[Local-Maine-Schools] Question about Reality Check

[Brian Hubbell]

Phil,

Under an enrollment-based SAD-type government for Union 98, the
destabilizing dynamic for Tremont begins with the power shift toward
Bar Harbor with its significantly higher population.  Under the
present proposal, Bar Harbor assumes nearly 40% of the voting power.

Then, picture a district-wide budget referendum at which voters are
spooked by the "rock vs. apple-pie" override language and vote down
expenses over the EPS limits.

The unapproved budget returns to the regional district board.  This
board, dominated by Bar Harbor, no matter how enlightened and
altruistic as a whole, now has to figure how to drastically reduce
spending across all its schools.

No matter that everyone is equally under the gun, on a board where Bar
Harbor has the majority influence, the only place to make politically
tolerable cuts will be at the schools with lower enrollments and
higher per-pupil costs.  These are the schools in the other towns, not
Bar Harbor's.

While a district board may not have the authority to close a school
outright, they surely can starve a school out of existence through
uniformity of budgets.

Under the new school order, that is what Tremont would be looking at
school governance: less authority and less school in exchange for an
insignificant change in tax dollars.  It is easy to see how
inter-municipality political warfare follows.

--Brian
mdischools.net
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On 6/2/07, Phil Worden <pworden at adelphia.net> wrote:
> I'm hoping to write a letter to Hannah Pingree opposing the plan from a Tremont perspective but I'm not sure I understand the plan accurately.  In Reality Check under "Cost Allocation Solely By Student Population" it explains that we will lose the subsidy we get from rich summer people's property in Mount Desert and it says that this will result in Bar Harbor's share of costs rising by $880,000.  In the next section about the 2 mil minimum it says that Mount Desert's share will go up by "an extra $1.2 million, also resulting in budget cuts beyond even those required by the bill."  It says that the "surplus [is] shared among the other members of the RSU."  How can it be that both Mount Desert's costs and Bar Harbor's costs go up?  And if that is true so an extra $2 million ($1.2 from Mt Desert and $800 K from BH) goes into the school budget, why would that extra $2 million require budget cuts beyond those mandated in the bill?  Does the State's share go down by even more?  Has anyone crunched the numbers for Tremont?  I grasp the educational and local control issues but I don't feel I understand the economics yet.  I'm hoping someone out there who understands this stuff better than I do will have the patience to explain it to me.  Thanks for any help I can get.  Phil Worden
>
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