AUGUSTA — Despite widespread support, prospects are still not certain that the Maine Legislature will agree to spend more than $3 million so the Maine School of Science and Mathematics in Limestone can open in September.

Partly because the Legislature has been preoccupied with such issues as the constitutionality of Gov. Angus S. King’s job-cut plan, funding for the Limestone school has been put on the back burner.

King made funding for the school an issue when he refused to include any money for the school for outstanding high school students in science and math in his two-year budget.

King was not convinced the school that was created by former Gov. John R. McKernan and the last session of the Legislature was a good idea. But he did say he wouldn’t veto a budget with magnet school funds in it if lawmakers could find someplace else to cut the budget.

Because of demands on the budget from many different quarters, the question of financing the new school in Limestone probably won’t be decided until late in this session. That could be late June or even early July.

“It will still be early enough for the school officials,” said Rep. James Donnelly, R-Presque Isle, an ardent supporter of the school. “I think we will be able to find the money. I think it will happen. I think the school has strong support well beyond the bounds of Aroostook County.”

When King cut the program from his budget in January, he said he was saving the state $3.7 million. But magnet school trustees say they only need $3.1 million over the next two years. The school also has been able to attract a large amount of federal grant money.

“Naturally, I’m still very interested in seeing the magnet school funded,” Senate Majority Leader R. Leo Kieffer, R-Caribou, said Friday. “It’s a very hard time, especially when you have demands like the hospital tax.”

Kieffer said he also wants to provide full funding to the new York County Technical College in Wells, which King only wants partially funded in its first year.

“Those schools were created in the last session and funded by the Legislature,” said Kieffer. “I don’t think the governor should have the power to shut them down. I’m still very hopeful we can find the money to fund both of these schools.”

Kieffer predicts magnet school funding won’t be settled until the very end of the session.

“Realistically, I think it’s going to go right down to the wire,” he said. “There’s such a demand for money.”

Rep. George Kerr, D-Old Orchard Beach, House chairman of the Appropriations Committee, was less optimistic than his northern Maine colleagues about funding for the magnet school.

“We’re at a standstill on Appropriations because of the productivity task force,” he said. “I did support it in the past, but let’s see what the needs are. We haven’t had time to focus on it.”

Kerr thinks the Legislature ought to settle on a new school funding formula before it grants a $40 million increase in state aid to schools or considers paying $3.1 million for the magnet school.

“The magnet school will be an issue,” he said. “Democrats and Republicans alike are in favor of it.

Meanwhile, Rep. Hugh Morrison, D-Bangor, is sponsoring a bill to delay opening the Limestone school for two years, until Sept. 1, 1997. Because King already has deleted funding for the school from his budget, Morrison says he’ll ask the Education Committee to kill his bill, but he remains adamantly opposed to the magnet school.

A hearing on Morrison’s bill is scheduled for 1 p.m. Thursday, May 4, in Room 124, State House.

“I’ve been against it since the beginning. I just think it’s poor public policy,” Morrison said. “The public only will be allowed to send a blank check. There will be no local control whatsoever.”

Morrison said his postponement bill has received a great deal of quiet support from educators around the state.

Donnelly said Morrison was in “a slash-and-burn mood this session. He wants to do away with things.”

Donnelly and Morrison both serve on the Appropriations Committee.