Reorganization Planning Committee Meeting
30 July 2008 DRAFT Minutes
Present: Facilitator Bill Ferm Chair Gail Marshall Vice-Chair Brian Hubbell
Bar Harbor: Paul Murphy, Bob Garland Mount Desert: Laurel Robbins Swan’s Island: Tammy Tripler
Southwest Harbor: Skip Strong, Amy Young, Kristin Hutchins Trenton: Judy Sproule, Mike Swanson
Others in attendance: Rob Liebow, Rick Barter, Nancy Thurlow, George Peckham, Rick Savage,
Tim Fuller, and Elsie Flemings
Commencement of Meeting
Gail Marshall called the meeting to order at 7:01 p.m.
Review of Draft Minutes from 23 July 2008
MOVED by Skip Strong, seconded by Paul Murphy and unanimously voted to approve the minutes of
23 July 2008, as written.
Public Comment
None
Work session on draft inter-local agreement and draft reorganization plan
The revised draft was reviewed. Gail Marshall pointed out that in the first five pages the only changes were grammatical.
Rob Liebow said that on page 4 “Trenton” has been corrected and is now listed as “Tremont”.
Page 5 – “April” has been changed to “August”. Tuition groups - added that it wasn’t only those towns that were listed; it could also be other tuition sending towns (e.g. Hancock, Lamoine). Page 7 – clarified that the AOS board would oversee negotiation administration, consistent collective bargaining agreements and maintain all personnel records.
Rob and Nancy talked to Jim Rier regarding subsidy. They asked if we would ever be able to determine whose subsidy was whose. Mr. Rier had some concern that you might have to change every year how you divvy it up because of how it flowed into special ed accounts. For example, Trenton will not be a minimum receiver and can’t be until they correct the law. If you have a very high cost out-of-district special ed placement, the money that comes back from the state is going to flow to that minimum receiver group through the special ed subsidy back and not up to your regular ed subsidy. Mr. Rier didn’t know how you’d deal with that. We would know by our method by what our allowable costs are and what the percentages would be and we can back that out of it. Rob thinks the method we described, using percentages of special ed, would work. Very rare that you end up with that kind of placement anyway.
Gail Marshall – To clarify, it’s what a school’s special ed expenses are, and then factor in what the state is compensating for out of those expenses, then figure out what percentage of the total budget they are paying anyway. They don’t really compensate you for your total expenses. You’re going to figure out the expense and what items within those expenses the state is compensating us for. If they are only paying 50% of that then we have to deal with that too.
Rob Liebow – We as a union are going to incur special ed expenses. You know the state will reimburse such expenses as salaries, benefits, contracted services, not transportation, and we’re going to get each school’s expenses for these. Each school will have a comparable proportional expense of that total. Then the state has done some massive calculation for the whole group. They’re going to give you something of that – currently it is 50%. A check will come for minimum special ed subsidy. We know what our relative comparable expenses are and we will divvy our check up by that amount. Trenton wouldn’t be in on that because they aren’t a minimum receiver. You’d have a different amount that the subsidy sheet from the state will show clearly. It will be divided between Frenchboro, who is a non-minimum receiver, and Trenton based on relative enrollment percentages. Most of it flows to Trenton because they have a higher enrollment than Frenchboro. The only problem would be if there was a high cost out-of-district kid. The amount that Trenton really paid will be stapled to the amount that is coming to the minimum receivers. We’ll have to back that out in some way.
Paul Murphy – Sounds like the fairest way to do it. Concern that whatever we end up with that it be documented and institutionalized so that it survives.
Kristin Hutchins – The state is only going to recognize one AOS, but if there is a town within that AOS that is not a minimum receiver they are going to somehow recognize that differently?
Rob Liebow – I would have to show you a 279 which shows how you come up with EPS allocation amount. There is an exercise that says, “you can be expected to pay up to 6.55 mils of your town’s evaluation towards the schools.” Some towns have such high valuations that they never get anywhere close to that and they just pay that amount. Others, because they don’t have high valuations, the schools start to suck off a lot of the mils capability of the town. They get stopped at some number the state sets. It varies every year. This year it was 6.55 mils. Anything else beyond that, they are now eligible for regular ed subsidy. That’s Trenton and Frenchboro for example. All of us are such high valuation towns that you never reach the mil cap, so therefore you would technically get zero from the state.
Kristin Hutchins – So we will receive one check or two?
Rob Liebow – One big check, but the 279 will show the minimum subsidy amount as a lump sum. They’ll divvy it up for you but they do it by enrollment percentage. That would take everybody’s expenses, as far as they are concerned, and give it to a high enrollment town. I have a spreadsheet that shows what would have happened this year if you applied our method as compared to the state method. $100,000 more subsidy would have gone to Bar Harbor as opposed to who actually expended that because it was a relative enrollment share.
George Peckham – The subsidy we’re speaking about is strictly dealing with special ed. Under the impression that towns like Trenton and Lamoine get a fixed percentage subsidy to defray tuition costs.
