AUBURN – To keep school spending from rising no more than 3 percent, which would slightly cut property taxes, the Auburn School Committee is looking at “drastic measures,” Chairman David Das said.

Those cuts include:

• Closing the East Auburn Community School, moving its 139 K-6 students to other schools next year. Savings: $262,000.

• Reducing school administrators, eliminating two assistant principals at the high school, and one assistant principal at the middle school. Savings: $257,000.

• Cutting all grades 7-12 athletics. Savings: $464,575.

A public hearing is scheduled for 6 p.m. April 24 at the Auburn City Building.

Residents are already reacting.

Taxpayer advocate Ron Potvin praised the cuts.

“We’re totally 100 percent behind that,” Potvin said. Compared to other districts Auburn has too many administrators and schools, he said.

However, he questioned whether East Auburn is the right school to close, and why cutting sports, which would impact many students, was proposed.

At the East Auburn school on Thursday, students protested with homemade “save our school” signs.

The feeling of parents is “anger and outrage,” said PTO President Keri Myrick. “We looked at our school to grow, not to close.”

East Auburn is small “and doesn’t serve a lot of children,” said PTO Vice President Yvonne Dyer. But the neighborhood school is one reason many families moved to the area, she said. “Every kid knows every kid,” Dyer said. “Every teacher knows every kid. In this age it’s nice to have a small community school.”

Dyer’s daughter is in the fourth grade. “I told her this is just a proposal. But she was very upset. She said she would not be with her friends.”

East Auburn school parents are organizing to oppose the possible school closing, Myrick said.

Das stressed that committee members “haven’t made any decisions. We want people to come and speak to us about the budget,” Das said. “We’re figuring out how to create a budget that meets the needs of all students and is fiscally responsible. One of the ideas bubbling up is a 3 percent cap on spending.”

To live with that cap would mean $659,000 in cuts, even though the state is giving Auburn $1.4 million more next year, Superintendent Barbara Eretzian said. That’s because special education and energy costs have risen, along with 3 percent raises for teachers and 8.6 percent increases in health care benefits.

To achieve a 3 percent cap that some from city hall have asked for, “three categories came up,” Das said. “Closing a school. Looking at athletics, and looking at administrators.”

Committee members have gone through the budget “nickel and diming savings. There really wasn’t that much there,” Das said. “Whatever fat was there has already been cut. Now we’re digging into flesh and bone.”

No one wants to close the East Auburn school, Das said. “It’s a small, wonderful neighborhood school. It’s all those things we prize in Auburn.” Closing it would have a ripple effect in the entire school system, with students moved into other schools. And the school was refurbished in the late 1990s, Das said. “It’s a nice facility in great shape.”

One reason that school was highlighted for a possible closing is because it only has one class per grade level, and all students who go there are bused.

When it comes to cutting all sports, no School Committee member favors that or a “pay to play” system Auburn had several years ago. Sports play “extraordinary roles in the lives of so many students,” Das said.

Neither do committee members want to cut administrators, Das said. At the high school, Principal Jim Miller has four assistants, one for each grade. The middle school principal has two assistants.

The assistants are doing all sorts of jobs, from disciplining, counseling and observation of teachers to teaching a class when needed, Das said.

But finding ways to live with a 3 percent cap “is really a challenge. When 77 percent of your budget goes to salaries and benefits of staff, it limits what you can do.”

Potvin said there are opportunities to save without doing things “that directly affect the children. I find it humorous they’re proposing to cut athletics, yet they won’t address an $80,000 assistant principal.” Cutting sports “makes you scratch your head and ask, ‘why would you do this?'” But the overall premise of cutting “is a step in the right direction,” Potvin said.

The committee has to deliver a budget to the city council by the end of April. After hearing public input, School Committee members could vote on a budget at their April 25 meeting, Das said.