LEWISTON — Local educators and media got a look Thursday at some of the thinking behind Gov. Paul LePage’s proposed education budget.

Education Commissioner Stephen Bowen hosted a news conference at Lewiston Regional Technical Center to outline LePage’s education budget philosophy.

“When we began work on the current budget last fall, it was clear the governor was not satisfied with just continuing to fund schools the way we typically have — one enormous account we put money into and distribute to the schools according to an astonishingly complex formula,” Bowen said.

The proposed education budget calls for $894 million in spending for the 2014-15 school year. About $10.1 million would be devoted to specific programs and grants that schools could apply to receive.

“What the governor wanted to do was take some of that money and make strategic investments in targeted areas we thought would have big returns — promising practices, new innovative approaches and things we have been talking about in Augusta,” Bowen said.

Those include grants for programs that offer dedicated help for struggling schools, that promote better teacher evaluations, that transition more students to college and professional certification programs and that give students more choices for education beyond high school.

“Out of the big education pie, we are talking about $10 million or so,” Bowen said. “But it’s targeted, and we can see how these programs can continue to grow and expand. We can continue to gather research and data about how effective these programs are and that drives some of the decision-making down the road.”

Eva Giles, director of Lewiston Adult Education, said the money would be welcome.

“The proposed increased funding would more than double the number of sites now offering college transition programs,” Giles said. “That would result in many more adults entering college and successfully completing their degree and enhancing the skill set of our states’ workforce.”

Bowen said LePage is scheduled to release his proposed education budget to the Legislature’s Appropriations Committee on Monday. If legislators approve, Maine schools could apply for funding for the new programs for the 2014-15 school year.

“We’ll do it on a couple of different scales,” Bowen said. “There is a four-year phase-in for these programs and we want to make resources available to districts based on where they are. We know we have districts, like here in Lewiston, that have been working on this for a long time. For them, it would be training and support type pieces. But we have districts that are nowhere on these models and they just have to start getting off the ground.”

The news conference was part of Bowen’s Promising Practices tour, in which he has scheduled visits to all nine superintendent regions before the school year wraps up. He followed up the conference Thursday by sitting in on the taping of a virtual social studies lesson being recorded by Lewiston teacher Michelle Crowley.

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