Nancy Thurlow – What they spend for tuition goes into that formula. It’s part of that whole formula as a cost. Where their valuation is lower they hit the cap and they get the regular subsidy. It goes into the formula but it isn’t specifically separated out.
Rob Liebow – It goes into it for Swan’s but they never get it back because they are a high value town and minimum receiver. They get nothing back on those expenses for tuition. Because Trenton’s valuation is below that cap they don’t reach it, even with those tuition expenses. There’s some money that flows from the state that flows back because of that.
Judy Sproule – A year ago, when the state first came out with those templates for a non-receiver to join a unit, which at that point was an RSU, where the total valuation made the total unit a minimum receiver, then everybody automatically became one. It sounds like they have acknowledged that the first method was wrong and they have changed it?
Rob Liebow – Yes.
Gail Marshall – In line with “c” on page 14, the most important thing for us to explain to people is the principle that we are attempting to accomplish with our funding formula, not necessarily the minutia about 279’s. That’s going to be a meeting stopper if we do that.
Elsie Flemings – At this point, the state only wants us to give them a final number?
Rob Liebow – They don’t like the idea of satellite units. They’re going to deal with an AOS structure and they want one aggregated budget from that structure and one list of expenses from that structure and they’re going to calculate that structure’s overall subsidy profile and issue one check to that unit as if they were an RSU. Those individual school units, as far as they’re concerned, don’t exist for their financial purposes.
Nancy Thurlow – When we upload all our numbers to the state they can’t differentiate between Southwest and Tremont, etc. They go as one figure to the state.
Elsie Flemings – But theoretically, the state law could change it so if you were to give the lump sum, but give it back proportionally.
Rob Liebow – What about the eventuality where a group in Machias votes their plans down and decides to pay the penalities. Somebody in the state is going to have to divide those individual school unit’s pieces. The state financial department will have to figure out those figures. Why couldn’t they apply that same concept to their AOS’s?
Paul Murphy – Doesn’t think it’s a financial question. Peter Mills’ interpretation was that any entity that
was submitting expenses to the state was by definition a school unit and that the law requires that there be only “x” number of school units. Qualifying or complying school units are different than non-complying school units since that would raise the number of units. They will argue that separating out expenses for individual towns within an AOS is contrary to the mission of cutting administrative expenses from education.
Nancy Thurlow – Right now they can separate it out because we are separate units. Once you get into the 09-10 year they can’t differentiate the number structure the way it is set up. They won’t know what schools are sending the information in.
Tammy Tripler – Since Gail has talked to our attorney about this, does he feel we will have that flexibility for Rob and Nancy to do what they are proposing?
Gail Marshall – Yes.
Bob Garland – Once the inter-local agreement and plan are approved they become the legal documents that control this so if one school in the AOS gets disgruntled and says, “the state formula says we would have received $3 or $4 thousand more than according to the way we divvy it up”, what we approve will govern?
Gail Marshall – Yes, but in future years you’re not going to get information from the state to tell that.
Rob Liebow – One of the key things we did was move “c” back from it’s previous position in how subsidy was set up, by 2/3 vote of your group. Take this first method described, change it so you meet your goal to give everybody back what they earned, and it didn’t have to be tied to any mechanism at the state. It was an internal AOS decision.
Gail Marshall – What’s key is that what doesn’t change is the original goal, that each community gets back what they’ve spent. That’s what we’re striving for.
Looking at the reorganization plan – this plan is only intended to be an outline of what we’re doing. Much of the substance of that is contained in the inter-local agreement.
We have to have a central office budget for 2009-2010 ready to go in time for the high school to do it’s budget and present it at a budget meeting, that by law, has to happen in mid-February. Their share of the central office budget has to be folded into that so we have to have an interim MDI RSS board meet to prepare the budget for the next year, after the election in November. Dick Spencer is saying in #9 that the school committee shall be appointed by January 1, 2009. That shouldn’t be too difficult to do since the committee will be appointed from within the school boards anyway. The Union 98 board will continue to function until June 30, 2009 for all other purposes to manage the schools, policies, staff, etc. But for purposes of preparing and presenting the budget, it has to be that board because that board is going to have to administer it.
Paul Murphy – In terms of the mechanics of the budget, most of the work Nancy does. We’re talking about a couple of board meetings because that budget is pretty straightforward. Once the board is in place, the budget process isn’t going to be a problem.
George Peckham – I’d like to take credit for convincing my town to change its fiscal year. I hope everybody will make an attempt to change that meeting in February. You can change the law. Doesn’t it make a lot of sense?
Gail Marshall – Yes, it makes a lot of sense.
In #10 we will probably amend this to describe that we are going to have a public forum next week and we’ll note that a special attempt was made to bring public to that RPC meeting to discuss this plan before it went to the school boards. #11 – if a plan is defeated by voters in any one of the four towns on MDI the MDIRSS shall not be formed under the plan and the SAU’s shall restart the process to form an AOS with the same or other SAU’s. If the plan is defeated by voters on the outer islands or Trenton, the plan shall go ahead with the remaining towns.
