RSU 68 officials weighing the impact of state budget on the district’s spending plan

By Stuart Hedstrom 
Staff Writer

    DOVER-FOXCROFT — With the biennial budget of Gov. Paul LePage including a proposed total of over $300 million in school and municipal cuts, community and school district officials across Maine are examining how such reductions will impact their local balance sheets. RSU 68 school board members and administrators discussed such possibilities during their March 5 meeting.

    School board member Chris Maas reported on a forum he attended the night before at Hampden Academy on the impact of school and municipal cuts for Piscataquis, Penobscot and Hancock counties. According to a bulletin from the forum, Maine school districts are facing $28 million in new retirement costs as the state shifts such expenses onto local school organizations and $12.6 million in cuts to general purpose aid for schools that began as a curtailment in the current fiscal year and will run through both years of the biennium.
    The bulletin also said on the municipal side the state’s communities are facing cuts of $200 million in revenue sharing, $280 million at full funding; $20 million in taxes due to making certain commercial and industrial equipment exempt; $7 million to general assistance; and $8 million in excise taxes.
    Maas provided copies of a spreadsheet showing cuts by school district in the three counties involved in the forum, which said RSU 68 could see a cost of over $76,000 more for teacher retirement and a K-12 education curtailment of nearly $58,000.
    The spreadsheet broke the budget figures down into an impact on property taxes for $100,000 parcels in the four RSU 68 communities, made up of increases of $192 for Charleston, $163 for Dover-Foxcroft, $90 for Monson and $59 for Sebec.
    RSU 68 Superintendent Alan Smith said the current version of the district’s budget for 2013-14 is up by about $369,000 from the current year to a figure of slightly more than $10 million. Smith said a portion of the increase could be cut, he provided a figure of up to $266,000 as a possibility, but said the rest of the $369,000 would need to remain.
    “I think it’s an opportunity for the finance committee to sit down now and have some more challenging discussions,” Smith said. “There are definitely some more ideas I want the finance committee to think about and talk about.” The superintendent said he has already had some preliminary discussions with the administrators on how they can try to handle possible budget reductions.
    Board member Sue Mackey Andrews said that the legislature is still working on the proposed budget and all of the figures presented have not been finalized, but it is helpful for the RSU 68 officials to look at what could happen.
    “The numbers we are working with are all preliminary figures, based on estimates of student populations and estimates of property values,” Smith said. He said RSU 68 is also awaiting finalized costs for the district’s contributions to adult ed and the Tri-Country Technical Center.
    Before the regular school board meeting a public forum concerning bullying was held. Board Chair Rick Johnston said at the start of the forum that district officials would take all comments under advisement and would likely meet at a later time to consider everything presented during the forum.
    Parent Amber Tibbetts said her 10-year-old son had a knife shown to him by another boy who had bullied her son. “School should be a safe place to come, not a hostile environment,” Tibbetts said, saying her son’s grades have since suffered.
    “I think you guys need a game plan because whatever you are doing it’s not working,” Cindy Schmand-Philbrook said in recounting her daughter’s experiences. “There are some wonderful teachers in this school and there are some who don’t want to get involved,” she added, saying she felt a longer meeting would be needed to address the situation.
    “I just think there needs to be consequences and something needs to be done,” Schmand-Philbrook said, mentioning having students who bully their peers being forced to sit in the office of the principal or vice principal, to write essays on their behavior or to perform community service as some ideas.
    “We really need to take a serious look at the policies and procedures in place at this school for bullying,” Ray Philbrook said. He said he felt disheartened after several meetings with administrators as “when I leave here I feel as though as I have been told by that individual what I want to hear” and then was not informed of any follow-up action.
    He said solutions to bullying such as having students being targeted use different bathrooms and hallways “is not the answer, and that is not the solution to bullying.” Philbrook added that he has heard of other parents who pulled their students out of SeDoMoCha in favor of homeschooling, and that parents in other districts say that RSU 68 has a reputation for having bullying take place in its schools.
    Grade 8 math teacher Ryan Nickerson spoke next, saying in the middle school’s advisory teams students and teaches began an anti-bias week where they talked about recognizing bullying and how to take some steps to prevent it.
    “Thursday we are starting our Battle of the Books,” he said. Nickerson said the shared reading experience done in the teams serves as a good community building exercise for the students. He said March 14 would be PI Day, another example of “things kids are excited about in school.”
    Gretchen Ziemer of Rape Response Services said her organization does work on policy and advocacy and she offered to help students, parents and school officials. “For folks who are being victimized it is really serious,” Ziemer said. “There are other resources and people you can talk to, both for the school and for parents.”
    Johnston concluded the forum by saying the school board has a sub-committee on policy, which would address such matters. He said the board does take bullying seriously and “this will probably not be our last forum that will occur.”
    In other business, Literacy Teacher Carolyn Clark reported on the finale to the elementary school’s third annual One Book, One School program — in which students and their families read the novel “Charlotte’s Web” together at home — on the evening of Feb. 13. “We had a little over 300 people participate and we ended up using most of the school,” Clark said, as activities included games in the gym, a meal in the cafeteria, crafts in the art room and more.
    “We had teachers from the elementary and middle school,” Clark said about the volunteers who helped carry out the Feb. 13 program. ‘It was really exciting, one student said it was ‘better than recess.’”
    “It’s a huge testament to (Clark) and all our staff,” Principal Julie Kimball said in thanking them for their efforts for the finale and in the month leading up to the program in which various activities during the school day promoted One Book, One School.
    “There’s a lot of excitement around that, and I can’t wait for next year,” Clark said. She said the school provided a copy of “Charlotte’s Web” for every family to keep, and thanked grade 3 teacher Jessica Dunton for helping to secure grant monies to fund audio versions of the book.
    Clark said on Saturday, March 30 sixth-grader Phoenix Eastman is scheduled to compete in the Maine State Spelling Bee at the University of Southern Maine in Portland. Eastman, the Piscataquis County representative, will be competing with other top spellers from across the state.
    Foxcroft Academy Head of School Arnold Shorey gave a report on the secondary school, saying many of the winter sports teams experienced great success. Shorey said the Foxcroft wrestling team won the Class C championship for the third year in a row, a first for the school, and the boys indoor track team had its best showing in program history by finishing second at the Class B championship with senior Don Boyer winning three individual state titles. He also said that senior Cameron Fadley earned Swimmer of the Meet honors at the Class B championship, and concluded his career in the pool with his name listed throughout the Foxcroft record book.
    Shorey said the Foxcroft boys basketball team entered the Class B East postseason as the 13th seed and won at No. 4 Oceanside in preliminary play and defeated fifth-seeded Caribou in the quarterfinals before losing to eventual Eastern Maine champion and top seed Medomak Valley in the semifinal round.
    “What we are most proud of is they received the sportsmanship award,” Shorey said, as the Foxcroft boys earned the honor for Class B East.
    Shorey said Foxcroft is looking to add a Jobs for Maine’s Graduates program, which should fit into the school’s budget. “We are facing some of the same budget restraints you are, especially the state retirement piece,” he said.