The BDN Opinion section operates independently and does not set news policies or contribute to reporting or editing articles elsewhere in the newspaper or on bangordailynews.com
Mark Brewer of Orono is a member of the RSU 26 school board. He wrote this column on behalf of the board. Other members are: Brian McGill, Noah Charney, Jacob Eckert and Kevin Roberge.
You may have heard Maine state leaders claiming that the state is maintaining high levels of school funding, but this is misleading. When you unpack the funding formula, the inflation-adjusted funding levels have actually declined meaningfully over the last four budgets.
In 2004, the Maine voters and the Legislature voted to put state funding for the schools on a cost basis using the Essential Programs and Services (EPS) formula. This formula estimates the cost to provide a basic education to a student, with the state setting parameters like the salary for a teacher and operating costs like supplies and energy (on a per pupil basis).
The voters instructed the Legislature to fund 55 percent of the calculated (EPS) cost to run the schools, with the towns picking up the remaining 45 percent through local property taxes. This system has been in place ever since, but from 2004-2021, the Legislature always funded less than 55 percent, hovering around 50 percent. This meant that the details of the formula mattered less than what percentage the Legislature picked up.
In great news for school funding, the percentage the Legislature picked up rose consistently from 2018 to 2021, when the state finally covered 55 percent of the EPS estimated cost of schools in Maine, and has continued to cover 55 percent every year since.
However, now that legislative whim isn’t driving the percentage covered by the state, the actual contents of the formula has come to be the biggest driver of changes in state funding levels. Specifically, if the EPS formula lags behind inflation, state funding of schools will lag behind inflation.
Surprising no one, the EPS formula has lagged behind inflation most of its life (with a number of studies pointing this out in the late 2010s). This never really mattered in the past because the percent the state covered was a bigger variable. But now that the percent covered is constant at 55 percent, good intentions to keep the funding at 55 percent don’t really matter if the formula is falling behind because costs are growing faster than the state’s contribution. Letting the formula lag inflation is just a complicated way to essentially cut school funding.
Which is what has been happening for the last three years. Exact numbers will depend on methods, but a reasonable estimate is that from the January 2021 to the January 2024 EPS, when the state share has remained fixed at 55 percent, the salary cost figure in the formula has gone up 6.1 percent the formula’s operating cost per pupil has gone up 5.7 percent, and with a few other factors, both the total EPS and the total state contribution have gone up between 10 percent and 11 percent. But in that same period wages have gone up 15.1 percent and inflation has gone up 16 percent.
In short, in real, inflation-adjusted dollars, state funding to schools has declined by 5 percent to 10 percent in the last four years. This gives school boards the unenviable choice to pass the real dollar declines in school funding back onto students via educational program cuts or onto taxpayers via property tax increases (while knowing taxpayers have also suffered from inflation). When the state coffers are showing large surpluses, it is disappointing that the state is not helping school funding to keep pace with inflation.
So when you hear the state is committed to funding the schools because it continues to hit 55 percent, know that a fact-checker would probably give that statement a “needs context” evaluation. While that statement is factually true, in real dollars, funding for the schools has actually declined since 2021.
Now that the 55 percent seems to be permanent, it’s going to be really important to keep an eagle eye on the funding formula and how it is doing relative to inflation. And while the state has so much cash, what better way than educating our future workforce and citizenry could there be to spend the surpluses in Augusta?
