On Tuesday, June 16, voters in will have a chance to approve or reject a school budget of $9,460,385 for RSU 50, which passed through last Tuesday’s budget meeting held at the Island Falls Municipal Building. Ninety residents were in attendance for the one-hour meeting.
RSU 50 includes the towns of Crystal, Dyer Brook, Hersey, Island Falls, Merrill, Moro Plantation, Mt. Chase, Oakfield, Patten, Sherman, Smyrna and Stacyville.
RSU 50, according to the state, should only be spending, $7,524,362 for what it terms “Essential Programs and Services.” When district goes over that amount, the local municipalities are responsible for the difference.
RSU 50’s state subsidy is $4,804,749, with the required local share of $2,567,567. That means the additional monies that each town has to come up with is $1,252,069, driving the mill rate from 11.18 to 11.50.
The school district will enroll 719 students for the 2015-16 year.
It is recommended $383,990 be expended on Region Two School of Applied Technology, which is a $28,814 increase this year to the school budget. The reason for the increase is that Region Two is adding an electrical course. However, the increase covers other expenditures within Region Two itself, including the start-up cost for the new program, a 5 percent increase in insurance and a 2 percent raise for salaries for instructors and a disbursement to transportation, as Region Two purchased a new bus during this fiscal school year.
Drawing a discussion under the Student and Staff Support is an increase of $25,482, which includes a new curriculum coordinator position.
“I have some concerns,” said Dannette Moody-Kay of Patten. She wanted to make sure those in attendance realized the money was for the coordinator position, not the curriculum itself. The curriculum coordinator would earn $59,595, including salaries and benefits.
The funding is to negotiate for someone to oversee what the RSU does with the students’ curriculum and assessment. However, there were also other expenditures under the curriculum category.
“What we did was reassessed our needs for the district going forward and we feel this position will be very beneficial to our students,” said Superintendent Larry Malone. “We pay attention to what kids need to know and be able to do, but for someone to oversee that over a period time is vital. As the landscape continues to change, the majority of your teachers spend a lot of time dealing with that aspect of what they are doing and not on how to do it. This would allow teachers to be more embedded in staff development around how to implement the curriculum versus constantly monitoring it themselves. They have a strong command of it, but it is a position that I feel is no longer a luxury, but a vital position for any successful school district.”
Moody-Kay agreed with a bit of the explanation Malone gave, but she pointed out, “this is a small school system, Class D, and we are losing enrollment every year. The teachers have always done the curriculum.”
Moody-Kay noted that with larger schools she could see a curriculum coordinator necessary, but not in a small school district, “all this money adds up,” she said. “Why would you do that now? Why wasn’t that brought up five years ago when we are losing kids every single year?”
“What makes students in Dyer Brook, Patten or Stacyville any different than the students in Bangor?,” asked Malone. “They deserve the best. They deserve high quality. Should it have been here five years ago, absolutely. The board, since I have been here, has heard me speak of it every year.”
Paige Coville of Island Falls wanted to make sure she had the correct understanding of what a curriculum coordinator would do.
“This is a K-12 position. This person would ensure what is being taught in first grade, whether one side of the district or the other, that the same things are being taught. That the material is the same and things are not being taught multiple times over when it is not necessary. So what is happening, the school’s progressing level to level,” she explained.
“Don’t you think perhaps if we paid our teachers what they deserve to teach, maybe these positions wouldn’t be so needed and we wouldn’t have the turnover in teachers we are having now,” said Kay-Moody. “That might be something to think about.”
Another major increase in the RSU 50 school budget is to replace roofs at Katahdin Elementary and Southern Aroostook Community. Malone noted $185,000 would be going into group projects designated to fix the sloped area around SACS and the administrative wing and sixth-grade area at KES.
Residents can check with their local municipalities for when their polls will be open.
