OXFORD – Oxford Hills School District Superintendent Rick Colpitts unveiled a preliminary 2011-12 budget Monday night that is 1.23 percent more than this year’s $34.7 million.

It proposes eliminating a high school teacher and a music teacher, reducing the chorus, strings and/or band program at the middle school, secretarial support, $20,000 in athletics primarily in freshmen sports, the biomass project supervisor job and other cuts.

Colpitts told the Board of Directors that programming will be effected by the proposed cuts, if the budget is approved.

The proposed budget comes with a 4.84 percent increase in local assessments to taxpayers in the eight district towns.

“We are at the minimum,” Colpitts said of the required local contribution to receive state funds. “If we cut the local share we are likely to be in the position to lose state dollars. It could be devastating.”

Taxpayers have not seen an increase in their assessment for the past two years and have been allowed to meet only minimum share requirements under a temporary state law enacted to help school districts deal with huge budget curtailments. If the “sunset” law is not extended again next year, Colpitts said the district towns will have to come up with a larger share of the school budget or face losing as much as $2 million in state funding.

Officials learned that the school district is now the furthest of all school districts in the state below the minimum required contribution under the Essential Program and Services funding formula. All other school systems are closer to or above the amount the state defines as the minimum needed to meet the Maine State Leaning Results. The district is $2,585,746 below what the EPS formula indicates the district should be spending for education, he said.

The state’s EPS program was developed to fund kindergarten through grade 12 education to insure that all schools have the programs and services that were essential if all students were to have equitable educational opportunities to achieve the Learning Results. Learning Results are the academic standards the state mandates students acquire to graduate.

The superintendent will now hold budget hearings with voters in each of the eight towns to detail the budget and answer questions. Hearings will be held for Oxford and Otisfield residents at the Otisfield Elementary School on Tuesday beginning at 7 p.m. and for Norway and Paris residents at the Rowe Elementary School on Wednesday 6 beginning at 7 p.m.

West Paris and Hebron residents will meet at the West Paris Elementary School on April 12 at 7 p.m. and Waterford and Harrison on April 13 at 7 p.m.

The budget will then go to the Budget Committee for review at the end of the month and the Board of Directors is expected to vote on the budget in early May. Voters will act on it budget in a two-part approval process.

ldixon@sunjournal