SABATTUS – On Tuesday, a little more than a week after angry residents voted to chop money from almost every department in town, the School Committee will hold a special meeting to figure out how the schools can function on a slashed budget.

School officials had requested $6 million for next year. Voters cut nearly $570,000 from that request.

That means the school department will get about $300,000 less next year than it did this year.

“They took them down to the bare bones. They cut them quite a bit,” selectman Gino Camardese said.

About 150 people showed up for the town meeting last Saturday. Many were angered by the town’s first revaluation in 16 years, which doubled some rural property values and tripled or quadrupled the value of waterfront land.

Not helping matters: all mobile homes were incorrectly overvalued, the result of bad calculations.

“People got their revaluations, and they were pretty upset,” said Camardese, who was told his own three-year-old mobile home had ballooned in value, from $90,000 to $165,000.

Those incorrect valuations will be fixed within the next week, Camardese said. And Sabattus is expected to lower its tax rate to compensate for the higher values.

But at the town meeting, many voters were afraid their property tax bills would jump just as drastically and just as suddenly as their valuations had.

“The people who came were the ones that had revals in their hands saying ‘We aren’t paying any more,'” Camardese said. “I think it was more fear than budgetary.”

Voters cut money from every department except the Fire Department, according to Camardese. Schools lost the most.

School leaders wanted a $6 million budget to run two schools for 500 students in kindergarten through grade eight. Instead, voters approved about $5.5 million.

That’s about $300,000 less than this year’s $5.8 million budget.

“It’s a very big cut,” Superintendent Susan Hodgdon said.

Since the meeting last week, she’s heard from parents who are happy with the new budget and want lower taxes. She’s also heard from parents who are unhappy and afraid the cuts will force officials to close a school, fire teachers and cancel extracurricular activities.

Hodgdon is concerned herself, afraid that recent gains – higher test scores and better academic intervention for young students – will be erased with the budget cut.

“We will lose ground again, and we’ll see a real difference in the quality of schooling for kids,” she said.

Camardese isn’t sure if he’s happy with the new budget, either. He would have been OK with keeping it the same as this year, rather than cutting it back.

“They’re doing it because they’re scared, not because the school needs cuts,” he said.

Some parents have talked about circulating a petition to get another vote on the budget. Sabattus, Litchfield and Wales residents recently revoted on the budget for the Oak Hill Community School District, which runs Oak Hill High School for the three towns. The revote added nearly $1.4 million to next year’s budget.

But not everyone is sorry that Sabattus slashed a half-million dollars from its school budget. Selectmen’s Chairman William Henshaw thinks voters made the right decision.

Schools get more than enough money, he said, and taxpayers deserve a break.

“I like it the way we voted on it at the meeting; that’s my opinion” he said. “Every year, it’s more and more and more. People are getting tired of it.”