BELFAST - The Regional School Unit 20 board of directors on Tuesday heard objections from district teachers and staff members to the elimination of certain positions in the district's proposed 2013-14 budget.

The meeting was the first since the board approved $1.7 million in cuts in the coming year in an effort to make up for a drop in state assistance and pending legislation that could shift a portion of teacher retirement to local school districts.

Roughly $1 million of the total came in the form of staff cuts recommended by Superintendent Brian Carpenter in the final days of budget deliberations. Carpenter said last week that he was asked by the board for "additional cuts," and that he intentionally kept principals out of the loop in his decision to cut staff and teachers, which had been mostly avoided to that point. 

But the strategy backfired as principals and others in the district learned of the late additions to the chopping block after the fact, often from sources outside the district.

There was the sting of being excluded from the conversation, but more importantly according to three speakers on Tuesday night, the staff cuts approved by the board were the wrong ones.

Troy Howard Middle School art teacher Lynette Sproch, blasted the board for eliminating her position and in turn all visual arts at the school.

Sproch said current lack of art for sixth-graders has already taken a toll. 

"They come into [my class] like soldiers," she said, describing the students' fixation on rules and control. Given a piece of paper, she said, "They're going to draw it in the center and very small and they're going to erase it to death."

Sproch said the basis of art, in which there are no set answers and an apparent mistake can be turned into an opportunity to solve a problem in a different way, opens students to modes of creative thinking that translates into many other fields.

The board was given a stack of envelopes stuffed with letters from THMS students supporting the art program.

"They can't go through three years of no art without being damaged," Sproch said.

The 2013-14 budget also includes some cuts to art positions at the elementary and high school levels.

Jody Henderson, principal of Captain Albert Stevens Elementary School in Belfast described the decision to eliminate her front office secretary as a safety concern, noting that the office is busy enough that there would not be enough eyes on the entrance to the school.

Henderson asked the board to consider safety its number one priority, ahead of instruction.

Cindy Boguen, the library ed tech at Kermit Nickerson Elementary School in Swanville, spoke in support of her own position, which would be one of 3.5 library ed tech positions cut under the proposed budget.

Boguen acknowledged from her own experience on the Swanville municipal budget committee that cuts in lean times will always upset someone, but said there were other positions at her school that would have made more sense if staff had to be cut. Boguen said her 17 years of experience in the district and the degree she was encouraged to earn during that time have made her a valuable staff member. The irony, she said, was that it also elevated her salary, which she saw as the reason her position was cut.

"Why in an educational system do you eliminate your most educated people?" she said.

In other business, the RSU 20 board of directors discussed the Governor's controversial school report card system. Superintendent Carpenter has addressed the grades in an open letter on the district's website. On Tuesday he said the marks given to some schools seemed to correlate with other performance measures, but the logic behind others wasn't as apparent.

Carpenter said the most pressing issue with the letter grades is that a school like Belfast Area High School, which was given a "D," will have to show improvement to avoid penalties, but what that means has yet to be defined.

Board member Stephanie Wade asked, rhetorically, why the Maine Department of Education was using an A-F grading system when actual assessments in Maine have shifted to systems based on proficiency or standards.

"Their philosophy is: this is what the parent understands; this is what we're going to give back to them," Carpenter said.

Someone asked Carpenter how best to oppose the system.

"You have to contact your legislator and raise holy heck with them and tell them this system is not a just one," he said. "It's not an indication of what goes on in the hallways of the schools."

The RSU 20 board meets next on May 28 at Searsport District Middle School. The public budget meeting at which residents vote on the 2013-14 budget's 11 cost centers will be held on May 30 at Troy Howard Middle School in Belfast at 7 p.m.

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Ethan Andrews can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com