Groton -- Administrators at Project Oceanology, the Groton-based education nonprofit that provides marine science education to students at more than 100 Connecticut school districts per year, learned last week that the program's state funding will likely be cut by more than 75 percent.

The money distributed to the program through the state's Interdistrict Cooperative Grant Program has steadily decreased from a peak of $800,000 less than a decade ago. In fiscal year 2018, which ends June 30, the program allocated Project O, as it is known, just over $400,000.

For the next fiscal year, it won't get more than $100,000, according to the state Bureau of Choice Programs, Sheff, Regional School Choice Office.

Mike O'Connor, a Waterford High School teacher and the chairman Project O board, said Monday that he and Project O's staff have long known that the state could impose a cap on the amount of money it allocates to the organization.

The grant's administrators notified all previous recipients this winter that they would impose a cap of $100,000 for each recipient in 2018. While state lawmakers included a provision in the biennial budget passed last year that allowed for up to $463,479 of the more than $3 million in the Interdistrict Cooperative Grant Program to go to Project O, they told executive director James McCauley this month that it would not get more than $100,000.

Now, O'Connor said, it's up to Project O's staff and supporters to figure out what comes next now that a bulk of the grant, which previously made up about 40 percent of the organization's budget, is gone.

"We've been circling around this for over a year now," O'Connor said. "Nobody has the right answer for where to go."

A state Department of Education spokesman, Peter Yazbak, said the Bureau of Choice Programs, Sheff, Regional School Choice Office put a $100,000 cap on the amount of grant money it will give to each recipient this year because of limited funding in the state budget and obligations to other programs.

The new state budget legislators approved last week cuts total spending on the Interdistrict Cooperative Grant Program to just over $1.5 million.

The rest of the money Project O uses to run school programs for students from throughout the state comes from tuition for summer camps and private year-round use of its 22,000-square-foot research facility at the UConn Avery Point campus with two fully-stocked research boats and several skiffs. Several local school districts also pay tuition to send students to educational field trips with the organization.

McCauley said staff at Project O have applied for federal grants and helped two school districts apply for Interdistrict Cooperative Grant Program grants for use in project O programs in anticipation of the cut.

But he said they won't know the true effect until Gov. Dannel P. Malloy signs his final version of the state budget and the grant program's administrators issue the final decisions on how much money each applicant will get in fiscal year 2019 later this summer.

O'Connor said staff Project O has also spoken to officials at the Mystic Aquarium, the nonprofit New England Science and Sailing and the University of Connecticut looking for opportunities to bring people into its underused dorm facilities and onto its boats.

"We've got some pretty good long-term plans for how to close the gap," he said.

Former staff members and parents of students who have participated in Project O programs have restarted a defunct fundraising group for the organization; in March the group hosted a $40-per-plate seafood tasting event, and they're planning another event in September.

O'Connor said the board has realized the need to build up its fundraising infrastructure. That doesn't happen ovenight, though, he said.

"We're all teachers or marine educators that don't have a lot of experience in development," he said. "Hopefully we'll be able to work to build a whole community of people who regularly donate and reach out to foundations ... but in the short term we don't have the cash to hire somebody."

Summer camps scheduled to start in the coming weeks will go forward, O'Connor said. But the future of school programs set to bring students from cities and towns across Connecticut into Long Island Sound this fall are uncertain. 

The program, founded by a group of teachers and administrators in 1972, has always struggled to draw funding from the state, and has adapted over the years to the effects of more frugal state budgets, O'Connor said.

"It just is a lot darker than it has been in the past," he said.

m.shanahan@theday.com