On Monday, April 13, Maine lawmakers passed a bill overhauling the state’s public school funding formula in an effort to more equitably allocate resources across the state.

While most districts will receive higher state subsidies, Scarborough will lose over $1 million — the biggest loss of all the school districts in the state.

LD 2226, which Gov. Janet Mills plans to sign, takes into account the number of economically disadvantaged students in a district and ties regional salary adjustments to a cost-of-living index. Tasked with studying the Essential Programs and Services formula — which hadn’t been changed since its implementation in 2005 — the Maine Educational Policy Research Institute provided recommendations to update it, and in March, Rep. Kelly Murphy, D-Scarborough, introduced LD 2226 before the Legislature’s Education and Cultural Affairs Committee.

Many school leaders testified in favor of the bill last month, but Scarborough leaders expressed their concerns about the impact the bill would have on school operations and taxpayers.

Out of the 34 districts losing funding, 12 will lose more than $100,000, and Scarborough and Falmouth will each lose more than $1 million, according to the Maine Educational Policy Research Institute. Cumberland County is impacted the most, with four districts absorbing $3 million in loss. The total loss of funding among the 34 districts amounts to around $5 million, which will be redistributed to other districts in the state, Shannon Lindstrom, chair of the Scarborough School Board, said in an interview before lawmakers passed the bill.

Currently, 12% of Scarborough’s school budget comes from the state and the remainder comes from local taxpayers, Lindstrom said. Personnel makes up over 80% of the school budget, and the biggest budget driver in the past few years has been an increase in ed tech positions required due to a growing kindergarten population, she said.

Although the bill will take effect in the 2027-28 school year, Murphy added a “hold harmless” clause, so the bill wouldn’t be implemented until 2031 for districts losing funding. Then, there would be a three-year transition period during which districts would gradually lose state subsidy.

The reduction in state subsidy comes as Scarborough residents will be paying for the $139 million school project voters approved in November 2025. 

“Asking right now for that investment in our schools is a heavy burden for some of our families that are just trying to make ends meet,” Lindstrom said.

While some properties in Scarborough might be worth a lot of money, many residents are generational landowners who do not necessarily have a lot of money in the bank and are already struggling to pay their property taxes, she said.

“There’s a misnomer here in Scarborough, specifically, that because we are land wealthy, that must mean that there are a lot of wealthy individuals that live in Scarborough,” Lindstrom said. “The reality is that it’s just simply not true.”

Lindstrom said 76% of households in Scarborough don’t have school-aged children, meaning they are not taken into account when the formula weighs the number of economically disadvantaged students.

“Please take into account school district property owners with fixed, flat or falling incomes,” Crescencia Maurer, a member of the Scarborough School Board, said in written testimony to the education committee last month. “They are already struggling with the cost of living and resurgent inflation.”

Scarborough Town Council member Jon Anderson — who shared his personal opinion in an interview before the bill was passed by legislators — said it doesn’t seem right that only a few communities are bearing the brunt of the bill’s impact. While he said the funding formula is better now than it was before, it is not where it needs to be to ensure optimization across the state.

A decrease in state subsidy will mean higher property taxes and more trade-offs in the future as the town attempts to balance keeping taxes low and investing in town and school services, he said.

“I worry that a sudden increase in local tax burden could become the tipping point that forces some of these residents out of their homes or vote ‘no’ on our school budgets,” Anderson said.