Maine news, sports, weather | Kennebec Journal, Augusta, Maine

AUGUSTA

Cuts and all, budget approved

Board of Education not swayed by student pleas

By Keith Edwards kedwards@centralmaine.com
Staff Writer

AUGUSTA -- The Board of Education approved a $26.4 million budget that cuts multimedia classes and other popular programs, over the pleas of numerous students past, present and future.

click image to enlarge

Staff photo by Joe Phelan SPEAKING OUT: Nicholas Locke speaks in favor retaining the Capital Area Technical Center multimedia program during a board of education meeting Wednesday night. Locke said he'd taken the program when he was in high school.

Select images available for purchase in the
Maine Today Photo Store

Current students said the multimedia program at Capital Area Technical Center kept them in school, graduates said it has provided them with successful careers, and potential students who had intended to take it said it was their future.

"The only thing I've ever wanted to do was animate," said Isabella Merrill, a freshman who said her older sisters had told her about the multimedia program's digital media animation classes, which she had looked forward to taking. "My idol is Walt Disney -- has been forever. When I heard they're going to cut it, it blew away everything I wanted. I hope you reconsider. Because this may do away with a lot of people's dreams."

The budget is more than $500,000 lower than the current year's budget but, due to revenue decreases, would require an approximately 3.4 percent property tax increase.

While sympathetic to students, board members said that if they proposed any more of a tax increase than is already in the budget, the City Council would likely reject their proposal and make them cut programs.

City councilors have the final say on the combined city and school budget. In past years, they have been known to send school budgets requiring a tax increase back to the school board to be cut.

"I wish we could have it," board member Nathanael Rende said, referring to the multimedia program. "I wish we could go to the City Council and say we want it all. But I'm afraid they'd make us come back and make these same tough choices again."

Board member Suzanne Allarie-Dowling said the decision to cut the multimedia program was made by an advisory board to Capital Area Technical Center. She said the school board has asked the advisory board -- of which she is a member -- to review their recommendation, so the school board wasn't specifically voting to cut the multimedia program in Wednesday's vote.

However, under questioning from parent Laurie Fowle, whose son had planned on taking a second year of the multimedia program next year, Superintendent Cornelia Brown acknowledged there was no funding to restore the multimedia program in the budget.

The entire elementary French program, which has been taught in grades five and six, had been marked to be cut in Brown's initial budget proposal, to save $42,000.

However, some board members said they wanted sixth-graders, who have already started elementary French, to be able to keep taking French for their final year before middle school. So a part-time elementary French position was added back to the budget, at a cost of $21,000.

Lifelong Augusta resident Blackie Bechard advocated for restoring full funding to the elementary French program, noting kids learn languages best when they are young and their brains "are like sponges."

Board members also reinstated "30 percent" of the industrial technology program at Cony High School.

Instructor Thomas Fylstra said he had no idea what the board intends by restoring 30 percent of the program.

He said the program has kept many students from dropping out of school.

The school budget next goes to the City Council for approval. It is tentatively scheduled for discussion at an April 12 council/School Department budget workshop. Then the public will vote on it in a citywide referendum planned for June 8.

Keith Edwards -- 621-5647

kedwards@centralmaine.com