AUBURN – Less money from taxpayers combined with higher costs will mean reductions in Auburn school programs next year, Superintendent Tom Morrill said Tuesday.

“All those programs are based on needs. Some needs are going to go unmet,” he said. “Everything is on the table.”

On Tuesday, the Auburn School Committee began work on the school budget, work that will continue through March and April. Like Lewiston and Auburn residents will vote on a local referendum on the school budget May 6.

Preliminary figures released from the state Tuesday show Auburn will receive about $379,328 more than last year for education. The Auburn City Council wants that state increase to benefit property taxpayers. The council has said it is giving schools $475,000 less than last year, a 3 percent reduction.

All of the above means the projected total school budget will be $33.60 million, compared to last year’s $33.72 million. Actual spending is down.

Costs for salaries, benefits and fuel are up, Morrill said. “To get the same product you need more just to maintain, whether it’s Davinci’s or the Auburn School Department,” said School Committee Chairman David Das.

Salaries and benefits, which make up about 80 percent of the school budget, are $840,725 higher than last year. Health benefits are $392,889 more, and fuel costs are up $225,495.

Morrill said he’ll recommend that Auburn’s class sizes and other areas considered important be protected. Average class size for elementary grades is 20. High school class sizes average 15.

To maintain those class sizes, and programs schools now have, would cost $1.76 million more than what the committee has. Not having that $1.76 million means “you’re not maintaining the status quo. You’re going backwards,” Das said. The challenge for the school committee, he said, is to figure out how to do with less.

Morrill did not offer recommendations Tuesday on how to make that happen. His recommendations will come next week. “I’ll lay out a series of options, all will have certain impacts. But it truly will be the School Committee that will make those determinations of what stays and what doesn’t.”

The focus will be to give a great education to students, which includes the core areas and liberal arts: art, music, physical education. The budget needs to consider the needs of all students, including those from poorer households. “We are the equalizer,” Morrill said. “We’ve got the hopes and dreams of kids walking through our school right now. They want to be able to realize that.”

Budget reductions made in recent years means committee members have lost the ability to avoid painful cuts, Das said. “It seems every year you’ve been slicing this, slicing that.” In 2002 cuts were less painful than six years later “because you’ve lost that flexibility.”

Das and Morrill said they are not recommending the East Auburn Community School be closed. That was a recommendation in architect Stephen Blatt’s report last fall, and it was a budget proposal last year.

Blatt recommended the city spend $24 million for a new-and-improved Edward Little High School, and another $4 million to $10 million to improve and restructure other schools. The exception, Blatt said, would be East Auburn Elementary, which should be closed. That school has 140 students, too small to provide programs similar to what other student receive, Blatt said.

A committee working on a school facility master plan will give its long-range recommendations on March 19, Das said. That will be separate from the budget proposal.

Even though Blatt said East Auburn should close, the committee isn’t taking his recommendations “lock, stock and barrel,” Das said.