By Scott Mitchell Johnson, Staff Writer
PRESQUE ISLE — Nearly a dozen people — consisting primarily of superintendents and school board members — attended a stakeholder forum last Tuesday night in Presque Isle to ask questions and offer feedback as part of the Maine Legislature’s comprehensive evaluation of the Essential Programs & Services (EPS) school funding formula.
According to the Maine Department of Education’s website, EPS is designed to ensure that all schools have the programs and resources that are essential for all students to have an equitable opportunity to achieve Maine’s Learning Results. The EPS model provides a basis for adequacy and greater equity in the funding of K-12 education because it is cost-driven instead of expenditure-driven.
“Presque Isle is the first of four forums we’re hosting throughout the state,” said Lawrence Picus, principal partner of Lawrence O. Picus and Associates, the California firm contracted by the Legislature to conduct the EPS evaluation. “During the day we’re running professional judgment panels where we have an interactive conversation with a group of educators from the region ranging from superintendents to school site administrators to school business managers to teachers, and we’re really looking at the components of the evidence-based model that we’ve designed and the EPS model that Maine uses and try to work with them to see which components would make the most sense if a revision of the EPS was necessary.
“In the evenings, we’re holding stakeholder forums to hear what people have to say, what they like and what they don’t like about the EPS funding formula,” he said. “We’re here to listen and receive feedback, and answer any questions people might have.”
Picus said he and business partner Allan Odden have been working on their evidence-based model for more than a decade.
“It’s based on educational research and on what we know about how students learn and what works in schools … how would you organize and design a school so that all children perform at high levels. How many teachers should you have, how many administrators, what resources you should have for children, etc.,” he said. “We’re putting together a model that would then apply those resource decisions to each school, and then each school district in Maine, which will give us an estimated cost of the system under our model which we would then compare to the EPS model and then you’d know which is more expensive, less expensive and what the differences are.”
SAD 20 Superintendent Marc Gendron told Picus that the timing of the EPS funding allocation was a concern.
“It’s really hard to create a budget — trying to be as efficient as you can — when you don’t get confirmation until late in the cycle. That puts everybody in a bind because — at some point — some superintendent or business manager has to put a number on a budget line,” he said. “It would be nice if you could go to a biennial system. That way we could really do some long-range planning and it would give us more stability. If we could have a little more lead time with the numbers, that would be good.”
Other discussion centered around Title I and how school districts downstate tend to receive more funding than schools located in northern Maine.
Rep. Bob Saucier (D-Presque Isle) called the stakeholder forum “enlightening.”
“All schools are feeling the effects of the funding cuts for education, but it’s good to hear it in their own words,” he said. “I think all the administrators and superintendents are hoping the new model is going to be more beneficial than the old model, and I think the questions that they asked were very pertinent to the fact that if the formula is changed, is it going to hurt rural schools more than it’s going to hurt affluent schools?
“However, no matter what you do with the formula, if you have an administration that wants to look at that big pot of money and say, ‘We need $20 million, let’s take it out of education,’ it doesn’t matter what formula you have,” said Saucier. “If the new formula is received well and does what it’s supposed to do — and the administration doesn’t touch the money — I think most superintendents and business managers will be OK with it.”
Picus said he was pleased with the local forum.
“We had a fairly diverse representation of people in northern Maine who represented very clearly the kinds of concerns that school districts in Maine have. We’ve learned a great deal and we’re looking forward to going to Bangor, Farmington and Portland and hearing what is said there. Then we’ll summarize everything and bring it back to the Joint Standing Committee on Education and Cultural Affairs in two weeks and see what the committee asks us to do then.”
Picus said his company’s final report is due to the Legislature Dec. 1.
Information on the study, as well as copies of their initial report to the Joint Standing Committee on Education and Cultural Affairs are available on the Legislature’s website at www.maine.gov/legis/opla/EPSfundingmaterials.htm or at www.lpicus.com.
