SACO — The Saco School Board will decide next week what items it wants to fund in the next fiscal year above and beyond its most basic needs.

The School Board has come up with what Superintendent of Schools Dominic DePatsy has called “a bare bones” 2019 fiscal year budget proposal of $38.4 million. This base budget proposal would increase the mil rate by 56 cents in addition to any impact the municipal budget could have. 

The district, earlier in the budget process, also identified about $1.3 million of additional requests not included in the $38.4 million basic proposal. 

The school district, under School Board directive, narrowed down the list of additional request to $662,000 of priority items it could consider adding to the suggested base budget. 

These items include the school district spending $80,000 toward the replacement of 5 buses and 3 vans, with the state paying the remainder of the cost of these items.

Other items in this prioritized list of additional expenditures include $10,800 for software updates and $15,000 for maintenance projects including repairing the roof at Fairfield School.

Prioritized positions in this list include a technology integrator for kindergarten through second grade, a reading interventionist at Young School, a math interventionist at Burns and a STEM teacher at Saco Middle School. 

Also on this list is $280,000 to fund a new pre-Kindergarten program. 

The School Board was previously scheduled to vote on a finalized budget proposal at its Thursday night meeting, so the city administrator could present it along with the city’s budget to the City Council on Monday. 

The board has postponed its vote on a finalized budget proposal to March 21. School Board Chairman Michel Ohayon said at Thursday night’s meeting that the board didn’t feel it could make a final decision that night. He said the board will give the city administrator a preliminary budget that he can share on Monday. 

School Board member Beth Johnston said she thought it was a good idea to wait on the vote, as the board could still share with the city an idea of what the School Board could approve. 

“I think it’s to all of our benefit as well as the city’s that we actually think long and hard before we make the final decisions,” she said. 

After the school budget is approved by the City Council, it must go to the voters at a June   referendum for a final vote. 

— Staff Writer Liz Gotthelf can be contacted at 282-1535, ext. 325 or egotthelf@journaltribune.com.