MADAWASKA, Maine — Nearly halfway through its 2012-2013 fiscal year, Madawaska School Committee approved a $6.7 million budget during an emergency meeting Thursday night.
Voters will act on the budget during a special town meeting Jan. 7
The approved budget represents a $513,000 decrease from last year, including reduction in local tax effort of $251,601.
The approved budget also provides enough funds to keep 10 teaching positions eliminated last week through the end of the current school year.
In November, voters turned down the proposed school budget after the committee failed to make $250,000 reduction in the local tax effort and increased the budget by $275,000 over the previous year.
Residents mandated that the school committee reduce the proposed budget by $525,000 before presenting it to voters again. Town voters approved a municipal budget that reflected $250,000 in cuts from the previous year.
“This [proposed] budget meets our goal,” Terry Wood, school superintendent, told her committee Thursday night.
Helping them get to this point is the revised Maine Department of Education computation allocations to fund public schools, the so-called ED279 formula, based the decreased 2011 state valuation of the town of Madawaska that will provide an additional $199,000 in state contribution.
The town is facing heavy tax revenue losses stemming from property tax abatements granted to Twin Rivers Paper Co., reducing its valuation from $170 million to $85 million during a four-year period beginning in fiscal year 2010.
“I was informed of these revised figures last Friday,” Wood said, adding the revisions were made by the department of education in November.
For the past month, school committee members have met with members of the teachers’ negotiating team in an effort to reach a compromise on cuts to teacher salaries as a way to make up at least part of the shortfall.
In an effort to meet those cuts, the committee last week proposed eliminating the equivalent of 12 full-time teaching and staff positions, representing more than 20 percent of the 43-member faculty.
Thanks to that extra $199,000 from the state, those teacher will be employed until the end of the current school year.
“I feel for these teachers,” Wood said. “When you are telling people they no longer have a job, it does not feel good.”
Wood said some of those teachers may be employed next year depending on subject matter need, something she will know when Madawaska students prepare their 2013-2014 schedules in April.
The final town meeting warrant for the school budget must be approved by the municipal budget meeting before it can be posted. That committee is expected to act on the warrant by next week.
Unconscionably after what teachers just did to protect kids in CT. Have the people gone insane?
You can’t relate a budget crisis and the need to overcome it to the acts of teachers (as brave as they were) hundreds of miles away. What those brave souls in Sandy Hook CT. did does not pay the bills in Madawaska, Maine.
There you go. This mentality ^^ is indicative of how teachers are being treated. I’d like to know when teachers went from being respected to being the scourge of society.
They haven’t
ok, ok, ok…..wait just a minute. all week we heard about the school department having to “borrow” monies from the municipal budget to hold these cut teachers over till the end of the school year…now we find out that the super knew since november that she would be getting an additiional 190k from the state based on reduced evaluation of the town??????? She might be good at “construction” but she sure does suck at stretching the truth!! Is the school borrowing monies from the town or not??answer us Mr. Chasse…tell the truth!! Do you know what the truth is? Enough of the bs in Madtown…can we just pass the budgets and get the application in for the S&S monies that rep therio promised us? (sic) exactly how much will that be anyway?? according to chasse and therrien, it was decreasing by the day…must not be much left…or did they not know what they were talking about….like Mr. Therio insinuated.
Twin Rivers Paper Company should be ashamed for not stepping forward to offer some financial relief to the Madawaska School District considering that the whole financial mess is due to their reduction in property valuation.
They did, they are still there employing people. for how long that is the question. Just think how it would be without them.
True. Considering the circumstances they could step up and offer some relief.
Has Twin Rivers emerged from bankruptcy yet? If they haven’t, they are accountable for every penny they spend[give] to the bankruptcy court, and any donations must be approved by the court.
Corporate welfare. They will soon be paying out thousands in bonuses paid for by you and me and off the backs of the teachers.
It’s the funniest thing … Madawaska was in this week’s Heal Point standings for basketball. They wouldn’t be firing classroom teachers but still funding ANY sports programs, would they?
I must be naive, but, from this distance, it sure looks like poor form to be funding athletics.
Messed up priorities! Heaven forbid you let go of the athletic program. Uh uh, fire the science/math/computer/whatever teacher first.