LEWISTON – If state aid to schools hits its goal, the city’s schools will survive the coming year without layoffs.

The estimated $48.6 million budget before the School Committee also would avoid asking for more money from local taxpayers.

“My charge was to keep the tax levy the same,” Superintendent Leon Levesque said Tuesday. “It could be worse.”

It might be.

Levesque’s draft budget – like school budgets across Maine – is waiting for numbers from the state. Without the state’s pledge for millions of dollars in aid, his revenue lines are only a guess.

“It could all change,” said Levesque, who had planned for at least a dozen layoffs until the state said it would use federal money to fund schools.

Less state aid would mean more cuts in school spending, he said.

“We’ve carved a good piece already,” he said.

The state numbers will be released by the end of the week, perhaps as early as Thursday afternoon, said David Connerty-Marin, spokesman for the Maine Department of Education.

“We’ve been expecting to hear for weeks,” Levesque said. When the information arrives, it will allow the School Department to move ahead.

If the numbers come in as expected, the budget will rise by $2.41 million.

Of that money, more than $1.8 million will be covered by the state’s funding for the new Geiger Elementary School. Most of the rest is owed to contractual obligations such as salaries and health care.

And though there are no layoffs in the current draft, there are several staff changes planned.

They include a retirement, shifting a teaching position from one school to another and changes that are being covered by new grants.

The current budget timeline calls for a formal presentation of the school budget to the City Council on April 16. The citywide budget referendum is tentatively scheduled for May 5.