MARS HILL, Maine — MSAD 42 superintendent Elaine Boulier is working on crafting next year’s budget for the district of 400 students, but knows she’ll be working with less state funding this year.
Boulier said that MSAD 42’s preliminary state allocation from the essential programs and services formula is slated to be about $133,000 less for the next school year, 2019-2020.
“That’s going to be challenging,” Boulier said.
The Maine Department of Education’s EPS formula determines both the state and local share of funding needed for essential school programming, and it’s based on student enrollment counts taken in October and averaged over two years.
Boulier said that the likely reduction in EPS funding for MSAD 42 is due to that enrollment count and the fact that in October 2018, the district had 20 fewer students than it did in October 2017.
“Because it’s a two year average, this Oct. 18 is going to haunt us for one more year,” Boulier said.
MSAD 42 has since seen its enrollment increase by 10 students, but that won’t change the EPS funding, Boulier said.
“This method of getting pupil counts is antiquated, because they only take it once a year,” Boulier said.
“Enrollment goes up and down throughout the year. We find here in The County that happens because people tend to move a lot. It doesn’t just impact MSAD 42, it impacts a lot of other districts. Oct 1 rolls around, the counts are in, and then you might have an influx of 5, 10, 15 high needs kids that are going to cost the district a lot more than the standard cost of education.”
This EPS allocation amount is preliminary and could change with the Legislature’s budget, ‘but I don’t believe that deficit is going be made up,” Boulier said.
MSAD 42’s total budget for the 2018-2019 school year is around $5.3 million, and Boulier said she expects that the 2019-2020 budget will end up at around $5.2 million.
One positive development this year, Boulier said, is that the state share of school funding would increase from 46 percent of costs to 50 percent under Gov. Janet Mill’s proposed budget. The EPS funding is based on that proposed budget, and without it, the funding decline for MSAD 42 would be larger, Boulier said.
Boulier and other staff are still working on the 2019-2020 budget, and expect to bring a preliminary budget to the board of directors in April. The board will then vote in May, ahead of a district budget meeting in early June.
