Millinocket schools warn of possible layoffs

MILLINOCKET – Notices of possible layoffs were due to go to some school workers by Friday as the School Committee braced for deep budget cuts and complied with a teachers’ union contract.

The contract, committee Chairman Thomas Malcolm said, required that town teachers be notified this week whether they will have jobs next year or the town must pay them for next year.

With a looming budget crunch in most Maine communities, Millinocket’s schools might be the first in the state to issue termination notices.

But given that the proposed $7.8 million school budget for 2008-09 is a slight increase over this year’s, and shrinking federal and state funding will force taxpayers to pay $772,229 more next year, Malcolm didn’t want to guarantee teachers jobs now only to have to cut more later.

“We really don’t anticipate layoffs, but we need to protect the budget,” Malcolm said Thursday. “I don’t want to get hit with that [having to pay teachers another year] on top of other cuts. My hope is not to lay anybody off.”

The number of layoff notices, and which jobs might be cut, was not available on Friday. Malcolm, Superintendent Sara Alberts and teachers union representatives did not immediately return e-mails and telephone messages. Alberts and the representatives were said to be in meetings Friday afternoon.

Malcolm described this year’s budget deliberations as the most personally painful, and most difficult for town schools, he has yet endured.

The proposed budget represents only a $166,640, or 2.8 percent, increase over this year’s, Alberts has said, but shrinking state and federal funding force the $772,229 increase – presuming the committee, Town Council and voters approve the budget.

The committee is due to meet at 3 p.m. Tuesday, May 20, at Stearns High School to discuss and possibly approve the budget. If the committee approves the budget, it will go to the council for review, and the council can reject it. If the council approves it, it will go to voters for the first time as part of the requirements of a new state law.

Alberts’ proposed budget projects a $605,589 loss in revenue due mainly to declining state Essential Programs and Services funding. Of the total loss, about $279,654 is the projected EPS shortfall, Alberts said.

About half the school districts statewide are receiving less subsidy than last year, state officials have said, mostly because school enrollment statewide has dropped 10 percent in the past three years.

Among the Millinocket revenue shortfalls are about $296,842 in EPS special education funding; Medicaid reimbursements, which are down about 50 percent, or $60,918; and the school’s designated and undesignated fund balances, down 50 percent and 55 percent, respectively. Another $476,000 in state and federal grants has also been lost.

More cuts will be difficult to find, Alberts said. The school system cut 12 positions over the past four years, including nine teaching positions, to keep pace with declining enrollment.

Malcolm told the school board’s finance committee at a meeting earlier this week to try to find at least $100,000 in further budget cuts among non- or less-essential programs.

“We came up with a bunch of ideas for them to consider,” Malcolm said.

Among the ideas: cutting all or part of the arts, music or sports programs, or turning them into pay-to-plays and cutting deeper into supply and building maintenance budgets.

“No matter what we do, it’s going to hurt,” Malcolm said. “You don’t very easily find $100,000 when six of your seven million dollar budget is fixed costs. You can’t make any cuts without hurting something.”

And even if the committee finds $100,000 in cuts, that might not be enough to satisfy the council, which has expressed dismay at burdening taxpayers with any tax increases.

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