FREEPORT

A PUBLIC hearing on the withdrawal referendum question will take place at 6:30 p.m. on Oct. 14 at the Freeport Town Hall, located at 30 Main St.

Conjecture about student enrollment numbers at a standalone Freeport school district dominated public comment at the Freeport Town Council workshop on Tuesday night to discuss the financial ramifications of exiting Regional School Unit 5.

Question 1 on the November election ballot for Freeport residents will ask if voters approve of the town withdrawing from the RSU, which currently comprises Durham, Freeport and Pownal, subject to the conditions of the withdrawal agreement as approved by the Maine Department of Education.

Town Finance Director Abbe Yacoben and the Freeport Withdrawal Committee were tasked by the town council with drafting an analysis of the potential cost of withdrawal for Freeport by estimating the cost of operating as a standalone district.

The 2013-14 school year budget for RSU 5 was used as a model for school operations, said Freeport Withdrawal Committee Chairman Peter Murray, who is also a member of the RSU 5 board of directors, and the terms of the withdrawal agreement were applied to this model to draft a financial analysis.

“It is critical that we are clear about what this is not,” said Murray. “This is not a budget, this is not what may or may not happen next year … we did not undertake to predict enrollment changes … nor did we attempt to estimate any cost adjustments.”

Murray described the analysis as a “snapshot in time” of what happened in the RSU last year — with all staffing and services maintained — but assumed that all of the students from Durham and Pownal who attended schools had paid tuition to Freeport.

The analysis found that as a standalone district, Freeport could have realized $288,876 in savings over the 2013-14 school year if the 53 elementary students and 185 secondary students from Durham and Pownal had tuitioned in.

If 60 students fewer had tuitioned in, the Freeport tax burden could have increased by $343,695, according to the analysis.

According to a tuition contract supplemental to the withdrawal agreement, the RSU agrees to send 60 students to Freeport High School, or to pay tuition equivalent to 60 students. The tuition rate for those 60 students is set at the midpoint between the maximum allowable tuition as set by the state and the state’s calculated actual cost per student.

Any students from Pownal or Durham who attend in addition to that 60-student minimum would tuition in at the actual cost. The contract contains a grandfathering clause for RSU 5 students attending Freeport schools at the time of withdrawal for nine years after the first year of withdrawal. Additional students can be tuitioned into the high school up to a total of 500 students, not including grandfathered students.

According to the DOE, the 2014 maximum allowable tuition rate for RSU 5 secondary students is $9,209, while the actual cost per student is $10,493. The midpoint was estimated by town officials at the workshop to be $9,708, but actual tuition rates for future years have not yet been determined by the DOE.

Additionally, the tuition contract is non-binding unless adopted by Durham and Pownal residents. If not approved, the RSU will not be contractually obligated to send any students to Freeport High School.

Durham resident and member of the RSU 5 board of directors Michelle Ritcheson said the Brunswick School Department agreed in August to take tuition students from Durham and Pownal in the event of a Freeport withdrawal. Greely High School, in Cumberland, has also agreed to take students as space permits, she said.

The 2014 maximum allowable tuition rate for both Brunswick and Greely is $9,209, while the actual per student costs are $10,277 for Brunswick and $10,596 for Greely, according to the DOE.

“I’m really concerned that we are going to lose the tuition students that we have,” said Terry Jewett. “If I was a taxpayer in Durham or Pownal … and I was going to be faced with a situation where I was going to be charged more for tuition for the privilege of going to Freeport High School … I’d be voting to send my kids somewhere else, not Freeport.

“I think we’re not taking those two towns seriously,” said Jewett. “People vote with their wallets.”

Some residents also expressed a concern that enrollment rates were dropping in other regional schools — citing Brunswick and Wiscasset high schools — and were concerned about losing programming and services if the student population dropped.

Other residents were concerned about overcrowding at the schools if Durham and Pownal students chose to stay in Freeport schools.

“I’m wondering if any financial consideration will be made regarding populations tracking forward,” said resident Mandy MacPherson. “We know that consolidation has caused overcrowding at the high school.”

MacPherson said that the student population coming from Pownal had been stable, while Freeport’s was moderately increasing and Durham’s was more rapidly increasing.

“Based on this, RSU 5 will be facing a future high school population bubble in 2019-20 of 613 students,” said MacPherson, compared to the 492 students currently enrolled. “If given back school choice, some students will certainly choose to go to other schools. This is actually a good thing.”

Murray said that a school committee would respond to population shift and predicting that response was beyond the scope of the analysis.

“We wanted to make sure that, if anything, in this analysis we erred on the side of being conservative in respect to those types of decisions,” said Murray. “We’re moving into an era where we have to compete for our students anyway.”

More than 20 percent of Freeport eighth grade students matriculating to ninth grade tuitioned out of Freeport schools, said Murray, which had impacted the budget and state funding.

“There’s an opportunity to keep those students in the district as well by making sure we’re offering a program that they’re excited about at the high school,” said Murray. “I think this issue of enrollments will not be an issue that we’re dealing with in terms of not having enough, but in how many we take.”

A public hearing on the withdrawal referendum question will take place at 6:30 p.m. on Oct. 14 at the Freeport Town Hall, located at 30 Main St.

rgargiulo@timesrecord.com