Gendron Promises Schools Timely State Subsidy Figures
By Walter Griffin, Bangor Daily News, Maine
Feb. 14–AUGUSTA — With budget season fast approaching, the state’s school superintendents received assurances from Education Commissioner Susan Gendron that accurate Essential Programs and Services subsidy figures would be available in time for them to meet their deadlines.
During a workshop held at the Augusta Elks Club on Monday, Gendron briefed the superintendents on the status of EPS, and other matters such as a moratorium on the Local Assessment System, an overview of a recent study on small schools, and the governor’s proposal to boost starting teacher salaries to a minimum $30,000 a year.
Under legislation approved a year ago, the state is committed to funding 55 percent of the cost of education by 2009.
The state provided $739 million for education in the 2005-06 school year, and that figure will increase to $1.05 billion in 2008-09, Gendron said.
The 55 percent goal represents the total amount of state subsidy, but does not mean every school district gets a 55 percent payment from the state. Each individual school unit’s EPS subsidy is based on a formula that is weighted heavily by property values and number of students.
Many of the 300 administrators and staffers who attended Monday’s meeting voiced concerns about the accuracy of the EPS figures released last week by the Department of Education.
Gendron stressed that those subsidy figures were preliminary. She said the department would make its final figures available once additional data from some late-reporting school districts are tabulated. Superintendents prefer to present budgets to their school boards by spring.
“We know that you need to have them,” said Gendron.
One of the complaints about EPS was that many districts felt they were short-changed in the amount of transportation subsidy. For instance, the funding formula only covers mileage one-way when a school bus has to travel down a dead-end road to pick up students.
Gendron told the superintendents that the Legislature’s Education Committee was looking into the matter and revisions could be in place next year. Among the changes being proposed are providing a subsidy for bus trips on dead-end roads and consideration of the actual cost of miles traveled.
Gendron said the department also found there were cost differences between rural and urban school districts. She said that whatever changes eventually get approved, school units would be reimbursed by the formula that benefits them the most.
“We continue to analyze the data and make adjustments for the next funding cycle,” she said.
Gendron said the moratorium on the Local Assessment System, which helps determine how students and school districts are meeting academic standards, would allow school districts time to narrow their focus on tests.
She said the system “looks very different depending on where you are and how the schools are structured.” She noted that test results over the past seven years indicated that a review was needed.
“Local assessments still look very different in each of our communities,” she said. “We need to reflect after seven years. This makes more sense to ensure that we are truly focused on our standards.”
Gendron also outlined the findings of a study and analysis of the cost and characteristics of the state’s higher performing schools conducted by Dr. David L. Silvernail, director of the Maine Education Policy Research Institute at the University of Southern Maine.
Silvernail found that while the size of Maine schools does not determine their success rate, it costs more to operate higher performing small schools, especially at the elementary level.
Silvernail also found that, faced with declining school populations, the state needed to develop a long-range policy to plan for declining enrollments, declining school sizes and declining academic performance.
Gendron said the study recommended increasing the state allocation by 13.8 percent for smaller, isolated schools with fewer grade levels than kindergarten through eight and with fewer than 15 pupils per grade, and by 8.8 percent for similar schools with 15-29 pupils per grade. The recommended increase for small, isolated kindergarten through eighth-grade schools with less than 15 pupils per grade level is 12.2 percent.
Gendron defined isolated schools as those at least eight miles away from the nearest elementary school and 10 miles away from the nearest high school.
“The Education Committee is grappling with the issue of changing policy toward small schools,” she said.
Gendron also noted recent studies that indicate the rate of teachers leaving the profession is growing.
She said there has been an 11 percent decline in the number of entry level teachers being retained and a 19 percent decline in the number of teachers with less than five years of service.
“We need a recruitment and retention program,” she said.
Gendron said the proposed $30,000 minimum annual salary for teachers would apply to 2,500 teachers and cost about $4 million to implement. She said the last time a minimum salary was set for teachers was in 1985, when it was pegged at $15,500 per year.
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