LAGRANGE, Maine — Superintendent of Schools Michael Wright hopes savings and combinations of services will offset the possibility of layoffs within the Howland-area School Administrative Unit 31 by July 1, but he is not optimistic, he said Monday.
AOS 43, the combination of SAU 31 and the Milo-area SAU 41, benefited from an additional $759,000 in state funding this year — $596,000 to SAU 41 and $163,000 to SAU 31 — but Wright fears that won’t be enough to offset layoffs in the Howland schools by the start of the 2012-13 fiscal year.
“What I am trying to do in 31 is resize the district,” Wright said Monday. “We are looking at all classes and both districts to see where we can do things more efficiently.”
“In 31 there is likely to be some changes as a result of looking at student-teacher ratios,” Wright added. “There will likely be some layoffs.”
It’s too early yet to know how many layoffs might occur or how severe the funding shortfall that will cause them will be, said Wright, who expects to have budgets for both school districts prepared for voters sometime in June.
“In a relatively short period of time, at least a week to two weeks, we will know all those answers,” he said.
Seventeen school workers were laid off from SAU 31 in November.
No layoffs are expected in SAU 41, which serves Atkinson, Brownville, LaGrange and Milo.
A $1.1 million, five-year loan that residents of the SAU 31 towns of Burlington, Edinburg, Enfield, Howland, Maxfield and Passadumkeag voted 606-127 to accept in late January from the Maine Municipal Bond Bank saved SAU 31 from bankruptcy. But the loan might not be enough to offset about $257,000 in budget underfunding and another $331,000 in anticipated revenues that were not realized in the 2011-12 budget, Wright said.
SAU 31 sought the loan to save the school unit from a financial crisis caused by leaders’ mismanagement and a lack of oversight that Wright discovered soon after his SAU 41 joined SAU 31 last summer as part of the new AOS. That loan should allow SAU 31 to pay off all of its debts by the end of the school year, Wright said.
“It is going as we thought it might. We are keeping our fingers crossed that we will end our year with all our bills paid,” Wright said.
The $163,000 increase SAU 31 expects in state funding, coupled with about $100,000 Wright expects to save by having SAU 41 special education director Stacy Shorey fill SAU 31’s vacant curriculum coordinator’s post, likely will save some cut positions, Wright said. He appointed Shorey to the newly combined job two weeks ago.
The school boards of 31 and 41 and the administrative staff located at the AOS 43 office in LaGrange have been reviewing portions of the school systems’ budgets over the last few weeks. The SAU 41 board was due to review that school system’s maintenance and transportation budgets at 6 p.m. Monday at Penquis Valley High School in Milo.
SAU 31 will hold a budget workshop at 6 p.m. Thursday at Penobscot Valley High School in Howland, Wright said.
WOW how much more can those poor people in Howland take in tax hikes? They just borrowed 1.1 mill to bail out that school district and now to learn that there are more shortfalls and their plan is to keep their fingers crossed.
… And the Maine Maritime Academy is subsidized to the tune of $9,000,000 per year by Maine taxpayers ($10,000 per student) to enjoy this sports and spa facility of which 1/2 of the student body is from out of state that leave immediately after graduation and never look back.
Great school – one of my relatives will be heading there in the fall. That sports facility is gorgeous.
Let’s get some buses and drive around the country collecting all Maine kids that are attending college out of state. Then we’ll kick out all the kids attending Maine colleges that are not Maine citizens and put our kids in their places. Makes perfect sense to me. By the way, my Doctor, Dentist, and Eye Doctor all attended their proffessional schools in Massachussetts. EVEN our pet’s VET went to school out of state.
The point was the outrageous $10,000 taxpayer subsidy per student per year. Many attend out of state colleges for various reasons, but most colleges do not accept 1/2 of their student body from out of state. Perhaps the connected ones should focus on our local K-12 youth before lavishing financing for jocks from out of state. It’s time for this sports and spa facility to be privitized like Bowdoin, Bates, and Colby.
You might want to check enrollment figures for Bates, Bowdoin, and Colby. A very low percentage of those kids are from Maine. I think Colby is about 10%. I may be off on that number.
Colby and perhaps the others mentioned are PRIVATE colleges. Not a dime of taxpayers money is diverted from K-12 funding to benefit a number in connected insiders.
Why does howland still have a superintendent? I though that we voted to consolidate several years ago?
He is the supt. for both schools AOS 43(SAU 31 and SAU 41). And no we didn’t vote on this, Baldacci came up with this mistake all on his own.
Once again facts proves better then your own personal thoughts.
The big wigs always layoff the lowest people on the totem pole when the AOS was formed it was supposed to save money by combining services and positions.By looking at this combination of services the top heavy districts are still top heavy while the lowley teacher and other district workers were the only ones affected.there were no layoffs of $150,000 supers or asst. supers or none of the top paying positions
yup he did, while also allowing retired teachers to return to their positions at the SAME RATE OF PAY. In that district alone there are at least 4 retired teachers, and 2 of them are at the top of the pay scale. It’s time to send these teachers back to retirement and bring in some younger teachers, that would save quite a bit of money. People should wonder how they can keep positions with only a very limited number of students; for instance the band program? Maybe if the “powers that be” had some guts about them, there would be some changes made where REAL DOLLARS would be saved.