ANDOVER — Town officials learned Tuesday evening that it will cost $1.4 million to operate the Andover School Department for 2015-16. The school serves 88 students in grades K-12.

Townspeople voted last year to leave School Administrative District 44 and run their own school department.

School startup administrator Jack Turcotte and School Board member Paula Lee thoroughly explained the process to arrive at $1.4 million. Beforehand, they presented selectmen with the budget and a prewritten document for Board of Selectmen Chairman Jim Adler to read in motioning for a public hearing on the budget at 7 p.m. Thursday, June 18, at the Town Hall. The motion passed 3-0.

A motion for a budget referendum Tuesday, June 30, also was approved 3-0.

“This budget is really large,” Turcotte said. “It’s much larger than what we wanted, but we didn’t have any budget history (since it’s a new municipal-run school).”

The School Board subcontracted all of the school’s financial matters, such as payroll and accounts receivable, to SAD 51 in Cumberland for $25,000. That is less expensive than paying salaries and benefits, Turcotte said.

Lee and Turcotte said when they and the School Board figured out their budget numbers, the state added in its own numbers per Maine law, driving up the amount.

“Among the additional costs that we didn’t anticipate is we have to pay SAD 44 $90,000 for special education,” he said. That amount could still be more or less depending on the state education department. Turcotte said the School Board estimated having to pay $83,000.

“If special ed is more than we anticipated, we will have to return to a special town meeting to raise the additional money,” he said. “We budgeted for 18 special ed students.”

Another thing Turcotte said they were unaware of is that the state requires Andover to tuition students in grades 6 through 12 at a greater rate than the state average. That is a one-year withdrawal surcharge, he said. Lee said the cost averages $1,200 per student in grades 9 through 12, and $1,000 per student in grades 6 through 8.

Additionally, Andover must cover the tuition cost for the first year for five Andover children in grades K-5 who are attending SAD 44’s Crescent Park Elementary School in Bethel. That will cost $51,000. In the second year, the students can go through the superintendent agreement process to decide which school they will attend.

The $1.4 million budget will be reduced to about $1.2 million when the state subsidy of $208,743 is applied, Turcotte said. He added that it could be less if the Legislature beefs that subsidy up. The school may also receive $10,000 to $12,000 from the state’s school lunch program.

Selectmen learned that to keep the budget at $1.4 million, they had to drop a teacher, so the ratio of students to teachers will be 14-to-1.

There will be fewer students attending school in 2015-16, so even with the reduction of one teacher the student-teacher ratio will remain the same.

One teacher can academically handle students in grades 3 through 5, but Turcotte said another teacher handling grades kindergarten through 2 contains “a little bit of a challenge with the developmental span,” which is why they budgeted for an education technician to help that teacher.

Another unexpected cost is $80,000 to participate in the Region 9 vocational school program in Mexico. “We have no choice,” Turcotte said. There are five students that are signed up for the program.

“Technical education and vocational education are wonderful programs, but it is costly,” he said.

Selectmen also OK’d including an article for voters to scrap the validation vote for the second year budget.

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Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect the $1.4 million budget will fund students in K-12 in the new town-run Andover School Department.