School budget daze

By Mike Lange
Staff Writer

 By the time you read this, I will have covered my third school budget meeting and an equal number of public hearings on the same subject.

 I have an inch-thick pile of papers in my letter tray with enough figures to make an accountant’s eyes glaze over.

 SAD 4 and SAD 46 have a dual approval system where voters have their say in an open public forum, then go the polls later on to ratify the results. Or they may not.

 I never liked the concept, but it takes legislative action to change the format and few districts are willing to go through the trouble.

 Greenville residents approve their school and municipal budgets on the same night. I like that idea, even though spending over two hours in the school’s wooden theater seats can be painful.

 This has been a particularly nasty year for school budgets. In the average small town, 60 to 80 percent of your tax bill goes to support education.

 Then there’s the age-old question of enrollment versus expenses. Why does the cost of running the school system keep going up while enrollment is going down?

 SAD 4 has lost nearly 70 kids in the past three years. Greenville’s enrollment is hovering around 200 with an average senior class of 20 to 22.

 I wrestled with that question for years, considering that I’m in RSU 19 – the Newport area – and our budget has hit a staggering $23 million.

 But raw numbers don’t tell the complete story. It doesn’t matter whether we have 300 or 200 kids at Piscataquis Community Secondary School. It costs the same amount of money to heat the building, keep it clean, cut the lawn and plow the snow.

 Lay off teachers? It’s not that easy or advisable. You never know from one year to the next how many kids are coming into the district or leaving it. Each grade needs a teacher, no matter how big the class is.

 Then there are mandates and student testing standards change every five years or so. Yes, I know that the state is supposed to reimburse local districts for mandated programs. But in the real world, they don’t.

 Keep in mind that the state promised to fund local districts at 55 percent of their operational cost more than 20 years ago. It never happened.

 Cut down on administrative costs? Good luck with that. School superintendents are well-paid by community standards, but it’s a high-pressure position where they’re usually blamed for everything that goes wrong and rarely thanked when things are going smoothly.

 The state legislature wants to add another $50 million for additional aid to local school districts. I wish them luck. So far, they haven’t specified where the money is coming from. The term “robbing Peter to pay Paul” comes to mind.

 Basically, we need a complete overhaul of our educational system. Budgeting should be a simpler process. We need to have a predictable state funding formula. Teachers should be able to teach without dealing with mounds of paperwork.  

 It may not happen in my lifetime, but the sooner the better.

 Mike Lange is a staff writer with the Piscataquis Observer. His opinions are his own and don’t necessarily reflect those of this newspaper.