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

Winthrop wrestles with its $180,000 budget gap

By Matthew Stone mstone@centralmaine.com
Staff Writer

WINTHROP -- Federal funds, vacant positions and a wait-and-see attitude.

School board members have yet to settle the details of how they'll cover a $180,000 hole in the budget, but those three items are -- at least initially -- part of the answer.

The Winthrop Board of Education held its first discussion Wednesday about addressing a $180,000 revenue shortfall in the budget that a new team of administrators discovered when they assumed their posts earlier this summer. Board members first learned about the budget gap at a meeting Aug. 11.

Wednesday's discussion came the same day administrators learned Winthrop would receive nearly $195,000 as the town's share of the $10 billion education jobs package passed by Congress earlier this month.

"That's a significant figure," Superintendent Briane Coulthard said.

The money can cover salary and benefit costs of school-level employees, but not those of administrators or school contractors.

Coulthard said he'd consider using the federal allotment to cover positions that are "on the line" as a result of the shortfall.

The budget gap includes:

• $100,000 in special education shortfalls from expenses that weren't figured into the budget and a recent $48,000 subtraction from state special education funds connected to a student who'd moved out of the district;

• a $52,000 shortfall in the budget of the Carleton Project, Winthrop's alternative education program, since the program's costs aren't covered in the budget and state subsidy payments arrive about a year after costs are incurred; and

• a $32,000 school lunch program deficit that's largely the result of underfunding in Winthrop's current budget.

Without factoring in the coming federal funds infusion, Coulthard said he'd tentatively figured out how to shave $96,500 from the shortfall amount.

He's negotiating with the Maine Department of Education, for example, to spread the $48,000 subsidy subtraction over three years, rather than one, reducing it to about $16,000 for the current school year.

In addition, Coulthard is proposing to leave the positions of a special education teacher, a special education technician and a food service employee vacant and temporarily covering Carleton Project expenses with money from other accounts.

But come January 1, other cuts might have to be made -- including a reduction in hours for a special education secretary and for employees working for the Carleton Project and an after-school program.

School board member Mark King recommended using the new federal money to avoid cutting the special education secretary's hours. The reduction, he said, would force that employee to resign and seek employment elsewhere.

"This person has a lot of institutional knowledge," King said. "It's always the institutional knowledge that gets lost."

Board chairman John Mitchell, however, urged caution on spending the federal funds.

"Sooner or later, we're going to hit the wall," he said. "This may be an opportunity to get us in order a little more."

But board members and parents are worried that leaving two positions vacant would limit the ability of remaining staff members to meet the needs of Winthrop's 116 special education students.

"I don't know how we can provide those services if we have vacancies in those positions that we didn't have last year," said Joseph Pietroski, a board member. "And we were wringing our hands last year, saying, 'How are we going to meet our demands?'"

Coulthard and Richard Spencer, Winthrop's special education director, said school employees will have to continue assessing the staffing situation to determine whether students are receiving the special education services they're legally entitled to receive.

But it's inevitable that the existing staff will be strained, said Jennifer McConnell, a parent.

"You have an amazing special education team, but if they don't have a school board behind them giving the financial support they need, then it's all for naught," she said.

King said the district would make sure, one way or another, that students receive their services.

"We cannot have kids not getting their services," he said. "That's the law."

Pietroski said he'd favor asking local taxpayers for more funds if it became necessary.

"Maybe we have not relied upon local participation enough to get the monies that we need," he said.

Matthew Stone -- 623-3811, ext. 435

mstone@centralmaine.com