local mismatch with the regional labor market index.  And some has to do with the controversial relationships between EPS staffing ratios and school size. 
  
• But by far the largest cause was the inversion of EPS from its original purpose -- a threshold defining the minimum spending necessary, under average circumstances, to meet Maine's Learning Results -- to its present function as a de facto spending cap.
• Smaller school sizes and a long-held local commitment to maintaining educational parity with the schools in more densely populated parts of the state means MDI's school budgets substantially exceed EPS.
• As a result, the over-EPS budget articles are no longer taken seriously by voters at town meeting or at referendum.  Rather, as EPS-level spending is generally understood to force inconceivable cuts in staff and programming, the requirements for override votes are now cynically regarded merely as another example of meaningless, state-imposed boilerplate.
  
• Re-keying the approval requirements to percentage caps in real budget growth could re-coup some meaning and transparency in the budget approval process.