By Nate Jones

Staff Writer 

Scarborough Superintendent David Doyle said he “wasn’t feeling good” last Friday morning when he learned the school system could possibly recieve approximately $781,000 less from the state for general purpose aid (GPA) than he had planned this fiscal year.

“It’s more than we had expected,” he said. “There are a lot of schools with good enrollment rates but a high valuation hurts.”

Maine Department of Education Director of Communications David Connerty-Marin said Scarborough’s “relatively high” property valuation was a large factor in the proposed curtailment causing an estimated 2.6 percent gap in Doyle’s voter-approved $35 million school budget. 

“It’s a pretty big hit in terms of dollars,” Connerty-Marin said. “It’s about 11 percent of their total state aid.”

Connerty-Marin said the state used the same formula – which takes into account the essential programming and services (EPS) estimate, school enrolment rates and the community’s ability to provide funding based on the total property valuation – to every school district in the state to determine how they are each affected by the approximate $27.8 million total curtailment. 

Proportionally, Doyle said Scarborough’s enrollment rate has slowed compared to the town’s increased property valuation, possibly due to new building permit restrictions. 

“Enrollment is still increasing, but we’re not nearly where we were,” he said. “In the [1990s] we would have increases of 100 or 125 a year.”

According to Department of Education estimates, Scarborough’s GPA reduction is the third highest in the state, with Portland topping the list with a loss of $1.8 million, followed by a $874,000 loss in South Portland.

“We ran everybody the same way, there’s just less money in some places,” Connerty-Marin said. “Scarborough was on the higher end, there’s a lot of property value there.”

Doyle said he has “frozen” spending on all non-essential items,  such as field trips,  and plans on filling the fiscal void by dipping into the school’s “undesignated surplus” and relying on profits from “breakage.”

“’Breakage is money based on the income of staff people who retire or resign and their position is filled with a new person,” he said. “There’s a difference in pay scale there, and it’s usually a positive number.”

The school is also finding new ways to create revenue; Doyle said the school board recently revised a policy to charge different community groups for using rooms at the high school such as the Girl Scouts. The new charge has spurred the Girl Scouts to seek another location for their adult leadership meetings, although Girl Scout Membership Manager Beth Dowling said the girl scout troops can still meet at the building for free.

“They charge us $190 for three hours,” Dowling said. “We’re a non-profit group, we can’t afford to pay that.”

Dowling said the group is now looking for a different venue for their adult leadership meetings. She said some community churches charge a small fee, as low as $25, while others will accept canned goods as payment. 

“Obviously we’d like to have the space available for groups, but our priority is K through 12,” Doyle said. “When they’re in there, the lights are on and the heat is running, that’s an expense we incur. We’re non-profit, too.”

The $780,000 reduction isn’t the first time Doyle has had to adjust his expectations for funding. He said the 2008-2009 budget approved by voters was $900,000 less than what he originally proposed to the town council. 

“We’re getting $1.6 million less than what we had hoped for, that’s the reality,” he said. 

Doyle said he does not expect to have to make staff cuts as a result of the GPA curtailment. 

“There are a combination of things that can get us there without eliminating positions,” he said.

According to the Department of Education, the proposed curtailment will be before the legislature in December, after which another $27 million reduction could be proposed for the 2010 and 2011 fiscal year.