Superintendent Christian Elkington presents the proposed FY26 budget at the March 25 RSU 9 board of directors meeting at the Mt. Blue Capus in Farmington. The draft outlines spending priorities, town assessments and staffing adjustments. File photo/Franklin Journal

FARMINGTON — Regional School Unit 9 board of directors reviewed a proposed $45.4 million budget for the 2025-26 fiscal year during their March 25 meeting in Farmington, but no vote was taken. Superintendent Christian Elkington and Director of Finance Alison Gamache presented the draft budget, which had been developed and recommended by the RSU 9 Budget Committee. The full board is expected to vote on the budget on April 8; the meeting will be held at the Mt. Blue Campus in Farmington.

“This budget is a proposed draft and subject to adjustments as may be suggested by the board,” Elkington said. “Or it could be the final version.”

A public forum on the proposed budget is scheduled for Tuesday, with advertising underway. “Alison [Gamache] and I are going to review the budget that the Budget Committee has approved,” Elkington said. “I do want to thank the members of the Budget Committee.”

The board reviewed how RSU 9 is navigating a difficult funding environment, especially in the wake of the loss of $7.5 million in Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief [ESSER] funds, which had been used over the past four years to stabilize the district’s finances. “This is life after COVID as far as funding goes,” Gamache said.

“We need to weather this storm and the negativity in 25-26,” Elkington added. “We’re climbing down from the cliff, not falling off the cliff.”

Town-by-town assessment changes

The district’s overall tax increase is projected at 1.24%, but the impact varies widely by town. Gamache said total town assessments are increasing by $187,712 over last year. The breakdown is as follows:
Chesterville would see the highest increase at 4.04%, or $46,417, followed by Farmington at 3.40% [$178,846], and Industry at 2.18% [$23,64]. New Vineyard would see an increase of 1.26% [$11,159], while Starks would go up by 1.75% [$10,355], and Wilton by 1.48% [$43,185]. Vienna’s increase is modest at 0.26% [$2,126]. On the other end, three towns would see reductions: New Sharon’s contribution would decrease by 2.40% [-$27,514], Temple by 4.55% [-$22,691], and Weld would experience the largest drop at 10.64% [-$77,814].

Only three towns in the district are seeing increases above 2%, Elkington noted. “All other towns are below or minus, with three towns seeing a reduction in that number,” he said.

“RSU 9 doesn’t determine the valuations of each town,” Elkington added. “That is done by a three-year average. The state assessor comes to a town and asks for three or five properties sold, and they base their changing of those numbers based on properties that are sold. We are a valuation community. That’s how we determine.” He noted that other towns may split the calculation between valuation and number of students, but RSU 9 uses valuation only.

Elkington highlighted Weld’s 10.64% decrease, noting the town had experienced a 25% increase in the past two years. “This is their year to breathe deeply,” he said.

Rising costs, pressures

Gamache said salary costs were up about 6% across the board, and the district budgeted a 7% increase in health insurance. However, Gamache said after the fact she got some notification from Anthem that they will not be using $25 million of their balance forward to help reduce rates out to school districts. “For every percent over 7% that we budgeted, it’s $40,000,” she said.

The district also faces a shortfall in special education revenue. “We were a little overzealous in our budgeting; at this point we are 10% above where we were this time last year,” Gamache said, citing an anticipated deficit of between $500,000 and $650,000 due to delayed MaineCare reimbursements in FY25.

“We had budgeted $1.3 million and we weren’t able to get things moving as fast as we liked,” Elkington said. “So next year we are only budgeting $900,000 now that we have that up and running and we have a person in there who we think will be able to keep that going.”

Gamache outlined balance forward fund planning: RSU 9 ended FY24 with $3.4 million, used $2.1 million to offset taxes in FY25 and is using $800,000 in FY26. Of that, $125,000 will continue professional development, $200,000 supports full-time pre-K, $50,000 funds the Family Engagement Coordinator and $425,000 offsets town assessments. An additional $450,000 will go to capital improvement reserves and $200,000 to special education reserves. The anticipated ending fund balance is $1.4 million or 3.1% of the total budget.

Good state news

“There was some good state budget news which really helped us from having to do the kinds of reductions that other districts are going through right now,” Elkington said.

RSU 9 received an additional $1.03 million in state aid, roughly a 5% increase. “Part of that money is just regular increases based on numbers, but about half of it came from higher reimbursement for special ed costs and a one-time reimbursement for adult education,” Elkington said.

“Why is this good news so important?” he added. “We did not need to do a second round of reductions, which would have been a concern for us because we have put some things in place based on the strategic plan. We also have things in place around literacy and math coaches, which we have more than most districts and with a more concerted systemic focus. We think we have the resources there to be able to make some good improvements on our assessments and our student knowledge. So that would have really hurt those two areas.”

Staffing, strategic priorities

“We must adjust our staffing numbers or else earned salary and benefit costs are going to overwhelm our budget,” Elkington said. “And that will lead to deep, forced, unmanageable cuts; which I would call going over the cliff.”

Elkington emphasized a district-wide approach to reductions: “Every school student numbers and SPED case manager numbers were reviewed. When we looked at all of our needs, we looked at our numbers, our average class sizes, and our number of students who were identified, number of students who may be identified.”

He added, “Position reductions, transfers and adjustments are happening in all districts. Districts around the state are making much larger staffing reductions.”

The district has aligned the proposed budget with its strategic plan, prioritizing literacy, engagement, professional development, and curriculum expertise. “We really want to create more experts, people with more skills and expertise within our schools,” Elkington said. He added that the district is working with music and special education staff to become certified teachers.

“When we talk about curriculum, we don’t mean a purchased curriculum,” Elkington explained. “We talk about the standards, which the state changes from time to time. They update them; they’re on a rotation. It’s a five-year rotation, and [the state] is proposing to adjust it to seven. We have a staff that have created units.”

On the special education side, Elkington noted a 2% reduction. “We added an hour per day to adaptive skills and day treatment ed techs; that was a $200,000 increase,” he said. “In reviewing that use, we needed to look at reducing that a little. So that’s being reduced for next year from 7.5 to 7 hours a day; that will be about a $100,000 reduction.”

As of now, the district has 388 identified special education students. “That fluctuates,” Elkington said. “In a week it could be 385 or it could be 392. It just changes. We had a high of 430 or 435 a few years ago, but it has been the same now. This year we have 32 referrals; last year we had 47.”

On the total budget increase Elkington said, “You don’t like to do budgets this way; you really want them to be even from year to year, not big overall changes.”

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