The preliminary budget for the Windham-Raymond School Department eliminates 25 teaching and support staff positions, including significant cuts to the music department, but does not increase taxes.

“It’s drastic,” Superintendent Sandy Prince said Thursday. “This is not anything that any person in the district is happy about.”

The budget proposal is just the first step in a long process that will not end until the final spending plan is approved by the voters, School Board members said Thursday. It is unclear how the proposed cuts will impact education, they said, and it is too early to tell how residents will respond to the budget, and whether a public outcry will lead the board to rethink the cuts.

In any case, tough decisions await the board and the public in the face of the steadily rising cost of education, School Board Chairman Toby Pennels said. As the board begins its review of the individual cost centers at 8 a.m. Saturday at Raymond Elementary School, members will look at the immediate and long-term effects of the proposed cuts, and try to discern how much more spending, if any, a tax-weary public can endure in the name of quality education, Pennels said. Significant cuts may indeed be on the way, but where and how deep has yet to be determined, he said.

“We don’t have the whole story, and it might be in the end I don’t like the whole story,” he said. “I want to hear from the community. I want the community to get involved. But I don’t know if we can please everybody.”

The proposed cuts include the equivalent of just under three music positions, spread over Windham High School, Middle School and Primary School. The budget also eliminates a fifth-grade position at Manchester School and a second-grade teacher at both the Primary School and Raymond Elementary School. The equivalent of four other teaching slots are cut out of the proposed budget, plus two special education positions. Hours for education technicians, especially in the special education department in Raymond, are also cut significantly.

As the district’s administrators sought to cut around $1 million from the roughly $40 million budget, they had to look at personnel, and they had to determine which areas could be cut with the least impact, Prince said. If the budget were adopted as proposed, the effects would be felt in the district’s educational programming, and the district would have to adapt, he said.

“It’s just trying to do things differently, given the drastic cuts,” Prince said.

The staff reductions account for around $1 million in cuts, making up for a similar increase in costs in the budget, Prince said. Windham School Committee members said that town alone was looking at an increase in fixed costs, including salaries and benefits, of around $1 million heading into the next budget year.

Consolidation itself will cost the Windham-Raymond School Department around $500,000 initially to change over deeds and banking accounts, obtain new tax certificates and complete the other myriad tasks of combining the two districts.

Funds from the federal stimulus package may be available to help with the budget in the coming year. But those funds are only available for two years, and the department has been told by state officials that the money should not be used to create programs or hire teachers.

The final budget cuts – and the subsequent impact on education – could look quite different from the initial proposal, Prince said. The cuts in the music department, for instance, which would mean the music program at the Middle School would be made an afterschool program, could be altered or dropped altogether if residents so wish, he said.

“That might look differently, given the public input,” he said.

Some of the cuts, including those to the music department, seem to go too deep, said School Board member Alizah Shriver of Raymond. But until she hears from each administrator on the exact impact of the cuts, which will come at the meeting Saturday, it is difficult to tell what will be restored, and what will be left out, she said.

“As far as I’m concerned, the music department, it is unacceptable just to cut it off. But until I hear more, I just can’t say,” said Shriver. “I feel like the budget is far from done. We’ll be putting money back in, I’m certain.”

Considering the breadth and depth of the cuts, community members are likely to bring to public hearings passionate feelings on a wide range of issues, Shriver and Pennels said. The desire of some residents to maintain quality programs and retain good teachers will have to be balanced against the need to keep taxes low in difficult economic times, they said.

“We can’t really raise taxes, but that can’t be at the detriment of the two communities,” said Shriver.

“We all have somebody next door who’s not doing well,” said Pennels.