FARMINGTON – Voters in the 10-town Mt. Blue Regional School District will have their say on the proposed $32 million budget for fiscal year 2015-16 at the budget meeting set for 7 p.m. Monday, June 1 in the Bjorn Auditorium on the Mt. Blue Campus.
At the meeting, residents will vote on the line item amounts and total budget approved by the Mt. Blue RSD board of directors on May 12. Once approved by voters, it goes to referendum for validation, decided by a single yes or no answer on June 9.
The $32,250,346 proposed budget, up by $1.2 million over the current fiscal year’s budget, which represents a 3.9 percent increase.
The most significant increase in the budget draft revolves around the day treatment program, with additional staff added to the budget to restructure the program. Administrators and many directors have supported locating the program in W.G. Mallett, Cascade Brook School and the Mt. Blue Campus, which would move the program in New Sharon’s Cape Cod Hill School to Farmington schools.
As part of that option, the district would add two positions: a social worker/professional counselor that would split their time between the day treatment program and Mt. Blue Middle School, and a social worker/professional counselor that would be responsible for district-wide testing and other duties.
Also added was a contracted board certified behavior analyst to meet the needs of a student in the district, with the alternative being to place the student out of district for $50,000, plus transportation. Another incoming student will require out-of-district placement at the cost of $50,000. The total cost of all special education additions was $157,206.
A teaching position was added to Cascade Brook School’s faculty due to a large class, and a half-time science teaching position to the high school to meet the course requests of the students.
Offsetting those increases is a $200,000 reduction in health insurance costs and another $143,000 that directors cut out of the proposed budget draft on May 11. Among the cuts were special education ed tech positions, deferred facilities and maintenance projects and the $30,000 in savings through not using portables at Mt. Blue Middle School.
At the June 1 budget meeting, residents will set the budget by voting on a number of cost centers. Also to be decided is an article that would put any additional state revenue toward reducing local tax assessments and the district’s undesignated fund account, at the discretion of the board. The state Legislature has discussed adding between $25 million and $50 million into General Purpose Aid for education as part of that budget process.
After Monday’s budget meeting, voters in all 10 towns will head to their local polling sites on June 9 to cast a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ vote on the decision taken at the June 1 meeting.
Here we go again. A 3.9% increase in the school budget.
RSU 9 residents – Please come to the budget meeting tonight. This is YOUR opportunity to ask questions, share your concerns, vote on each cost center, and even change the budget before it goes to a district-wide referendum on June 9.
School budget increase?? Not a problem.. Property owners will be slapped with another 10% increase once again. This madness needs to stop. Come on sheeple, wake up and vote this down.
Vote it down before it gets to the polls!
Half of the high school kids can go to work in the manufacturing sector; places like paper mills, toothpick factories, and shoe assembly lines and make a darn good wage. Heck my father, and his father did exactly that and they did just fine. We just need more Chinese language classes so they can perform these traditional jobs overseas. Isn’t that why Governor LePage traveled to China a year or so ago to drum up jobs for our kids?
As for special education, since it is a state requirement that we provide a good education to those who are less fortunate, we should abolish the state legislative branch (the state’s executive branch has made it clear they need only have one rubber stamp) and use the money saved for IEPs, and special education. Alternatively, special education can be funded by the bond funds which are being withheld in the Blaine House.
No increase. This incrementalism needs to stop. Just vote no
Education is still cheaper than ignorance. We should be spending more.
everyone commenting here either has no kids in school or doesn’t care about kids education. invest in your kids and invest in the future of Maine .there are no toothpick jobs and most mill jobs are gone ,so maybe a great education will keep more kids in Maine and produce better jobs here .
Sam and woodnut….. Just send your monthly paycheck or trust fund allowance to the SAD, RSD or whatever it is called and tell them to keep whatever they need… and return any that is left over..
My understanding, and my memory from bygone years, is that the budget meeting breaks the budget down into a number of articles which concern the various components of the budget. We vote on individual articles. There is no way to vote “it” down or to “just vote no” until the June 9 vote. Those who oppose this budget should offer specific reasons for us to vote against specific articles and should offer specific evidence that an article’s objectives are superfluous or can be met with less expense. I see very little of that here and have heard very little at bygone district meetings, where folks who speak cannot hide behind bogus aliases like we see here.
And those of us who have at times skipped out on the big meeting and voted the budget in are not “sheeple” — sheep do not pick their shepherds or the sheepdog who herds them over a cliff. The budget was built by people we elect to represent us in this process and they tend to be good, conscientious citizens, taxpayers themselves usually, and concerned with cost and education. We elect them because we choose to trust them to look out for our wallets and our kids. The folks who think education can be done cheaply tend to very rarely take out papers and run for a seat on the Board.
The budget has increased $10 million since the 2007-2008 budget. $10 MILLION. In 8 years, that’s an almost 50% increase. None of us have seen that kind of pay raise.
Time to strip this budget down. And go after our elected folks for the unfunded mandates.
We can’t afford this.
People with fixed incomes, typically operate on fixed budgets. The school board should be required to do the same for a few years.