AUBURN — The School Committee will meet at 6 p.m. Wednesday to consider further adjustments to the 2020-21 budget, which so far has been reduced to include no local tax increase.

The sticking points: preparing for a possible midyear reduction in state subsidy and taking nearly $1 million from the surplus account to keep classroom positions.

“I’m concerned about using so much from the fund balance,” committee member Dan Poisson said at a budget workshop last week. “It’s like spending all of your savings.”

Business Manager Adam Hanson said the fund balance would have between $900,000 and $1 million left in it if the amount budgeted is used.

Member Brian Carrier, the City Council representative to the School Committee, also was concerned about spending so much of the reserve account.

“I’m hearing the money is not going to be there (next year),” he said. “I would rather eliminate one or two positions this year than to have to cut five or six or seven or eight next year and have no fund balance.”

Projections show the state losing $1 billion in revenue because of the COVID-19 stay-at-home order.

Superintendent Katy Grondin said she had not received any official notice of a reduction in state subsidy.

“If you pass the budget and there’s a curtailment, we would immediately freeze spending,” she said. “You can pass the budget and have a plan for it.”

That plan might include furloughs.

“The biggest unit is teachers,” she said. “They have been made aware that they may be asked to open their contract to renegotiate.”

The Auburn Education Association includes teachers, education technicians, food service employees and secretaries, Grondin said.

She said administrators and maintenance/custodian bargaining units also have been told they could be asked to open their contracts.

Some committee members were ready last week to approve the superintendent’s spending plan of $45.8 million, a 1.01% increase over the current budget. The increase is covered by state aid and the fund balance.

Others said they wanted more time to go through the budget to look for further savings.

“You’ve had this budget since Feb. 5 and everything we’ve done has been transparent,” Grondin said. “Nothing has been added.”

She said any further reductions would affect jobs.

“We could go line by line and take $500 here and $200 there,” she said. “This budget is about as bare as it has ever been. You have absolutely no wiggle room.”

The superintendent’s spending plan so far has been reduced by $1.9 million to reflect a flat local tax rate.

Those reductions included 12 new positions ($490,798) requested by teachers to lower class sizes and put more educators such as interventionists and education technicians in classrooms.

It also included cutting eight current positions ($397,560) and reducing “non-position” lines by $1.3 million, Grondin said.

No one would lose their job under this budget. People would be moved to vacant positions and some vacant  positions — a literacy coach at Sherwood Heights Elementary School, a gifted and talented position and an Edward Little High School teaching position — would be put on hold, the superintendent said.

“If you want to cut more and go below (a zero local tax increase), then give me a number and we’ll do that,” she said. “I’m getting defensive because at every meeting we’ve shown you the spreadsheet line by line.”

Chairwoman Karen Mathieu said she was ready to pass the budget.

“I’m comfortable with a zero local increase,” she said. “I fear that if we reduce, reduce, reduce, if we ask the School Department to go back and cut, there will be jobs lost.”

She said that if a curtailment comes, the district could have a plan in place.

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