CARIBOU, Maine – A proposal to eliminate several staff positions from Regional School Unit 39’s budget next fiscal year sparked criticism from the school community at a recent meeting.
Last year, voters in RSU 39, which includes Caribou and Stockholm, passed a $22,053,109 budget, setting the local education mill rate at 11.31 mills per $1,000 of property value. Caribou residents paid $4,451,017 total for the school portion of their tax bills, while those in Stockholm paid $136,756 total.
Business Manager Mark Bouchard said that he could not provide the full list of potential cuts for fiscal year 2024-2025 because district administrators are still in budget negotiations and will not have a full proposed budget for many weeks.
On Wednesday, a dozen people, including teachers, athletic and support staff, parents and a student, spoke out against the suggested cuts during a school board meeting. Several identified themselves or other staff members as being on the potential cut list.
Heather Anderson is one of four eighth-grade teachers. She teaches English and social studies along with colleague Kim Barnes, who also addressed the school board. Anderson said that she is one of the teachers whose position has been discussed as a potential cut.
Anderson said she finds the district’s proposed cuts to teaching staff at Caribou Community School odd, since the school has seen a substantial increase in students.
“Our school is growing, not shrinking. Cutting staff will enlarge class sizes and overburden our teachers with learning unfamiliar subjects and less time to give students experiences outside the classroom,” Anderson said.
It’s not only the teachers who are affected when positions get eliminated, said Lena McShea, Caribou Community School’s art teacher.
Seventeen years ago, McShea came to RSU 39 from a school district that had only 150 students, where she split her days between the elementary and high schools. At Caribou, McShea teaches art classes for kindergarten through eighth grade in a school that has 778 students total.
If McShea had to permanently replace an art teacher at Caribou High, which has nearly 450 students, she would need to eliminate most of her classes for specific grade levels at the Community School in order to split her time between both schools. Students at both schools would not be able to gain as many skills from art, she said.
“Studies have shown that visual art has a positive impact on students’ abilities to organize their writing, improves their sophisticated reading skills and helps them become creative thinkers and problem solvers,” McShea said. “A cut to art at Caribou High School is a cut to art at Caribou Community School.”
Several others pointed out how staff cuts could affect students’ access to technology and to emotional support systems within their schools.
Rani Mehta is one of two guidance counselors at Caribou High School. If the school had only one counselor, that would go against the American School Counselors Association’s recommended ratio of one counselor for every 250 students, Mehta said.
The proposed cut in counselors comes at a time when Caribou High’s rate of student homelessness has doubled, and as the district works to address bullying and post-pandemic mental health challenges.
“We strive to meet our students’ needs within three areas: academics and careers, social and emotional needs and mental health,” Mehta said. “If there’s only one counselor, that would leave many students with unmet needs.”
James Jalbert and two other computer network technicians oversee 11 WiFi networks, 133 network access points and more than 2,100 school electronic devices, including 413 staff devices and 1,633 student devices.
If one of the technicians were gone, that would leave only two employees to fix issues with devices, which could delay when students can complete school work and hinder teachers’ communications with colleagues and parents, Jalbert said.
Caribou High girls varsity wrestling coach Nina Ryan has coached two state wrestling champions and four others who placed in the state championship, while empowering all female athletes, said her husband Casey Ryan, who coaches boys varsity wrestling.
“Women’s wrestling is the fastest growing high school and college sport in America,” Casey Ryan said. “At a time when gender equality is at the forefront of so many discussions, cutting a coach for a sport that has grown would send the wrong message.”
Caribou resident and parent Sara Brown and Sarah Draper, an ed tech and Caribou High graduate, said they would not support cutting programs like Gifted and Talented, the high school’s track and field team, and the diversity, chess and drama clubs, which help engage students and build self-confidence.
Caribou High junior Sophia Garcia said she does not want to see student morale drop as a result of losing beloved teachers and programs.
“In the end, it boils down to students who are the future of this town,” Garcia said. “If cuts are made and class sizes increase, it takes teachers away from helping students reach their potential.”
Superintendent Jane McCall said that she and district leadership are looking at ways to reduce the current number of potential cuts.
McCall asked that the school board consider at least a 2-mill increase in the current local education mill rate of 11.31 mills, which still won’t cover projected costs. In that scenario, at least $658,000 in cuts would be needed to close the gap, Bouchard said.
Next fiscal year’s budget has been more challenging to balance because federal COVID relief funds are ending in September 2024 and COVID-funded positions need to go back into the general budget, Bouchard noted. The district is also facing wage and health insurance increases, which make up 81 percent of the budget.
The school board’s finance sub-committee meets again on Thursday, May 3 to review the budget before presenting a final proposed budget to the full school board Wednesday, May 8.
On May 22, Caribou and Stockholm residents will vote on whether the final proposed budget will go to a referendum in June or if they want administrators to revise the budget again.
