I am writing in response to the recent letter (“Poor planning,” May 16) that accused the Brunswick School Department, and more specifically, Superintendent Paul Perzanoski of “poor planning” and “trouble with arithmetic.” I also hope to interject some facts into the conversation.

Between 2009 and the current budget year of 2013, Brunswick’s resident pupil population declined from 3,050 students to 2,432 students. Over this same period, the Brunswick School Department downsized significantly and appropriately.

Compared to four years ago, Brunswick will have 46 fewer teachers, 26 fewer educational techs or resource assistants and 43 fewer support or administration positions.

The school department also has taken further steps to reduce expenses. In 2009, it closed Hawthorne School and in 2011 it closed both Longfellow and Jordan Acres schools. It has asked for more direct financial support from athletics boosters with $100,000 of this current year’s budget coming from the Dragon Fund. Throughout the year, it has also exercised tighter controls over discretionary spending, resulting in budget surplus carryovers that reduce the impact of future budget requests.

This year the school department even worked closely with town officials to develop a proposal that includes drawing $1 million from town surplus, and using $350,000 from a state road grant to reduce the local impact of the school budget to slightly more than a $1 million increase — which equates to a 2.70 percent property tax increase related to the school budget.

So, people should not confuse this year’s budget difficulties with a lack of planning, an unwillingness to make difficult decisions or inadequate downsizing. This position is just not supported by the facts. The hole we find ourselves in today was largely dug by the policy decisions made in Augusta and Washington.

In 2009, excluding debt service payments, the state of Maine provided $4,308 in funding per pupil to Brunswick to fund the cost of education. Fast forward to 2013 and the state has reduced that funding to just $3,425 per pupil, or $884 less per pupil.

So while it is obvious that Brunswick has fewer pupils than four years ago, is anyone really arguing that somehow our pupils are $884 per pupil less expensive to educate than they were four years ago?

If you held per pupil expenses completely flat over the past four years, this $884 in reduced funding per pupil from Augusta creates a $2.1 million funding gap. If you take a more honest approach, and actually factor in inflation for these four years, the gap widens to roughly $2.9 million.

Add to this roughly $700,000 per year in reduced federal funding not related to our Navy families, and what you have is the burden which is now falling upon the shoulders of the town and its property owners.

To be clear, the impact on local property owners this year was not created by any lack of planning or difficulties with math locally. This situation is exactly what state and federal elected officials created through their education funding policies.

The only thing we are left with locally is the choice to either provide the same quality of education we have offered for decades in Brunswick, and fund our schools accordingly, or to deprioritize our focus on our schools and cut their funding.

Rich Ellis represents District 1 on the Brunswick School Board. He chairs the board’s budget and finance committee.

letters@timesrecord.com