PORTLAND — For the seventh year in row, Portland school officials are proposing to pay some of the district’s most veteran employees to stop coming to work.

Employees who accept a proposed retirement incentive would get a minimum of $10,000 or 30 percent of their latest salary up to $20,000. To be eligible, employees would have to meet a minimum retirement age of at least 60 or 62, depending on when they were hired, and have worked for the district for at least 10 years.

The School Board is scheduled to vote on the proposal tonight, and there is consensus among members to offer the incentive, said board member Justin Costa, who chairs the board’s finance committee.

The district is facing a shortfall in its budget for the 2013 fiscal year, which begins July 1, primarily due to the loss of just over $2 million in federal funding.

Last year, the district saved more than $1 million when 43 employees accepted a similar incentive. About half the positions were left vacant.

The base salary for a beginning teacher in Portland is $33,669, but a teacher at the highest step who has taken advantage of all available professional development credits can earn as much as $79,203.

The district could replace employees who accept the offer with less experienced employees who earn less, or in some cases leave the positions vacant to realize more savings, Costa said.

The other options for reducing the shortfall would be laying off employees or raising taxes, he said.

“This works because this is in the district’s financial interest,” he said. “Basically, what this allows us to do is save the district money, which ultimately in tough budget times allows us to keep staff we otherwise wouldn’t be able to.”

He said that about 150 employes would be eligible for the incentive. The district has roughly 1,100 full-time equivalent employees.

Eligible employees would have until Feb. 15 to apply for the incentive.

The School Board would not be able to pick and choose who gets the incentives. It would go to all who qualify, from top teachers and other employees to under-performing ones.

However, after receiving the applications and examining the overall financial impact, the board could decide to rescind the offer, said Michael Wilson, the district’s chief financial officer.

Retirement incentives can backfire if they are paid to employees who are planning to retire anyway, acknowledged School Board member Jaimey Caron. But the offers have been effective in Portland because the district has had a high proportion of older, high-salary employees, he said.

As the average age of the district’s employees decreases, he said, the potential savings gained by a retirement incentive also decrease.

“We are not quite at the end when it begins to lose its value,” he said. “That day is coming.”

Costa said teachers should not count on getting an incentive every year.

He said the School Board has been clear with the teachers union that “there should not be an expectation that this is ongoing.”

Staff Writer Tom Bell can be contacted at 791-6369 or at: tbell@mainetoday.com