PHILLIPS – SAD 58 missed getting a state exemption from school reorganization by the slimmest of margins – 1/100th of 1 percent, Superintendent Quenten Clark said.

“We are high performing but not efficient,” Clark said, according to a state audit of efficiencies.

Maine Department of Education spokesman David Connerty-Marin said SAD 58 and SAD 75 in Topsham didn’t meet the criteria for efficiency, but school systems in Cape Elizabeth, Yarmouth, Brunswick and SAD 22 in Hampden did.

SAD 58 directors from Avon, Eustis, Kingfield, Phillips and Strong voted in November 2007 to go through a state audit to determine if the district qualified for an exemption from school consolidation.

The idea was just to get the exemption and hold on to it just in case things didn’t work out between SAD 58, SAD 9 and Highland and Coplin plantations, which have a proposed plan to consolidate the 16 communities into one system as required by state law.

Three of SAD 58’s schools were identified as “high performing” in the May 2007 Maine Education Policy Research Institute report “The Identification of Higher and Lower Performing Maine Schools.”

That met the first part of qualifying for an exemption, and the second part required a school system to have had spent less than 4 percent in central office expenses in 2005-06 per student expenditures.

Clark said in November the district had spent about 3.86 percent per pupil for 725 students on system administration that fiscal year, but after the state audited to see if the district was efficient, there was a $9,904.62 state auditing adjustment factored in bringing the number up to 4.01 percent.

The audit noted said the local accounting system report expenditures for system administration were more than the financial report cited by $9,904.62 and advised the district to review its chart of accounts for compliance of state accounting practices.

Department of Education Commissioner Susan Gendron’s letter to Clark dated Jan. 25 stated the district did not meet the alternate plan requirement because the audited system administration per-pupil expenditures represented 4.01 percent of total per-pupil expenditures and didn’t meet the less than 4 percent per pupil expenditure requirement for system administration.

Financial information is submitted on an annual basis by school systems to the department but because each district figures things differently, an audit was needed to determine efficiency, Connerty-Marin said.

Since there was no definition for what an efficient, high performing school district was in the original reorganization law, the state Legislature created an unsophisticated definition, he said. One was having three or more high performing schools in a system and the other was spending less than 4 percent per pupil for system administration.

Applying the definition of an efficient school, a district actually spending more ends up looking better on paper for system administration cost per student, he said.

For example, if you had a district that spent $4,000 on system administration in a $100,000 budget, you’re spending 4 percent, Connerty-Marin said. If you have a system that spent $4,000 on system administration in a $150,000 budget, then you’re spending 2.7 percent, he said.

Clark said he is disappointed SAD 58 didn’t get the exemption because the whole consolidation process has gotten so confusing. The exemption was only good for three years, he said, so they would have had to do something after that.

“I didn’t think we would have been able to maintain the exemption, but it would have given us some breathing room,” Clark said.