13-A – Any assets and liabilities of Union 92 that Trenton has a piece of will remain with Trenton.
Tuition contracts – describe what schools we have contracts with. Insurance – continuity in insurance and liability policies.
13-D – Must have 2,500 students unless you meet certain exceptions.
Rob Liebow – 13-E – major components of it are that there is a common contract for the five main island players right now and continues with three-year agreements in this cycle. Swan’s and Cranberry have just mirrored what happens in that main contract. Frenchboro hasn’t followed that. Since they could be exempt, Rob asked commissioner if Frenchboro were not able to take on the aspects of the salary scale that they couldn’t be part of our AOS, or could they be exempt for that piece of it. She said we could give them some leeway. Trenton is starting a new three-year contract next year. They will be doing a seven-year ramp up. By the end of the 7th year of the new AOS, Trenton will be fully engaged with salary and language.
Brian Hubbell – We describe this as a plausible narrative of how we expect consistent bargaining could be reached. The key addition to this narrative is the last paragraph on page 9 that states the fact that what governs is the collective bargaining itself. There is no way to guarantee when bargaining in good faith that this will be the result that we reach.
Paul Murphy – In the inter-local agreement remains that enforcement piece where any town that is not in compliance may be asked to remove itself from the AOS. Language suggestion – “the five main island school units” doesn’t mean anything. It should be changed to “the five Mount Desert Island school units.”
Gail Marshall – 13-F – the inter-local agreement, after it has been approved by all school boards, has to be sent to the commissioner for her approval as part of the plan.
Paul Murphy – Interested in a straw poll of the committee regarding both agreements. Fair to know where we all stand going into next week’s public meeting.
Laurel Robbins – Definitely in favor of both documents.
Skip Strong – Thinks we’ve come up with as good a solution as we can.
Kristin Hutchins – Supports both the agreements.
Bob Garland – Supports both.
Amy Young – Expressed support for both documents and admiration for the hard work of Brian, Gail, Paul, Rob and Nancy and making the documents reflect a good school system and how to do it.
Tammy Tripler – Full agreement.
Gail Marshall – Always nicer to fight for something positive. But sometimes doing the positive thing is fighting against a negative. We’ve done that pretty well.
Paul Murphy – Supports both agreements. We hit a lot of roadblocks along the way. This process speaks to how well we all work together. Stroke of brilliance was hiring Drummond, Woodsum, and MacMahon and retaining Dick Spencer.
Brian Hubbell – Every now and then not a bad idea to go back to the fundamentals of an organization and decide what is important. If the happy answer is that things are pretty good the way it is, then that’s not necessarily a negative.
Mike Swanson – Supports both documents. Being on selectboard for town of Trenton, the way this is drawn up we’ll be able to sell it to our town. The phasing-in over seven years will take care of one of the big concerns for our residents. We look forward to joining an organization like this and it’s going to be a win-win situation.
Judy Sproule – Supports these documents. This must be one of the very few groups in the state where everybody is going to fair well. Very appreciative to be a part of this school system. Can we address filing the Letter of Intent?
Gail – When school boards meet in August they will approve new ones to include Trenton. Will then send the amended Notices of Intent along with agreement and plan to the commissioner.
Consideration of Public Information and Presentation Materials Needed
Gail Marshall – Once school board meetings are finished in August, we will have a system-wide meeting and then meetings in each town that we would seriously advertise and each school and town would take responsibility for hosting a meeting. There will be many opportunities to communicate with the public between now and November.
Rob Liebow – Newspapers have been good to us and have put information right on the front pages.
Laurel Robbins – Letters to the editor before November are going to be very important.
Rick Barter – Most schools have email lists for parents and he would head up notifying them for Bar Harbor.
Gail Marshall – The public forum is an RPC meeting and then we will ask for public comments and questions and then we will vote at the end of the meeting to forward the documents to school boards for approval.
Copies of all documents will be available for everyone at the meeting. School boards will need to act on these documents before August 25.
Brian Hubbell – In the best circumstances, the RPC’s work is probably done after the next meeting. There will be roles for all RPC members to take on in advance of the referendum itself.
Judy Sproule – Trenton will send informational letter in August after plan has been filed. Trenton information meeting in September.
Brian Hubbell – If there is any way RPC can be useful to the process then we should consider it. After we take action on the plan there is no change that can be made. Individual school boards can decline to go forward but they can’t make alterations themselves. Once we approve the plan it’s fixed. The only way we would reconvene is if the process gets ditched and we have to start over again.
Date and time of next meeting
Wednesday, 6 August 2008 at 7:00 p.m. – Public Forum
Adjournment
MOVED by Paul Murphy, seconded by Tammy Tripler and unanimously voted to adjourn the meeting at 8:35 p.m.
Respectfully submitted,
Selena Dunbar, Recording Secretary