AUGUSTA – Schools across Maine will be forced to ask property taxpayers for more money just to maintain the current level of programs because of the small increase in state aid being offered in the first year of Gov. John Baldacci’s proposed biennial budget, local school officials complained Tuesday.

Things would be even worse the second year because the budget includes a cut in general purpose aid to education, they said.

The $728 million plan for next year has a $3 million “cushion” to help schools that stand to lose a lot of money. But that isn’t enough to “meet the inflationary growth costs for operating the schools of this state,” Leonard Ney, chairman of the Maine School Superintendents Association’s funding committee, told two legislative committees.

Ney, who is superintendent in SAD 64 (Corinth area), was one of a number of educators worried that Baldacci’s recommended 1 percent funding increase for next year would result in schools having to cut positions.

“All the easy cuts have been made during the last two years,” he said, referring to delays in maintenance and purchasing equipment.

“The hard cuts are the people,” he told the Appropriations and Financial Affairs and the Education and Cultural Affairs committees.

In a reflection of the extraordinarily tough financial times, the proposed budget calls for a decrease in 2005 back to $725.8 million, which includes $5 million for a “cost savings incentive program” rewarding schools that show they can save money through consolidation and regionalization.

Last month Baldacci established a seven-member task force to examine ways that public education could become more efficient. The group is charged with recommending by next January ways for “improving efficiency and equity in the use of K-12 education resources in Maine.”

Commenting on the decreased amount in the budget’s second year, Rep. Glenn Cummings, D-Portland and House chairman of the education committee, said the “normal flow of the biennium budget is at least marginally upwards.”

But Education Commissioner J. Duke Albanese said in light of “revenue trends, economic changes and tough times, this is what [the governor] feels can be recommended.”

John Dirnbauer, superintendent in SAD 68 (Dover-Foxcroft area), told the group that his district stands to lose $385,000 under the plan. That could mean cutting six teaching positions and leaving a principal’s job unfilled.

The moves would “rip the heart out of programs that we worked so hard to build,” he said.

Educators had a number of suggestions. They urged legislators to use the $5 million allocated for the incentive program for a “hold harmless” provision that would guarantee no district would get less state subsidy.

And they begged for tax reform so there would be less reliance on property taxes to pay for education.

The state’s education organizations weren’t any happier.

Urging legislators to “make every effort to secure additional funding for GPA,” Rob Walker, president of the Maine Education Association, said more money is needed to put the new Learning Results into place. Many teachers are calling for a delay in the timetable.

“The passage of the budget as presented will likely result in the elimination of programs and elimination of positions in many, many school systems across the state,” said Dale Douglass, director of the Maine School Management Association.

Douglass said he also was concerned about the decrease in the second-year budget. “If there’s not enough in the first year to maintain the current level of programs and services, [a cut would mean] there certainly wouldn’t be enough in the second year,” he said.