The Hampden-area school district is cutting back its staffing due to declining enrollment.
Regional School Unit 22, which is made up of Hampden, Newburgh, Winterport and Frankfort, is cutting 17.2 full-time positions across the district, Superintendent Nicholas Raymond said.
Staff in special education, nursing and classroom teaching are slated to be reduced. Nine of the cut positions came from special education. The other reductions include wellness coordinators, librarians and a part-time school nurse.
The majority of the roles were all either previously unfilled or are teachers who are retiring at the end of this school year, Raymond said during an April 30 budget meeting.
School budgets across the state have become battlegrounds where residents and city councils demand reductions while schools push back, including in RSU 22 where voters initially rejected last year’s budget. This year, RSU 22 officials drafted a budget that so far has not drawn public backlash, which includes position cuts and adds less than 1% to costs compared with last year.
The district has drafted a roughly $40 million budget, with less than $50,000 added from last year’s approved version.
Although the number of staffing changes may seem high, the level of education the district provides isn’t changing, Raymond said.
“I can say with a straight face that our students are not going to be negatively affected by just a .15% increase [to the budget],” he noted.
The cuts were possible without much change in student education because of a declining enrollment across the district, Raymond said at the meeting.
The district has 68.5 fewer students enrolled in the coming year than it did previously. The majority of that drop came from Hampden and Winterport, which are predicted to have nearly 50 fewer students between the two towns, according to budget documents.
While shrinking enrollment is not a new trend for the district, this is the first time it has been accounted for in the proposed budget in recent years, Raymond said in April.
“I will say we probably should have looked at this the last couple of years. We have had some declining enrollment over the last few years,” Raymond said at the meeting.
RSU 22 budget committee members were supportive of the draft during the April meeting, with the only point of discussion being how much of the district’s reserves should be used to offset any burden the budget could put on taxpayers.
In 2024, the district used $3 million to offset a rise in taxes. That amount dropped to $1 million in 2025.
While Hampden Councilor Matt LaChance initially supported the district spending $650,000 of reserves, RSU 22 Board of Directors member Brooke Miller wanted no funds contributed.
Spending roughly half a million dollars would equate to property tax bills dropping by $80, Miller said. That small savings is not worth the district needing that money in the coming year and not having it, Miller said.
“There are expenses coming up all the time that we are under-budgeted or unbudgeted for,” Miller said at the April meeting.
The budget committee recommended the Board of Directors spend half a million dollars of reserves to lower the tax impact. The board could still decline the recommendation.
The district’s surplus funds have become a flashpoint in the towns that are included in it.
RSU 22 has nearly $9.5 million in reserve funds. Under Maine law, roughly $1.5 million has to be spent in the next three years because it is more than the district can carry forward from previous budgets.
There is a plan in place to spend the funds down over the next three years, Raymond said at the meeting. He suggested half a million dollars of reserves be used, noting that giving nothing could cause voters to turn down the budget, he said.
There are two more meetings on May 13 and June 4 where the budget will be discussed. A referendum vote on the budget will be held June 9.
