Most high school tuition rates to jump

AUGUSTA – The state Department of Education has set the dollar amounts school districts may charge for nonresidents to attend their high schools.

Three school systems in the state – Ellsworth, SAD 35 in South Berwick and Southern Aroostook Community School District – will see increases of more than $1,000 to their per-student tuition rates.

Just 11 of the 117 school systems with high schools will see decreases.

The figures can severely benefit or hurt the budgets of school systems, which must predict the figure when their spending plans are written in the spring.

Secondary tuition rates are the amounts communities without high schools pay to send their students to a school system with a high school.

To increase the rates, high schools must spend more money or have a decrease in the number of students, said Jim Rier, director of finance and operations for the state Education Department.

In the latest calculations, the largest decrease was for SAD 14, based in Danforth in Washington County. It lost $403 per student, compared with last year’s figure. The district can charge $6,801.73 for each out-of-district student it accepts.

With just 63 students at East Grand High School, the district is struggling to overcome the loss, Superintendent William Dobbins said Tuesday. Nearly 20 percent of the students, or approximately 13, pay tuition.

The decrease is compounded by the district’s prediction last spring that tuition rates would actually increase by $200, Dobbins said.

“We had a lot of [teacher] turnover and had a lot of teachers come in at base pay,” which decreased the operating costs, Dobbins said.

“When you improve the costs, you get hit by the state,” he said.

For schools like Ellsworth High School, with 56 percent of students nonresident and tuition paying, the increase is a windfall.

The statewide tuition average has increased by $738 over the last three years. In 2004-05, it was $6,880; in 2005-06, it was $7,205; and this year it was set at $7,618. Sixty-five of the school systems have tuition rates that equal the state average.

Most school systems had per-pupil costs that ranged between $6,000 and $8,000, but 11 had averages that totaled more than $10,000 and two exceeded $20,000. North Haven, with 24 students, has a per-pupil cost of $24,133 and Easton, with 49 students, is listed at $20,025.

The average per-pupil cost statewide this year is $7,255 and is based on a high school student population of 60,794. Total operating costs for 2005-06 were listed at $441,031,122.

What is upsetting some school administrators is that they where not given a reason for the substantial decreases, Superintendent Daniel Lee said Monday during a break in the Brewer School Committee meeting. Lee has asked for a meeting with Rier “to get a better understanding of how these tuition rates were calculated.”

“I’m not sure what was done,” Lee said.

Lester Young, Brewer School Department’s business manager, said Monday that he was not informed by the state that vocational expenditures were no longer part of the tuition rate formula.

Brewer School Department’s tuition rate dropped by $380 per student last year, which caused a $125,000 loss in revenues because the high school population is 51 percent nonresident.

School systems with high populations of tuition students are greatly affected by the state’s calculations, said David Walker, Old Town superintendent. “The tuition side is very difficult [to calculate] because of the variables,” he said. Tuition students make up half of the population at Old Town High School.

The decrease in the SAD 22 (Hampden area) tuition amount didn’t affect the budget because the school system doesn’t have any tuition students, Superintendent Rick Lyons Friday.

And Brewer has become wary of the issue.

“Because of all the unknowns and the overestimation last year, Brewer deliberately predicted no increase” for this year, Lee said. “Because we were caught off guard last year we felt it was important to go ahead and be very cautious about making any predictions.”

The state set Brewer’s tuition rate at $6,860 per student this year, an increase of $360, and Old Town’s rate at $6,931, an increase of $610.