Augusta school officials ask the city for more funds

Kennebec Journal, May 1, 2007

(excerpt) School officials asked the City Council Monday for an increase of $125,000 from taxes to support the School Department's $28,520,000 budget.

They had hoped to return about that much to the city if the amount of state aid they expected had come through.

But Superintendent of Schools Cornelia Brown said a proposed state limit on increases for school costs working its way through the Legislature would cost her department more than $271,000.

Had it not been for Augusta's increases in costs for loan payments for the new Cony High School, Augusta School Board Chairman William Burney Jr. said, increases in the city's anticipated state school subsidies would have been nowhere near the new 15 percent limitation.

"Without the debt service (for the new high school) we wouldn't even be on the radar" for a cut in state aid, Burney said.

Brown said the state changed the rules after the city's expensive new $30 million high school was built and the bills are coming due.

"We have a big debt payment," Brown said. "The state and the city made that commitment."

In the past, state aid to pay for state approved building projects was not considered part of a school district's cost increases, the superintendent said.

If a state budget that contains the language put forward by the Baldacci administration now under consideration passes, Brown said, school districts like hers will be forced to make difficult choices.