On Tuesday, Embden residents shot down a measure to formally explore leaving the town’s school district, Regional School Unit 74.
The 148-107 vote comes after months of tension in the small town. School costs were at the center of the debate: critics of withdrawal believed such a move would undercut the district’s budget and be detrimental to local education, while advocates saw it as a way to explore potential tax savings for the town amid rising education costs.
Residents collected over 60 signatures to get the issue on the ballot. Tuesday’s nay vote means that the town will stop at step two of the 22-step withdrawal process and Embden will remain in its school district.
Had residents voted in favor of moving forward, Embden would have formed a withdrawal committee under the state’s guidance and begun negotiating an exit from RSU 74 before holding a second vote to decide whether or not to withdraw.
“I’m relieved that they have chosen not to proceed with the withdrawal process,” said RSU 74 Superintendent Mark Campbell. “And I do understand that there were some messages sent by that. As the leadership team, we need to take a hard look at what we can do to further lessen the tax burden on all of our families in RSU 74.”
RSU 74 serves four towns — Anson, Embden, New Portland and Solon — and has four schools. If Embden had gone through the withdrawal process and voted to leave, the schools could have faced drastic cuts, Campbell recently told The Maine Monitor.
Regardless of their stance on the issue of withdrawal, many residents pointed to issues in the state’s school funding model.
Paul Fortin, who spearheaded Embden’s withdrawal exploratory committee earlier this year, previously told The Maine Monitor that debate between neighbors was misguided, and that the issue lay with the state.
The state’s funding formula — known as Essential Programs and Services (EPS) — can place more financial responsibility of education on towns if property valuations are high or student enrollment is low. School districts also tend to raise beyond what the EPS model requires to cover other costs not covered by the state formula.
Valuation in Embden has more than doubled since 2015.
On Tuesday, residents in RSU 74 also voted on whether to approve a $12.9 million school budget, about a $350,000 increase from last year. Embden will be responsible for about $2.2 million of these funds. Residents across the district passed the school budget in a 238-181 vote, an outcome that heads to the school board for final approval Wednesday night.
School enrollment across the district has been declining, according to state data. However, the district reported that Embden’s student count has risen slightly since the 2020-21 school year.
This is not the first time Embden has explored withdrawal. The town went through the formal process in 2015 but the measure ultimately failed. The nearby towns of Strong and Phillips recently voted in favor of beginning the withdrawal process from MSAD 58, which saw its $12.6 million school budget fail at the polls on Tuesday.
The move follows a decades-long trend of rural communities exploring withdrawal to tackle budget woes and take control of local education.
Embden resident Kayla Starr, who has been a strong critic of withdrawal and won a bid for a selectman position on Tuesday, said that she felt “proud” that residents chose to “stand behind education, community and the next generation.” Still, she pointed to a looming need to address the underlying issue: how schools are funded in Maine.
“What we’re seeing across the state hopefully serves as a wake-up call to state officials — it’s time to reexamine the funding formula for public education and find real solutions,” Starr said. “Towns shouldn’t be left to figure it out on their own, especially when doing so could unintentionally cause more harm than good.”
