Next year’s tenth graders at Cape Elizabeth High School may have to do without individual laptops, a tool they have benefited from for the past three years.

The School Board’s plan to extend one-to-one laptop computing throughout the high school hit a roadblock last week when the Town Council refused to provide $58,500 in additional funds to extend the laptop program into tenth grade.

The additional funds were requested beyond the budget, but would have exceeded the Town Council’s 3.3 percent cap on increased spending – something the Town Council said it was not willing to do.

The $17,502,204 proposed school budget, which the council has accepted, is a 5.72 percent increase from this year’s budget. It includes $400,000 of voter-approved debt for the high school renovation that was exempted from the cap, leaving rest of the budget’s increase at 3.3 percent.

A public hearing on the town’s entire budget, which includes the school, municipal and community services budget, county taxes and state revenue, has been set for Monday, April 25, at 7:30 p.m. at Town Hall.

Last week the Town Council Finance Committee, a committee of the whole council, met with the School Board to discuss the proposed school budget and the additional technology request.

Interim Superintendent Bob Lyman said the $58,500 would not be a one-time expenditure, but would recur over the next three years until the lease had been paid off. He also added that if Cape Elizabeth were to continue with the original intention of the state’s laptop initiative to promote one-to-one computing it is likely a request for an additional $58,500 would be made next year to extend the program to the 11th grade.

Current ninth graders received laptops in 2002 when they were in seventh grade, the first year of Maine’s Technology Learning Initiative. The laptop program followed them into the high school this year because of a $27,000 grant from the Cape Elizabeth Education Foundation, in addition to $25,000 in district spending.

“It’s a tool for them,” said Lyman. He said the one-to-one technology initiative has changed how the classroom works, how teachers are instructing and students are learning. “It’s a part of them,” said Lyman.

However, working under such a strict spending cap Lyman is not sure about the future of one-to-one computing at the high school.

“I don’t believe right now that we can fund (laptops) for this year and then have the money to fund them next year,” said Lyman.

He said he understands why the Town Council did what they did and respects their decision. Now, Lyman said the school department’s job would be to look at other options and “make computers as available as possible to students at the high school.” Lyman said he had asked high school Principal Jeffrey Shedd and the computer coordinator to brainstorm a “plan B.”

Shedd said he was not surprised by the Town Council’s decision. He said that instead of one-to-one computing at the high school, they might take the laptops it currently allots to the ninth graders, add them to 20 or so other laptops the school owns, put them all on carts and create a mobile computer lab that could be used by multiple grades.

All members of the Town Council said they support laptops in the classroom, but, even so, could not rationalize breaking their pledge to the taxpayers to limit expenditure.

“3.3 percent is very tight,” said Councilor Mary Ann Lynch, who has two children in the schools, one of whom just entered seventh grade this year and received a laptop. “If I thought (the 3.3 percent cap) was terrible I would break the pledge,” she said.

The Town Council made the pledge last September because of the impending Palesky tax cap initiative, which would have capped property taxes at 1 percent of assessed value. The pledge would limit spending to a 3.3 percent increase and would return to the taxpayers in the form of property tax relief all additional funds received from the state as a result of new legislation.

Councilor David Backer said that the Palesky initiative was draconian, and that at the time the Town Council asked the voters to “trust us, we heard you.”

“1,800 people in Cape voted for Palesky,” Backer said. “We go against those 1,800 people at our own peril.”

School Board Chairman Kevin Sweeney said the Town Council’s decision was not a big surprise. “Times are tough,” Sweeney said, “everybody is looking over their shoulder after Palesky.”

EPS versus LD1

The fundamental difference between the School Board and Town Council was the perceived intent of increased funding coming from the state this year.

According to a presentation by School Board Finance Committee Chairman Kathy Ray the town is receiving additional funds from the state totaling $338,733.

School Board member Rebecca Millett made the case that only a portion of that money is a result of the passage of LD1, the Legislature’s answer to the voters’ request for property tax relief, and therefore subject to the Town Council’s pledge. The other portion, totaling $205,500, is a result of the newly implemented Essential Programs and Services funding formula, which includes specifically targeted technology funding.

The Town Council did not see it that way. Backer said that they would have to agree to disagree. He said he was not aware of “a refined delineation between LD1 money and EPS money … so to say there is a difference is arbitrary.”

Councilor Jack Roberts stood out from his colleagues on the Town Council by stating he opposed the spending cap last year. He said it was wrong to decide last year what needed to be spent this year.

“We’re not saving tax dollars, we’re deferring them to cover later,” Roberts said. He also opposed using a consumer price index to set the cap. “No household has to pay bills the way the town does, no matter how you slice it,” he said.

Councilor Michael Mowles did not support breaking the council’s pledged spending cap, but did offer a potential solution by floating the idea pay for a one-time addition to the school budget of about $60,000, using proceeds from the sale of town property. That would make room to include the laptop program in the budget.

Mowles said $9,000 from the town’s sale of the former service station lot at 316 Ocean House Road, next to Town Hall, was still available and the rest could come from the impending $225,000 sale of property on South Street, half of which would go to the general fund and the other half to the land acquisition fund.

“You can’t tell me the land acquisition fund is more important than our children,” Mowles said.

Councilor Paul McKenney said that he was committed to the 3.3 percent cap even though he did not take part in the vote last September, but he would support funding the laptop program out of the general fund. The rest of the council rejected Mowles’s suggestion.