Worried that Cape Elizabeth schools will fall behind other schools in the area and drag down the town’s property values and quality of life with them, a group of citizens is distributing flyers, has launched a Web site and is banging on doors to encourage citizens to vote against the Town Council’s $19 million approved school budget June 10.

The loose-knit organization calls itself “C.A.P.E.” – Citizens Advocating for Public Education – and has just launched a Web site, www.snowhaven.com/budget.

“We want the citizens to vote no, and the reason they’re voting no is, (the school budget is) too low. It’s very simple,” said David Hillman, one of the group’s spokesmen.

He said C.A.P.E.’s members include teachers, parents, non-parents, high school students, and even older residents, all of whom are concerned about the implications of the Town Council’s approved 4.6 percent budget increase. The School Board had asked for a 6 percent increase, and Superintendent Alan Hawkins had originally requested an increase of 13 percent.

C.A.P.E.’s contention – one considered valid by many education professionals – is that school expenses by nature rise faster than the consumer price index, so linking school budget increases to the CPI, as the Cape Elizabeth Town Council has done for the past three years, is to actually reduce the schools’ budgets in terms of purchasing power.

According to information distributed by C.A.P.E., Cape Elizabeth schools spent more per student than 10 of 11 neighboring districts surveyed in 1995-1996. By 2005-2006, all but three of the 11 districts were spending more than Cape Elizabeth, and Cape had also fallen below the state average in spending.

While Cape students continue to be high performers, Hillman said, there’s a real concern that underinvestment will quickly lead to loss of talented teachers, students who are behind their peers in technology expertise, and schools that are no longer an asset to the community.

“If you don’t have adequate textbooks, how do you learn? If you don’t have adequate technology, which we don’t, how do you learn?” Hillman said. “You’ve got to spend to get quality anything.”

According to the C.A.P.E. group, the difference between the 6 percent budget increase recommended by the School Board and the 4.6 percent increase approved by Town Council – $265,088 – is the equivalent of about $50 per year for the owner of a median-priced house in Cape Elizabeth, or the cost of one postage stamp every three days.

David Silvernail, director of the Center for Educational Policy, Applied Research and Evaluation at the University of Southern Maine in Gorham, has studied what makes the state’s most successful schools successful for more than a decade. He concurs with C.A.P.E. that school expenses, tied as they are to salaries and benefits, tend to increase faster than the consumer price index, and that a school budget that increases at the rate of inflation is actually a budget that is shrinking in terms of purchasing power.

However, he is quick to point out that spending more money does not make a better school.

“There’s not a strong correlation between the amount spent and achievement,” he said in an interview Friday. In his studies, Silvernail said, he has seen high-performing schools that spend far less than some low-performing schools – and other schools where student achievement does seem to reflect the amount of money spent.

“You’ve got to have a minimum amount of money behind each child … but beyond that, you’ve got to look at where you’re spending it,” Silvernail said.