GRAY – The SAD 15 board Wednesday prepared for its daylong budget workshop scheduled for 9 a.m. Saturday at Memorial School in New Gloucester. The public is invited to attend.
The proposed budget stands at $17,895,695.
Gray and New Gloucester municipal leaders have urged the board not to increase spending this year in an effort to provide tax relief to residents.
Superintendent Victoria Burns said the draft budget contains no new programs. Any new ones will be considered through the budget process.
Fixed costs account for most of the 4.75 percent increase over last year’s spending. These costs include salaries and benefits, heating oil and gas, utilities, special education contracts, elementary school cleaning, insurance, and gifted and talented requirements and increases in the English as a second language program for seven students.
“This is an evolving budget,” Burns said. “There will be changes due to feedback from the scheduled budget workshops and recommendations from the Budget Advisory Committee,” she said.
Burns said the district has several challenges. Two labor contracts with teachers and administrators remain unsettled. And the state subsidy will not be known until late spring. In addition, she said, state and federal programs require additional resources.
The current state subsidy estimate for SAD 15 is $8,414,172, an increase of $1,585,132 above the 2004-05 subsidy.
“The initial subsidy number is positive for Gray-New Gloucester; however, it must be viewed with caution as the school funding has not been finalized” by the Legislature, Burns said.
New programs that have been reviewed but not included in the budget include hiring a second high school assistant principal, forming a middle school alternative program for eighth graders, hiring a foreign language teacher for kindergarten through grade 12, hiring a middle/high school substance abuse counselor, and providing laptop computers to all high school students.
An all-day kindergarten initiative that was turned down by voters last year is not included in the budget, but listed. However, based on final funding figures, these requests may be considered in time.
On Saturday, Burns said she will supply tentative total revenue and assessment data for the 2005-06 budget.
SAD 15 has a student population of 2,085 and employs a staff of 328.
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