BANGOR ? Though the state will no longer fund a literacy intervention program for first-graders, two-thirds of the 99 school systems that participate in Reading Recovery say they will continue to provide it, the Maine Department of Education said Thursday.

While in the past schools have relied on the state to pay for Reading Recovery, under the new education funding formula, Essential Programs and Services, there is no specific allocation for the program. Instead, superintendents have been asked by the Maine Department of Education to pay for the state’s 13 teacher-leaders who train the Reading Recovery teachers and who provide the professional development, which is a key component of the 12-20 week program. The department will continue to pay $120,000 for the professional development and research provided by the University of Maine, which directs the program.

In an April 29 letter to superintendents, Commissioner of Education Susan Gendron asked schools to pay $3,460 per Reading Recovery teacher to support the teacher-leaders. She suggested using a variety of funding sources including the federal Individual with Disabilities Education Act or the No Child Left Behind Act, as well as a special allocation for younger students under Essential Programs and Services. Superintendents were asked to notify the department by last Friday as to how they planned to pay for the teacher-leaders.

David Stockford of the Maine Department of Education said Thursday that a majority of the school systems that rely on Reading Recovery to help low-achieving youngsters improve their reading and writing skills have indicated they would continue. He said he anticipated that more will sign on.

Stockford said the former $942,000 state appropriation for Reading Recovery instead will be used to “meet current services from which all schools throughout the state benefit.”

Slightly under half of the first grades in the state use the 25-year-old, scientifically based, short-term program. In 2003-2004, there were 297 Reading Recovery teachers who worked with teacher-leaders at 12 teacher training sites serving 206 schools and almost 2,400 pupils, according to state education officials.

Meanwhile, in a split vote, the Legislature’s Education and Cultural Affairs Committee on Wednesday approved a bill that calls for providing some relief to schools that want to continue providing Reading Recovery. Sponsored by Rep. Tom Saviello, D-Wilton, the bill calls for restoring $500,000 to the state budget to help pay for the teacher-leaders. But Sen. Elizabeth Mitchell, co-chair of the education committee, said Thursday that sending the bill on to the Appropriations Committee may “be raising hopes falsely.

“This bill has a price tag that there’s no money for,” said the Vassalboro Democrat, who opposed the legislation on two counts. Schools have a number of options they can use to participate in Reading Recovery if they want to, she pointed out. Also, paying for education already has “stretched the state budget beyond our ability ? so to come along and ask for another $500,000 isn’t something I can support.”

Superintendent Robert Ervin said Bangor was “on the fence” about whether to spend $35,000 to have its 10 Reading Recovery teachers continue with the program. He said he wants to support the program, but isn’t sure why the state isn’t paying for it. “Support for Reading Recovery teacher-leaders is a state level responsibility, not a local responsibility,” he said.

Other school systems are going ahead although they acknowledged the financial burden involved. The Old Town school system is “doing the equivalent of digging it out of the sofa cushions ? a little here, a little there,” said Sharon Greaney, a Reading Recovery teacher-leader who serves 36 teachers in 11 school systems. On average, one teacher-leader serves about 25 teachers.

In Dover-Foxcroft, Marcia Nye Boody, principal of Morton Avenue Elementary School and Monson Elementary School, said the system will be able to send only one of its eight Reading Recovery teachers for professional development. “This can’t be funded locally. There isn’t enough money to go around as it is,” said Boody, a former Reading Recovery teacher-leader.

Without teacher-leaders, Reading Recovery will be severely impaired and students will lose out, said Mary Rosser, of the University of Maine, who trains teacher-leaders. Teacher-leaders are critical to the Reading Recovery infrastructure because they provide the professional development sessions in which individual Reading Recovery teachers are mandated to participate each year and because they offer support to teachers and travel to schools to work with literacy teams, administrators and other staff.

When teachers have no access to teacher-leaders, “they feel abandoned. They have no one to support them in work that is very specialized and detailed,” she said. “Because it begins to feel so hard, the expectations for student learning often drops.”

Rosser said she appreciated the department’s support of Reading Recovery at the university, adding that if the number of teacher-leaders was reduced, “we’d have to look at the capacity of those people to support students and teachers given the extent of travel they have to do.”

In a May 4 letter urging superintendents to support Reading Recovery, Robert Cobb, dean of the College of Education at the University of Maine, pointed out that last year 71 percent of the nearly 2,400 students who received Reading Recovery reached the average classroom reading level and didn’t need more expensive special education services.

During a public hearing this week on the bill supporting Reading Recovery, education committee members agreed that the program was valuable.

Rep. Emily Cain, D-Orono, said she voted for the legislation to give schools another year to adjust. Schools should “take a hard look at how they value the program and how they want to move forward with it under the commissioner’s new funding mechanism,” she said. “At some point we have to say that if the state is providing money for programs, it needs to be for all schools.”

But Rep. Jacqueline Norton, D-Bangor, said that she voted against the bill because she was “doing the fiscally responsible thing.” It’s a local decision to use Reading Recovery, Norton, co-chairwoman of the Education Committee, pointed out. In many cases, schools may share one Reading Recovery teacher so the cost per school would be $1,700.

“I believe it’s manageable for schools. I believe in most cases if Reading Recovery is important to them, they can find the funds,” she said.