MARS HILL, Maine — MSAD 42 in Mars Hill is on track to keep its budget at last year’s levels, but is eliminating two positions.
MSAD 42’s board of directors recently approved the district’s $5.26 million budget for 2019 and 2020. The budget will be presented to the voters of Blaine and Mars Hill at the district budget meeting on Tuesday, June 11.
Superintendent Elaine Boulier said the total budget is down by $83,000 over last year and has the same local property tax rate of 12.2 mills, or $12.20 per $1,000 in property value.
“The goal is always to try to keep the budget within a good range,” Boulier said. “The overall budget maintained the same school mill rate that we have had for many years.”
The two positions eliminated from the budget were a current education technician and a vacant special education position that the district had planned to hire for the next school year, Boulier said.
“We had plans of trying to hire another teacher but we had to put that off,” Boulier said. “We were able to bring everything together. We decided to shift personnel around to meet our needs.”
Enrollment for the district is expected to increase by about 20 students to 404 for the next school year, Boulier said.
MSAD 42’s enrollment decline of 20 students in October 2018 was one factor in a decrease in the amount of state funding earmarked for the district. As of this spring, MSAD 42 was expected to lose $132,000 in state funding, but that figure won’t be finalized until the state budget is set.
“It’s hard to say if we’re going to lose that much, but we’re not going to gain all of that. We may stay at where we’re at,” Boulier said
Either way, Boulier said, the district has to work with the budget amount that local voters approve.
“State funding is always a challenge and pools of money are not what they used to be years ago. We try to be extremely prudent fiscally.”
