Region 10 Technical High School has whittled down its tentative 2021-22 budget by $100,000, reducing the amount local school districts will pay by $240,557.
The Region 10 school board tentatively approved a smaller $3.3 million budget Monday, an 11% increase that drops the total Brunswick School Department, Maine School Administrative District 75 and Regional School Unit 5 have to pay from $406,116 to $165,559.
That is an increase of $63,392 to Brunswick, $60,893 to MSAD 75 and $41,274 to RSU 5.
Superintendent Paul Perzanoski said the budget still contains an additional $262,299 or 8.7% increase to the budget in order to respond to the coronavirus pandemic and the related safety restrictions. The school is leasing six modular classrooms to provide more room for students to space out. That means additional spending not related to the pandemic, is only a 1.88% budget increase.
“I certainly appreciate the reductions and requests from the sending school districts because this is not a good time to be asking for more money from taxpayers,” said board member Nancy Chandler, an MSAD 75 school board representative.
Perzanoski said Monday that the Maine Department of Education agreed to factor in the additional square footage of modular classroom space in its subsidy calculations. The school is expecting to get an additional $140,423 in state subsidy as a result.
The school board had hoped to get federal aid to help pay for pandemic-related expenses. However, Perzanoski said the technical schools didn’t receive any of the most recent federal funding. Perzanoski said Brunswick is slated to receive $2.78 million; RSU 5 is expected to get $1.3 million and MSAD 75 is to get $3.25 million.
Perzanoski said the state education commissioner’s office told him the sending school districts can use their COVID-19 relief funds to pay for COVID-19 expenses at Region 10. He said the state is also looking at other ways to try to help offset the financial burden of technical schools caused by the pandemic.
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