PERU — School district Superintendent Tom Ward will meet with selectmen from area towns Tuesday to review the carryover funds towns retained when SADs 43, 39 and 21 became one district.

Ward told the school board Monday night that the results of the final audit of Regional School Unit 10 will likely soften the blow of potentially higher school taxes. The audit revealed more 2008-09 carryover funds than originally estimated. For the towns of former SAD 21, the combined carryover is $573,874; for towns of former SAD 43, $685,287; and for towns of former SAD 39, $1,059,246. All amounts are at least twice what had been estimated.

Ward will meet with selectmen from Canton, Carthage, Dixfield and Peru on Tuesday at 5 p.m., at the RSU 10 central office in Dixfield. On Wednesday, he will meet with selectmen of Byron, Mexico, Roxbury and Rumford at the Mexico Town Hall. And on Jan. 19, he will meet with the selectmen of Buckfield, Hartford and Sumner at the Buckfield Town Office building.

All meetings begin at 5 p.m.

He said he will recommend that the carryover funds be divided equally for use during the current school year, as well as for school years 2010-11 and 2011-12. He said those times are expected to be the most difficult financially for the support of the schools because of the reduction in state aid to education.

Wall scheduled a workshop for Feb. 1 to begin developing the 2010-11 budget. “We’ll start with a figure 1.4 percent lower than the current budget,” he said.

Voters in the 3,000-pupil Western Foothills Regional School District approved a budget of $34.2 million in June 2009.

Since then, the state has “curtailed” or reduced state aid for the 2009-2010 school year by nearly a half-million dollars, and by a total of almost $1 million during the past two school years.

Ward expects the 2010-11 and 2011-12 school years to be even worse financially because of the state’s efforts to try to balance the state budget that is currently more than $400 million in the red.

[email protected]