Facing major reductions in state aid to schools, officials in Scarborough and Cape Elizabeth are asking state legislators to change the formula that determines how $27 million in cuts will be parceled out.

In Scarborough, which faces a loss of nearly $781,000 in general purpose aid in this year’s fiscal budget, Town Manager Tom Hall has written District 6 state Sen. Phil Bartlett asking for help.

Hall recommended that instead of basing cuts on a town’s property valuations, as the current formula does, the state reduce all school districts’ general purpose aid, or GPA, by 2.75 percent. Scarborough’s projected loss represents a little more than 11 percent of its GPA budget.

“I have models that calculate the effects of such an across-the- board approach,” Hall said in a telephone interview. “This is not easy or fun for anyone and let’s share equally in the pain.”

The Cape School Board wrote a letter last week and sent it to Gov. Baldacci, Education Commissioner Sue Gendron and members of the Joint Standing Committee on Education and Cultural Affairs. Cape Elizabeth will lose nearly $441,000 – or about 13 percent of its GPA budget.

Like Hall, the Cape board took issue with the formula the state used, rewarding higher property valuations with higher cuts.

The formula is based on last year’s property valuations, said Cape School Board member Peter Cotter, which have dropped since then because of a decrease in home values as the national and state economy began to lag.

Cotter argues that making larger cuts to coastal towns such as Cape Elizabeth and Scarborough based on established mil rates that can’t be adjusted until next fiscal year isn’t fair, since a revaluation of properties would show that those values have lessened.

“Those valuations were set in a totally different time period than today,” Cotter said. “The state’s formulas don’t reflect that.”

In the letter, board members wrote that “This methodology based on the Essential Programs and Services formula unduly penalizes a handful of districts. That some districts see only a 2 percent cut, while others (including Cape Elizabeth) face double-digit cuts, does not meet the test of ‘fairness.’ “

State Sen. Bartlett said that making the cuts more equitable, as Hall and Cape School Board members suggest, isn’t easy and is unlikely to happen.

Making changes to the formula could be more harmful in the long run, as districts in northern Maine – where GPA funds make up nearly 60 percent or more of school budgets – would be more negatively affected, Bartlett said.

“It’s tricky,” he said. “When you start getting into the changes in education funding you really start pitting different districts against each other and that makes it so much harder.”

The Legislature also needs a two-thirds majority vote to make a change in the formula, which is unlikely as well, Bartlett said.

Instead, the Legislature, in conjunction with the Education Committee, recommends capping the percentage a district could be cut, most likely at 8 percent, Bartlett said. The remainder of the money would be drawn from other state emergency budgets to make up for the shortfall.

The Legislature has until the end of January to pass the supplemental budget.

“Our best case scenario is saying that we understand some communities are hit pretty hard and we’re going to try and cushion that,” Bartlett said.

Not all officials see a formula change as the answer. While the EPS formula was used to generate a percentage of cuts, it is also used to determine how much money a district usually receives, said Cape Elizabeth Town Manager Michael McGovern. In that regard, he said, it has served Cape and other higher-property-valued communities well in the past.

“My real worry this year is with property valuations going down,” McGovern said. “It’s not time to shift the formula now.”

If the cuts remain the same as they are, Scarborough will shift money from its operating budget to its education budget, Hall said.

Cape has discussed transferring $200,000 from its undesignated surplus to the education budget to make up for at least 50 percent of the projected shortfall, McGovern said.

The $27 million in state education cuts is part of a broader $150 million belt-tightening Gov. John Baldacci announced in November to offset an upcoming state budget shortfall.