Model of inequity in school funding

I feel compelled, as the co-author of the current school funding formula, to respond to the Jan. 29-30 Bangor Daily News editorial titled “EPS and Tax Relief.” Incidentally, in rural Maine the new, proposed formula is called the “Essential Service Center Program & Services” – E(SC)PS for short.

In the past four years the Bangor Daily News, through numerous editorials, has called for more money to be sent to property-poor areas of Maine in order to achieve statewide equity in the number of mills raised for education. Regrettably, in the most recent editorial, a 180-degree shift has occurred by endorsement of E(SC)PS – a model which (when combined with the governor’s decision to fund special education in one year, while achieving 55 percent in four years), puts an additional $20 million into the 85 richest districts which raise 5 to 6 mills, while almost abandoning the 157 communities that all raised over 13 mills for education last year.

This, unless fixed by the Legislature’s education committee by March 15, will leave Maine in the exact position that New Hampshire was in 10 years ago – one-third of the schools’ financing their whole school budget on a fraction of mill rate effort compared to what the rest of the state must raise to finance theirs. The property-poor New Hampshire schools went to court, won, and the courts have been supervising school funding ever since.

For this administration to:

1. deny the Joint Special Committee on Tax Reform school funding printout requests;

2. to have run other requested printouts and then refused to show them to the Joint Select Committee;

3. to have gone to coastal school districts and asked “How much funding will it take to make you happy?”;

4. to have placed wealthy communities in the same labor market with the poorer ones;

5. to have admitted that the 10 percent factor used in the isolated small school adjustment was unscientifically pulled out of thin air; and

6. to propose only reimbursing dead end road school bus runs one way, and to propose a transportation model which cuts hundreds of thousands of dollars from rural schools already requiring young students to walk one half a mile to the bus, potentially requiring more inexperienced teenage drivers to transport students to school.

All of the above makes me think this is an urban school model. I have never seen school funding done like this and I have worked on this issue as a legislator since 1986.

Your editorial states that E(SC)PS is grounded in equity. Nothing could be farther from the truth. When the Education Committee holds its public hearing on E(SC)PS as a result of the bipartisan Joint Order passed, rural Maine will finally have a chance to speak. This urban model, combined with an incorrect special education decision will lay a $20 million “hit” on rural Maine – an area of the state whose economy is struggling the most.

The number of mills raised in each community has been the primary measure of equity used in school funding formula in the United States. That is why state Rep. David Trahan has introduced a bill to reform E(SC)PS to do that very thing in Maine.

Yes, E(SC)PS stands for inequity and not equity.

John Nutting, D-Leeds, represents Senate District 17.