ROCKPORT, Maine — The superintendent of the local school district is pushing back on claims that she was aware of concerns regarding the formula it relied on to incorrectly calculate funding for the system for nearly a decade.
The town of Rockport is suing Municipal School Administrative District 28 after overpaying its share of the system’s budget since 2009.
Superintendent Maria Libby said it was only recently discovered the district had incorrectly calculated Rockport’s portion of the payments, but town officials said this week the district disregarded questions in recent years regarding how its property valuations affected its share of school funding.
“Anyone who knows me or knows my work, knows that I don’t disregard anything or sweep anything under the rug. I did not know we were incorrectly assessing the towns,” Libby said, adding that she never received the email. “I inherited a Business Office with an inaccurate understanding of how to properly assess our towns but had no reason to question it.”
MSAD 28 provides public education for Camden and Rockport students in kindergarten through eighth grade. These students attend Camden Hills Regional High School, which is operated by the Five Towns Community School District.
In Maine, the majority of school districts generate a large portion of funding from local property taxes, which are based on property values.
For at least the past nine years, MSAD 28 has relied on an incorrect formula to determine each town’s share. Instead of billing each town based on its property valuations, it calculated payments based on the percentage of students that attended from each town. This error meant Rockport overpaid its share of funding, while Camden underpaid.
Libby said this error was only discovered this summer when the district’s new business manager found a 97-cent discrepancy between his assessment calculations and those performed by the interim business manager.
“When I began as superintendent, I had no reason to question my veteran business manager’s work,” Libby said. “She believed, and led me to believe, that the way we calculated the two towns’ tax allocations was solely based on per pupil count. The district had been calculating it that way since before her time and she was with the district for a decade.”
Rockport seeks to recover the full amount town has overpaid, plus interest, which could be as much as $450,000.
“I understand the scale of the error and as current superintendent, I accept ownership on behalf of the district,” Libby said. “We are willing partners who look forward to working with the towns of Camden and Rockport to figure out how to rectify the situation.”