On Tuesday, Lewiston residents will be asked to weigh in on a proposed school budget for a second time this year.
In May, more than 65 percent of those who turned out to the polls voted to reject the budget as it was then written. Following this vote, Lewiston officials took steps to make more than $1 million in additional cuts.
Even with these reductions, however, the proposal would raise the city’s school property tax rate by nearly 13 percent, increasing the school portion of the mill rate by $1.68 and bringing it to a total of $13.85.
Superintendent Jake Langlais told the Lewiston Sun Journal that if voters reject the budget Tuesday, the district will be forced to “pause hiring, reduce programming, and discontinue other items immediately.”
The Journal went on to report that “Langlais said he is not telling anyone how to vote but he is encouraging people to approve the budget if they support school resources for those in in need, education, summer programming, after school programming, sports, pathways for success, special education programming for high need students, making schools safer and maintaining instruction and support at its current level.”
According to an article published in the Journal last month, the original draft of the budget would have resulted in a property tax rate hike of more than 18 percent.
In its current form, the district’s budget is just under ten percent more expensive than it was last year. This is reportedly the result of higher staffing costs, expenses associated with the Lewiston Regional Technical Center, and new family leave law requirements.
[RELATED: MDOL Now Accepting Public Comment on Proposed Rules for Paid Family and Medical Leave Program]
It was also reported that the cost of sending “students with severe cognitive, physical and/or other disabilities” who cannot be properly supported by the public school system to “special purpose private schools” has increased significantly since last year.
Superintendent Langlais told the Journal earlier this year that in addition to rate hikes for this program, state law now requires that municipalities pay schools for all days, not just those attended by a student, driving up costs even further.
The district pays nearly $15 million to send 133 students to schools outside the district, an expense that Langlais has said the district cannot sustain long term.
The Superintendent also told the Journal at this time that he has proposed a three-year plan for the district to expand its in-house special education program so that the majority of these students could return to the Lewiston Public School system.
The district has also struggled with the coming loss of Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funding.
ESSER was originally launched in the wake of the pandemic and was designed to “address diverse needs arising from or exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, or to emerge stronger post-pandemic, including responding to students’ social, emotional, mental health, and academic needs and continuing to provide educational services as States and school administrative units (SAUs) respond to and recover from the pandemic.”
Late last month, members of the School Committee approved a slate of alterations to the proposed budget in a 5-2 vote.
Most notably, members agreed to use $650,000 from the special education reserve to offset some of the additional costs facing the district next year.
This amendment alone accounted for nearly 58 percent of the reductions advanced at the May 30th meeting.
Lewiston isn’t the only municipality where growing public school budgets are driving property tax increases.
Earlier this year, the Portland City Council approved a school budget accompanied by a 6.6 school property tax increase.
Portland Public Schools explained in a press release that the district originally went into the budgeting process with the expectation of having a $19.4 million shortfall that would have required a 17.41 percent tax increase for resident.
[RELATED: Portland City Council Unanimously Approves School Budget with 6.6% Tax Increase]
The school district went on to say that they were able to reduce their projected costs through “strategic reductions and restructuring.”
Just as in Lewiston, Portland voters will be asked to weigh in on the proposed budget at the ballot box Tuesday.
