The Cape Elizabeth School Board wants to give a laptop to every tenth grader and Tuesday adopted a $17.5 million budget allocating $58,500 for that purpose.

The budget contains a spending increase of 6.07 percent, above the 3.3 percent spending cap imposed by the Town Council. The newly adopted budget would increase the property tax rate by 37 cents per thousand dollars of assessed value.

The schools have placed the $58,500 for laptops outside the cap. Also outside the cap – with council agreement – is $400,000 of voter-approved debt for the renovation of the high school and an addition to Pond Cove Elementary School.

CLARIFICATION (March 31): In the March 24 issue of the Current, an article entitled “Cape schools adopt budget above cap” did not clearly represent the School Board’s budget actions. On March 22 the board unanimously voted to adopt a school budget in the amount of $17,502,204, which represents an increase of $946,343 over this year’s budget. The amount of increase consists of $400,000 of voter-approved debt that the Town Council exempted from inclusion in cap. That leaves $546,343 in new expenditures, which is an increase equal to the council’s 3.3 percent cap on increased spending. The board also unanimously adopted a second motion requesting an additional $58,500 for extending the laptop program into tenth grade. They specifically asked for these funds outside the adopted budget proposal and outside the 3.3 percent cap. Together, these two motions form a request from the Town Council for school spending of $17,560,704, a 6.07 percent increase, including the exempted $400,000.

The debate over the funding of the tenth-grade laptop program revolves around the use of technology-targeted funds included in the statewide education funding formula, called Essential Program and Services.

The School Board believes those funds are not intended for property tax relief, though the Town Council pledged to give all additional state funding back to the taxpayers.

School Board member Rebecca Millett said the extra technology funds from EPS the town receives are a result of a ramp-up in the state funding of public education and are not included in what the Town Council has pledged to return to the taxpayers.

Board member Elaine Moloney said the technology-targeted funds in EPS do not necessarily need to be spent on “something above and beyond what is already being spent on technology.”

Town Council Chairman Anne Swift-Kayatta had not seen the school budget numbers yet but said the council is very firm on the cap. If the proposed school budget is above the 3.3 percent cap, not including voter-approved debt, the council would have to look at it very carefully, she said.

“The spending cap is quite clear, it caps expenditures,” said Swift-Kayatta.

The Town Council adopted the 3.3 percent spending cap in February to keep costs down and help alleviate some of the weight of increasing property taxes.

“I’d love to be able to provide more money,”said Swift-Kayatta, “but, it is all about choices and important competing needs … and the citizens have a competing need with property tax relief.”

There are three areas of targeted funds in EPS formula: technology, student assessment and K-2 pupils. The state has not released any guidelines on how these funds should be spent, which is one of the reasons there is confusion on the local level.

The state has said that they will review the use of these funds by the schools, and if the specifically targeted funds are not used for what they are intended, there could be a penalty of decreased funds in the future.

Next year’s tenth graders received laptops in seventh grade under the statewide technology initiative and have had one-on-one access to them since then. Cape Elizabeth extended the laptop program into ninth grade last year with help from a grant from the Cape Elizabeth Education Foundation.

If the Town Council and School Board do not see eye-to-eye on technology funding and the council refuses to allow the $58,500 above the cap the board will have to find another way to fund the program.

Other funding possibilities were floated at a board meeting Tuesday. One option was not to purchase outright but to spread over three years the cost of the software for an academic-support program at the high school over a three-year period, which would free up $22,000 that could be reallocated toward the laptop program.

But the board agreed not to start rearranging the budget unless it was absolutely necessary.

“I think we should go to the Town Council outside of publicized, regular meetings and have this discussion,” said Moloney. “If the answer is negative, we need to reassess the current laptop system,” which also includes local funding for laptops for ninth-graders.

“Or hunt for other monies,” added Interim Superintendent Bob Lyman.