The cost of the six positions, estimated at more than $300,000, had been covered by grants, but they ran out. So local funding was needed to keep the positions, according to the results of an investigation into the School Department's $1.7 million deficit for the year that ended June 30.
School officials had blamed the last-minute hires on a surprise influx of special education students and other unpredictable factors.
The grant-funded positions should have come as no surprise to administrators and School Committee members, said Bryan Dench, the Auburn lawyer hired to perform the post-mortem on the deficit. His view is shared by officials in other school districts and critics of how Portland school officials have handled district finances.
"It is all about planning," said Ron Lavender, business manager for School Administrative District 75, which includes Bowdoin, Bowdoinham, Harpswell and Topsham.
The unfunded positions and other last-minute hires were identified as a major reason why the district exceeded its $82 million budget, according to the investigation, which concluded last week.
The controversy resulted in the resignations of Superintendent Mary Jo O'Connor and Finance Director Richard Paulson, and in continued uncertainty about the district's fiscal health.
Some School Committee members said they were kept in the dark about what grant-funded positions might expire in the coming year and had pressed for more detail from district administrators.
The grant-funded positions that expired included 3.3 teaching jobs and a half-time guidance counselor at Casco Bay High School, previously paid for by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and part-time posts sprinkled throughout the district. Those included a federally funded, half-time districtwide education planning director and two part-time teachers who oversee special education compliance at Portland and Deering high schools.
School administrators were given permission by Expeditionary Learning Schools Outward Bound, which administered the Gates grant, to use more of the three-year grant for salaries in the second year, said Scott Hartel, who was field office director at that time. That left less grant money for salaries in the final year, he said.
Dench concluded in his report that all but one of the 25.7 unbudgeted positions, which cost almost $940,000, could have been anticipated at the time the budget was drawn up.
"It would have been better to anticipate," said Dench, who works at the Skelton Taintor & Abbott law firm.
Some city councilors, who approve the school budget's bottom- line spending plan, said the report highlighted their long- standing concerns about how Portland school officials keep track of grant money.
Councilor James Cohen, head of the council finance committee, said he repeatedly asked for the School Department to present a budget that included information about grant-paid staff positions. "So that at a single glance, school officials and policymakers are aware of staffing throughout the system," he said.
Cohen said that is the only way to ensure that staffing and resources are being fairly allocated among schools. It is not currently possible to determine what the student-teacher ratios are at each school because the school administration does not report how many grant-funded positions exist, he said.
Barry McLaughlin, president of the Maine School Superintendents Association, said most grants come with a pre-defined lifetime and sometimes with the stipulation that voters must approve local funding of the post for it to continue after the grant. But he said some federal grant money is unpredictable.
McLaughlin still hasn't received final approval for some of the federal funds he built into...
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