BRUNSWICK

School Board members Wednesday gave School Superintendent Paul Perzanoski their permission to cut more than $772,000 from next year’s operating budget.

It’s among the first steps taken to reduce an impending 10.4 percent overall tax increase to a less calamitous 5- to 7-percent increase, as directed by the Town Council.

The reduction effort affects both the municipal budget — projected to increase by $1.4 million — and the schools’, which contained a 6.7 percent hike to maintain current staffing and curriculum levels in the face of likely cuts and curtailments from Augusta.

Now, both sides have to cut money and positions to get to the “5- to 7-percent” number. Perzanoski Wednesday outlined several ways of getting there. Among the proposed deletions are a clinical educator and a dean of students at the high school, numerous coaching jobs, technological upgrades worth $89,000, a data collection and processing employee, and reductions in music, health, resource and support positions.

Armed with the first draft of cuts, Perzanoski is scheduled to meet with Town Manager Gary Brown to discuss whether it would be enough to meet the projected threshhold.

Some board members lamented the schools’ budget reductions and complained that their council counterparts hadn’t done enough to trim the municipal budget to meet the new number.

“We’ve eliminated more than 115 positions and 22 percent of our core teaching staff (over the past four years), I haven’t seen that same level of deep reduction on the town side,” Rich Ellis said.

The board has a short deadline for making its decision: Employees whose positions are cut or eliminated must be notified no later than June 2. Because that’s a Sunday, the notice has to be delivered by Friday, May 31.

Board members also pondered their latest response in a back-and-forth skirmish with Gov. Paul LePage, regarding proposed cuts and shifts in state school funding. They suggested new methods of revenue that could help the state meet its required 55-percent funding level, including hiking lodging taxes, taxing medical marijuana use, using casino revenue — rather than public school dollars — to fund charter schools, and passing fewer school-related laws without ways to fund them.

jtleonard@timesrecord.com