AUGUSTA – Faced with a near revolt from school superintendents who felt they were being shortchanged by next year’s education funding formula, the Joint Standing Committee on Property Tax Reform has recommended adding more money to the mix.

The committee on Monday voted 12-3 to add an additional $9.8 million to help those school departments receive at least as much in state aid for their 2005-06 budgets as they did this year. The state will spend about $830 million on education in the coming year.

The final committee vote came shortly before 11 p.m. as part of its endorsement of Gov. John Baldacci’s property tax relief legislation. The Maine House and Senate are expected to take up the bill by Jan. 20.

“Folks were trying to be equitable,” Commissioner of Education Susan Gendron said Tuesday of the additional state support. “This will at least bring them [the schools] back to flat funding.”

Many superintendents were up in arms last week when the education department released its projected Essential Programs and Services allocations for the coming school year. Under the new EPS formula, 88 of the state’s 284 school units wound up receiving less state money than they had under the former system.

Implemented for the first time in this two-year budget, the EPS model establishes a percentage of state support for most, but not all, educational expenses incurred by school departments. EPS determines how much individual school departments must spend to provide the educational tools and instruction necessary to meet Maine Learning Results.

Gendron said that education planners knew all along that some “transitional” money would be needed to balance the losses incurred through the EPS model. She said the $9.8 million was obtained by adding $6.9 million to the overall budget and by removing another $2.9 million from special education subsidies. As a result, she said, some districts that had expected to receive 100 percent subsidy for special education would now receive 84 percent.

Under the Baldacci plan, 55 percent of all education costs will be funded by the state by 2009. Combined state and local education funding is expected to provide 84 percent of EPS requirements over the next two years and 100 percent over the subsequent two years. The governor’s plan was introduced in response to the June referendum vote requiring the state to provide 55 percent of the overall cost of education.

Although the added money will provide a cushion during the transition to EPS this coming year, school administrators will not learn the extent of state support they will receive until the DOE releases its spending requirements to individual school departments. Those figures are expected to be available within the next week or so.

Dale Douglass, director of the Maine School Management Association, the administrative arm of the Maine School Boards Association and the Maine School Superintendents Association, noted that until those individual reports are released, local administrators will be in the dark as to their overall budget outlook.

“I think there will be some relief for those districts who are being zeroed-out, but so far the superintendents are only getting part of the story,” said Douglass. “Even though this has returned that group of 88 to flat-funding, they still need to know the rest of the numbers.”

Douglass said that while they provide a big picture of funding needs, the EPS allocations do not reflect the entire cost of education. He said there were a number of costs that fall outside the state subsidy formula or model. He said fuel, insurance and other costs cannot be accurately projected with a funding model.

He said it should not be overlooked that part of the goal of EPS was to control costs.

“When you contain costs at the state level, what you do is exclude costs at the local level,” said Douglass. “Superintendents really won’t be able to assess the impact until they have all the figures. School budgeting is an extremely complex entity and the EPS model does not reflect all these expenses, either in type or amount.”