OXFORD – SAD 17 Superintendent Rick Colpitts and others are set to meet with the Legislature’s Education Committee on Wednesday to ask that the district be excused from fully funding their local share for education.

LD 367, sponsored by Sen. Jim Hamper, R-Oxford, will ask that the repeal provision enacted in 2010, which limits the reduction of state subsidy for education until June 30, 2013, be repealed.

The 2010 repeal provision allowed districts to fund the local share to the same percentage the state does, excusing them from raising the full amount required by the Essential Programs and Services statute. LD 367 would erase the law’s “sunset clause.”

State statute currently obligates the state to fund 55 percent of K-12 education, but it only fulfills about 84 percent of that commitment.

Unless legislators agree to waive the state’s minimum local required share for education spending again, school officials have said taxpayers in the district may have to raise an additional $1.8 million for 2013-14.

“I very much support extension of the waiver, particularly this year,” Norway Town Manager David Holt said Tuesday. Norway is one of eight district towns that will feel the effect of the EPS  assessments which could result in an average overall increase of 10.99 percent to the towns.

Under the full local share, towns such as Otisfield and Paris may see their share go up 14.49  percent, or $343,600, and 15.17 percent, or $29o,125, respectively.

Norway would see a 9.04 percent or $285,177 increase.

Other towns in the district are Oxford, Hebron, West Paris, Waterford and Harrison.

Last year, voters approved a $35.1 million budget with an overall 6.03 percent increase in local assessments by not raising the full EPS amount.

Since 2004, Maine has used the Essential Programs and Services model to calculate how much money each school district needs to spend to provide an adequate education. Calculations are based on various factors, including staff-to-pupil ratios, with adjustments for characteristics of the student population and geographic factors.

The state uses property values to determine how much each community should contribute to the EPS amount, and a state subsidy covers the rest.

The majority of school districts fund the full required amount, according to information from the state Department of Education.

Oxford Hills School District officials say because of budget cuts, the district has seen a class size increase at all levels. The elementary schools have gone from about 15 students per class five years ago to as much as 28 students in some.

The superintendent said they have reduced or eliminated programming in foreign language, gifted and talented, literacy and math coaches. The fifth and sixth grades have been restructured, administration has been consolidated at the elementary level, technology investments have been deferred as well as maintenance and bus purchases.

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