Scarborough searches for funding

SCARBOROUGH — Scarborough school officials say a boycott of the high school parking lot, promised by students upset over a new $50/year parking fee, has fizzled, but students may get a say in how the district tries to pay its bills in the future.

School board Chairman Robert Mitchell has announced the creation of an ad hoc “alternative revenue committee” that will be tasked with researching fees paid by students in surrounding districts and brainstorming potential revenue streams in Scarborough.

This past spring, the expiration of $1.2 million in temporary federal jobs money sent the school board scrambling for funds even as it raised the school department budget $1.7 million to $37.4 million, in order to restore language teachers and other programs cut in recent years. Given a total $2.9 million increase in the cost borne by local taxpayers, the school board began to look to student fees as a way to shift some of the cost of education to families who use the system, rather than rank-and-file taxpayers. Superintendent Dr. George Entwistle III says a $200,000 revenue target was talked down to $50,000 during the budget process, and clipped further to $25,000 when students began to reject the means of collection – a charge to use the high school parking lot.

“The community really stepped up this year to fill a loss in federal funding, and 80 percent of them don’t have kids in the school,” said Entwistle. “The fee thing is a bugaboo in any school district but it’s there to acknowledge that the users of the system have to kick in a little more.”

Although voters approved the school budget May 15 by a 683-585 margin, students rallied at the Aug, 23 school board meeting, urging revocation of the fee. The school board voted 6-1 to keep the charge in place, however, and the senior class president, Jack Sullivan, vowed a drive to “boycott the lot.” The plan, he said, was for student commuters to prove they actually save the district money by “stuffing the bus,” forcing extra runs in order to accommodate all students with the district’s 19-bus fleet.


Lat week, high school Principal Dean Auriemma says 265 permits have been sold, with “well over a majority of the senior class” buying in. “My secretary has been flat-out totally preoccupied with processing payments and handing on tags to the kids,” he said. “It’s actually been her full-time job from registration a month ago through the first days of school.”

“By the second day of school I knew my plan had not really gone well,” said Sullivan, on Thursday. “All of the students were pretty much into it in the beginning, but once they realized they had to be inconvenienced for the plan to work, some of them kind of quit.”

Sullivan claims suspension of senior privileges, including the right to leave school grounds during the day, was used as leverage to sell permits. His own privileges were temporarily suspended, he says, because he and a neighbor elected to carpool and share a permit, using it in whomever’s car they used each day. That neighbor used a waiver to obtain a free permit, he said.

“Because I did not pay the fee in my own name, I was punished,” he said, admitting that there are only a few holdouts against the fee.

Still, even though the fight over high school parking fees appears to have abated, the district continues to fret over potential funding sources going into its next budget.

Mitchell said he will appoint “six to eight” people to the new alternative revenue committee. Membership will be open to students, parents and community members in addition to school board members and administrators, he said.

The committee will be charged with reporting back to the school board its recommendations, which could include increasing the parking fees, or the activity fees students also pay to participate in athletics or extracurricular activities, as well as any number of suggestions for new sources of revenue.

Mitchell unveiled the committee at the Sept. 6 school board meeting, saying he would make appointments to it at the Oct. 4 session. Auriemma added that students would be advised of their ability to have at least one representative among the membership. However, on Sept. 13, Sullivan said the committee was news to him.

“I have heard absolutely nothing about that, which I find kind of suspicious,” he said. “They probably don’t want me anywhere near that committee.”

Anyone interested in being on the committee should call 730-4102 or email DRideou@scarborough.k12.me.us.