OAKLAND — Opponents and supporters of the Regional School Unit 18 school budget are ramping up get-out-the-vote efforts as residents get ready to go to the polls for a second round of voting on a spending plan for the next school year.
Supporters have been distributing fliers and putting up lawn signs, while opponents have been circulating a “fiction and fact” sheet from an anonymous source that the superintended says contains out-of-date figures and errors.
The districtwide ballot vote is scheduled for Tuesday.
Residents gave initial approval to a $34.4 million spending plan for 2015-2016 at a district budget meeting last week. The budget reflects almost $293,000 in cuts the school board made after voters rejected a proposed $34.7 million budget 747-619 in a May 18 referendum.
Voters in Oakland and China backed the budget in May by tight margins. Select boards in Belgrade, Sidney and Rome, the three towns that opposed it, came out forcefully in opposition to the original proposal before the May vote.
On Friday, some of the same officials said they still oppose the plan, despite the budget cuts, many supporting their argument with the “RSU 18 Fiction and Fact Sheet,” which implies that RSU 18 officials have made misleading statements and that there are areas in which the school district easily could save money.
Opponents worry that spending is too high and continually results in yearly increases in property tax rates in their towns.
But parents of students in the schools, Superintendent Gary Smith and some town officials say the recent cuts reflect hard work by the budget committee.
In Rome, school board member Andrew Cook has been working hard to get the vote out, paying for a postcard mailer to registered voters and helping put out yard signs encouraging people to support the budget.
He said other school board members are doing the same thing.
“We’ve worked hard on it. We’re standing up for it,” he said.
In neighboring Belgrade, the Board of Selectpersons earlier this week voted 5-0 to oppose the budget.
Selectman Chairman Ernie Rice said Friday he intends to be at the Belgrade transfer station on Saturday to pass out information and encourage residents to vote on Tuesday. Board members in the town did the same thing before May’s vote.
Despite the cuts, Rice said the school board has not taken the time to consider other savings, such as contracting for transportation, maintenance and cleaning.
“If they really and truly sat down, they could really look at places where they can cut,” he said.
“We really care about the children’s education, but there are areas where there are cuts that should be made,” Rice added.
Rice said he also is concerned that the school district has not been billing MaineCare for eligible services, one of the claims made in the “fiction and fact” sheet. That issue has gained traction with opponents, who say RSU 18 hasn’t been billing for eligible MaineCare services that could reduce the budget by $250,000.
Smith said the district had opted not to bill MaineCare because the process is expensive and paperwork-heavy, which would end up costing the district more.
Schools can bill MaineCare for services through its special education program, Smith said, but the billing model is the same as that used by hospitals and would require extra work from the district staff, or could mean adding to the staff.
He said that he didn’t know how much the district could expect to get from MaineCare, but it wouldn’t be the $250,000 cited in the “fiction and fact” sheet.
There are plans to change the billing process to make it easier for school districts, Smith added.
“Very simply, it is our stance right now that until we have a different billing model, it makes sense to maintain our special education model,” he said.
There is no indication on the sheet who authored it, and those circulating it won’t say who put it together. It states the information is “based on” data available in the RSU 18 budget and through the Maine Department of Education.
Smith said he hasn’t seen the sheet but heard about it, had fielded questions about it and is familiar with the information on it. He said he thought some information it used was out of date.
“I don’t know how this data was put together,” he said. “I have no idea where those numbers came from.
“That’s the beauty of being an anonymous writer; nothing has to be factual,” Smith added.
Laura Parker, a Sidney selectwoman and vocal opponent of the budget, said the person who sent out the sheet was not being named publicly because he or she is worried about retaliation.
Although Sidney selectmen have not taken a formal position on the budget, she and others still oppose it, despite the cuts, Parker said.
“I think they left too much money on the table again,” she said.
Tim Russell, a Sidney selectman, used numbers from the “fiction and fact” sheet to support his argument against the budget.
Russell said he “doesn’t know exactly for sure” who put the “fiction and fact” sheet out, but the numbers “jive with what I’ve seen” in the budget and information from the education department.
Proponents hope the tide has turned since May’s votes and the recent budget cuts.
In the May vote, 1,366 of the five towns’ 13,782 registered voters went to the polls. The budget failed by 128 votes.
A workshop after the vote was attended by a large number of residents, including parents, teachers and staff members who opposed more cuts to education.
To encourage parents to vote, the administration has used blog posts and emails from principals and administrators and an open letter from China school board representative Bob Bennett.
“A lot of people that I’m talking to now understand the situation more,” Rome school board member Cook said. “I’m getting a strong sense they are supporting it.”
A group of parents from Belgrade, Oakland and Sidney also has advocated for the budget, asking the school district to send elementary school students home with pamphlets about the vote.
Dana Doran, a Belgrade parent with two children in the school system, said the ad hoc group wanted to encourage parents to vote.
He noted that the last budget lost by only 128 votes, out of the more than 1,360 cast.
“As parents of students of kids in the school district, we just want to make parents understand that their vote matters,” Doran said.
Peter McGuire — 861-9239
Twitter: PeteL_McGuire
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