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Proposal Would Increase Education Funding by Taxing Wealthy

AUGUSTA, Maine — It's been 12 years since voters approved an initiative requiring the state to fund 55 percent of the cost of public education in Maine.

But the state has never met that threshold.

Instead, towns have increasingly been forced to raise property taxes and cut services in an effort to make up the difference.

Now, a coalition of students, parents, teachers and community members are asking voters to weigh in again.

A proposed 2016 ballot measure seeks to raise $110 million for public education by requiring the state's wealthiest residents to pay more in taxes.

Amanda Cooper teaches 8th grade English and social studies at Gorham Middle School. She has been a classroom teacher in Maine for 15 years. When she started out, Cooper says her average class size was between 17 and 22 kids.

Now, because of decreased funding, ed tech and teacher positions have been cut in recent years and class sizes have jumped to as many as 27 students.

"That's a lot of kids," she says. "Sometimes we don't have enough desks."

Cooper says that has made life in the classroom tough on the school's remaining teachers and their students.

"That specifically impacts students, particularly special education students, who sometimes have some pretty significant needs," she says.

These dynamics are playing out in countless schools and communities across the state, be they rural, suburban or urban.

Teresa Gillis has two kids in school in Brunswick, where she teaches music and her husband runs a tree care business. Her son, who's in junior high, loves science.

"They really have had to cut back on the experiments in the junior high, specifically," she says. "Just no funding to keep the gas hooked up in the science labs."

Gillis says Brunswick, like many communities in recent years, has had to raise property taxes in an effort to fill the gaps. But this dynamic is becoming increasingly unsustainable, as many homeowners see their wages remain flat and the number of people living on fixed incomes in Maine goes up as the state's population continues age.

"Yeah, we really need to get more help funding our schools," Gillis says.

That reality has led her and Cooper to throw their support behind a proposed citizens' initiative designed to do just that. The Stand Up For Students campaign, launched Wednesday afternoon in Portland, asks voters to approve a measure to raise $110 million for Maine's schools.

Under the plan, wealthy Maine households would pay an additional $30 in taxes for every additional $1,000 they make, above $200,000.

The proposal is likely trigger a political fight at a time when Republican Gov. Paul LePage is backing a voter referendum to eliminate the state income tax altogether.

The Maine Heritage Policy Center, a conservative think tank, and the group Maine Taxpayers United did not return requests for comment by airtime.

"An investment in K-12 education is an investment that pays dividends to all Mainers," says Jon Costin, who supports the Stand Up For Students initiative and runs Veneer Services Unlimited, a small business in Kennebunk. "And unfortunately, the burden of not making that investment really falls the heaviest on the least affluent Mainers."

Supporters must collect 62,000 signatures for the Stand Up For Students initiative to appear on the November 2016 ballot.