LISBON — The Lisbon School Committee received a crash course on the proposed school department budget for 2012-13 during a meeting last week.

The $14,291,593 budget — including $153,448 for adult education — maintains existing programs. Although most budget line items mirror spending for the 2011-12 academic year, the proposed 2012- 13 budget represents an increase in local funding of $341,567 and a total increase in expenditures of $532,143, according to Superintendent Richard Green.

The school department is slated for a preliminary state subsidy increase of $190,576, although cuts to general purpose aid could still be made at the state level, Green said. However, the loss of some federal funding will shift costs to local taxpayers.

The Lisbon School Department received $157,503 in federal job stimulus funds in the current school year that will not be available in 2012-13. School officials must either find a way to put this money back into the budget or make cuts, Green said.

Administrators don’t yet have accurate costs for increases in salaries and benefits, Green said, because negotiations with the Lisbon Education Association have yet to finalize those figures. Green said salary and benefit costs increase an average of about $200,000 from year to year. The administration also doesn’t know what the insurance costs increase will be, buthasbudgetedfora9percent increase — or $153,000.

The proposed 2012-13 budget includes a $ 140,000 increase in special education costs, Green said. The proposed spending plan also adds approximately $58,000 for new bus lease- purchase agreements, and there is an additional $5,000 currently budgeted for technology costs.

In addition to having the job stimulus money available for the 2011- 12 school year, Green noted the district also had an unusually high number of retirements, which helped the school district present a 0 percent budget increase.

Green said the administration’s preliminary budget presentation to the School Committee went well Tuesday, as most of the line items call for no spending increases.

Green said one School Committee member, Pete Reed, said he couldn’t support a budget that generated such an increase in local spending, adding the budget wasn’t well received by those who don’t like the thought of taxes being raised.

It is still very early in the budget process, Green said.

The school district is scheduled to hold the school budget referendum May 8, before the May 14 deadline for notification to teachers regarding whether the school department will offer them probationary or continuing contracts.

Green said for every day after that deadline until a budget is passed, the school department must make a per diem payment to any teachers being laid off, based on their base salary. Those payments come out of the following year’s budget.

To avoid this cost, the school department told teachers it isn’t offering contracts, Green said. In these cases, good teachers have left not knowing if they’d have a job or at what school.

Green noted the teachers association has approached the school department about the hardship this causes. Moving the referendum from June to May, Green said, will cost the department $3,500, but the School Committee and administrators feel it is worth the money to prevent losing good teachers, which means finding a replacement, providing the training and going through the probationary process, so “$3,500 is a bargain to keep your staff.”

The School Committee is scheduled to discuss the budget further during a workshop at 7 p.m. today in the Lisbon Town Office. In addition to the workshop, the committee has two executive sessions scheduled, one to discuss a personnel issue and a second to discuss negotiations with the Lisbon Education Association.

dmoore@timesrecord.com