BRUNSWICK

Brunswick voters will decide in November whether they want their school department to join a regional service center that could result in more state funding and better deals on programs and services. But one member of the town council is worried about the cost and intricacies of joining a new bureaucracy.

Regional service centers work together on projects and find ways to reduce spending through group purchasing of necessary goods and services, such as teacher training.

Brunswick School Department plans to join the Greater Sebago Education Alliance Regional Service Center, a collective with nine other school departments, including Gorham, Scarborough, Cape Elizabeth, Portland, South Portland and Westbrook school districts and Regional School Units 6 (Bonny Eagle), 14 (Windham-Raymond) and 15 (Gray-New Gloucester).

As a result, Brunswick would receive nearly $38,000 in state funding this year and close to $70,000 next year.

On Monday, the town council voted 8-1 to send the question to voters. Councilor Jane Millett dissented, stating she wanted the town attorney to review the issue.

“The school board is not asking this body to approve the interlocal agreement; that has already been done,” said Aga Dixon, the school department’s attorney, addressing the council. “The question is really simple. We’re asking you to allow the voters to take this question on as they’re required to do by state law.”

“It does sound like a great idea, but as always the devil is in the details,” Millett said. “This is creating a new large bureaucracy and there will be overhead.”

In the first year, the state will kick in $97,000 to the service centers to counter startup costs and pay a staff person. In the future, the state will fund 55 percent of the salary of that staff person, a part-time position. An existing superintendent or assistant superintendent within the membership will likely be paid a stipend to take on this role in the Greater Sebago Education Alliance Regional Service Center.

Millett argued a $38,000 state subsidy bump is a drop in the bucket compared to the annual school budget, “and we all know that what the Legislature gives this year, they can take away next year. What assurances do we have that we’re not going to be putting these bills going forward all on our own dime, so to speak?”

Dixon said if the service center is not a bargain, Brunswick School Department can enter a dormant mode and not participate. In that case, it wouldn’t need to pay the annual $1,000 membership fee.

“There’s no financial commitment other than what we elect to on a year-to-year basis,” said Councilor Christopher Watkinson. “I don’t see the downside, personally.”

The Legislature provided $5 million in 2017-18 and $5 million in 2018-19 in Maine’s biennial budget to help finance the cost of local and regional initiatives to improve educational opportunity through more efficient delivery of educational programs and services.

As of April, the Maine Department of Education announced that 12 regional service centers had formed as part of the departments “EMBRACE Regionalization” initiative.

According to the Department of Education, the centers are created to increase access to high-quality student programming, increase school system efficiency and effectiveness through technical assistance, provide direct, regionally shared services and implement grants received for state initiatives.

Rachel Paling, director of communications for the DOE, said school departments have been getting grants for nearly a year to work on the partnerships.

“We check in with them and ask how it’s going, and there have been challenges — unexpected challenges — but a lot of successes,” Paling said Tuesday.

Some participating in the regionalization initiative may find cost savings and others may not, “but what we hope is that everybody finds is that they’re improving services for students,” or providing services they weren’t providing before, she said.

The participating school systems track any cost savings, and Paling said she didn’t have that data Tuesday.

dmoore@timesrecord.com