DIXFIELD — The Regional School Unit 56 board of directors is working through a 2027 budget that is just over $16 million, up $917,629 or 6%, Superintendent Pam Doyen said.

At the start of the board’s March 24 meeting, Doyen gave an overview regarding the pros and cons of where the budget stands.

“As you know, we’ve always used a balance forward of $277,500, which we’ve historically used to start off our budget each year. We do have that on hand, so we’re not starting in the hole,” she said.

The state remained at 55% funding for the ED 279 Essential Programs and Services (EPS) across the state, Doyen said. This is the formula the state uses to calculate what it deems as essential in each district, including the number of teachers.

Doyen said the essential programs funding for RSU 56 is up almost $600,000.

“Part of that is because we thought we were going to add our pre-K classroom, because at our elementary school we’ve had a bit of a waitlist,” she said. “That’s no longer the case, so they will not have a new pre-K program, and the state will take about $100,000 of that as they fund that up front.”

She said one of the reasons the funding is up is there is a 6% increase in the number of special education students. They also saw a 1% increase in how many students are considered economically disadvantaged, “which seems really small but you get additional funding for students who are coded as economically disadvantaged.”

Doyen said there are still unknown factors. They have not received the actual costs for the property and casualty insurance. The district has a 12% increase budgeted, but the hope is that it is significantly less than that.

There will be a health insurance increase, Doyen said. Some districts have budgeted for as much as an 18% increase. “We put in a 15 percent because our use rate was pretty decent,” she said. “The real number will be known in April.”

In addition, there are employee salary and benefit increases, from 3% to 6.5%.

“The school resource officer and the extended learning opportunities teacher were both paid for out of grant money for the last three years. That grant money has now disappeared,” Doyen said.

And the RSU 56 share for Region 9 School of Applied Technology in Mexico is up $74,190. The district also has not locked in fuel prices.

“We always start with status quo,” Doyen said. “What we have in our district, that’s where we start building our budget, and that includes the school resource officer and the extended learning opportunities position because they’re already here.”

She also noted that status quo really means you’re not actually getting ahead.

Other proposed additions to the budget include administration team priorities: a dean of students stipend at the high and middle schools of $6,500 apiece to help the principals with lower level behavior issues; and a network manager IT specialist for $98,000 in salary and benefits.

Adding in those, Doyen said the budget is up 6.8%, for a total of $16.2 million.

“We have things in the budget right now that if they come in lower than projected, I would use that to decrease the budget,” she said.

Another issue for the board to consider is there is no money for site improvements in the proposed budget.

The town-by-town comparisons of the impact of a 2027 budget increase of 5%, 6% and 7% on a $100,000 house are:

• Canton property tax would go down $58 at 5%, down $30 at 6%, and $0 at 7%;

• Carthage property tax would go down $12 at 5%, up $2 at 6%, and up $17 at 7%;

• Dixfield property tax would go up $25 at 5%, up $60 at 6%, and up $95 at 7%;

• Peru property tax would go up $12.10 at 5%, up $17 at 6%, and up $21.20 at 7%.

Doyen said the board will vote to approve the proposed budget at its meeting April 28.