Bills to revamp school funding pitched in Augusta

AUGUSTA – The school funding formula should be changed so districts receive more state money for instruction than for administration, a southern Maine legislator said Monday.

LD 344, which would limit the amount of the state subsidy allocated to school districts for administrators during tight financial times, was sponsored by Rep. Thomas Murphy, R-Kennebunk. It was one of four education funding bills to receive a public hearing before the Education and Cultural Affairs Committee.

Each bill, sponsored by a southern Maine lawmaker, would amend the funding formula, which currently subsidizes schools based on property valuation and average income.

The sponsors complained the current formula is flawed for a number of reasons, including its equating property valuation with ability to pay.

They also said school districts need a mechanism to allow a “phased in” approach so large subsidy losses can be spread over a few years.

Other school funding bills discussed were:

. LD 850, sponsored by Rep. Terrence McKenney, R-Cumberland, which would base each district’s subsidy solely on the number of students in a district.

. LD 744, sponsored by Rep. David Lemoine, D-Old Orchard Beach, which proposes basing property valuation factors used in the school funding formula on five-year averages instead of year-to-year data.

. LD 828, sponsored by Rep. Kevin Glynn, R-South Portland, which would limit the loss of state subsidy to a school system to 90 percent annually.

Under Murphy’s bill, each school district would get the same amount of money, but “it would be slanted slightly more towards the instructional side” and would work to keep administrative costs down because residents would have to raise more money from the property tax to fund those expenses.

“Local policy always follows the dollars,” Murphy said. “When resources are real tight, our money ought to be going to directly support students, not administration.”

He suggested that principals could teach classes so “part of [their] salary would fall on the instructional side for reimbursement instead of the administrative side.”

But Barbara Eretzian, a superintendent in Auburn and president of the Maine School Superintendents Association, was one of a number of people who opposed Murphy’s proposal. She pointed out that Maine currently is second in the nation in the amount of education costs spent per pupil annually on instruction.

In addition, the bill could have “unintended messages” by making school boards feel as though “they’re not doing a good job at looking at expenditures” and by making administrators feel as though they’re “not important to the classroom.”

Richard Tory, first vice president of the Maine School Boards Association, said the bill “assumes there are lots of underworked administrators hanging around collecting paychecks and that they’re separate from the education of students.”

Sen. Betty Lou Mitchell, R-Etna, said the current emphasis on schools regionalizing and consolidating means “more responsibility for principals and superintendents.” How would they have time to teach when they’re trying to “manage a business?” she asked.

Changing the funding formula is an exercise in futility, according to Leonard Ney, superintendent in SAD 64 (Corinth area). Since there’s no new money going into the formula under Gov. John Baldacci’s budget plan, “any bills will only redistribute the poverty that exists in the state,” he said.

Ney said residents who are losing homes because their property valuations are too high should be able to get relief through the state’s low income tax circuit breaker. If it were better funded and crafted differently, it would target individuals in need rather than everybody, he said.

The Department of Education opposed three of the proposals. Although Suzan Cameron, school finance supervisor, said the department was neither for nor against Glynn’s bill, there were several concerns. For one thing, the bill’s cushion provision could reward schools “with low tax efforts for education,” she said.