School Administrative District 15 is still trying to decide whether it can afford to expand the laptop program to Gray-New Gloucester High School next year.

The laptop initiative is one of several items, originally cut from the budget, that the district’s Board of Directors will consider restoring as the board moves toward another draft of the budget at its next meeting, April 29.

The budget, as it stands now, would cut 15 full-time and six part-time positions, Chairman Alan Rich told the Gray Town Council Tuesday night. The budget, using preliminary state aid figures, would lower Gray’s taxes by 1 cent per $1,000 of valuation and New Gloucester’s by 19 cents, he said.

After the April 29 meeting, the budget will be handed to the citizen-led Budget Advisory Committee, which will then give its recommendation in advance of the board’s May 6 meeting, at which they will adopt a final proposal. A public referendum meeting on the budget will be held May 26, and the budget validation referendum will be held at the polls June 9.

At the April 29 meeting, the board will consider restoring money in the budget for a maintenance person that handles carpentry and plumbing, field maintenance equipment, the laptop initiative at the high school and the full run of the activity bus, which now would be eliminated on Wednesdays, the week’s least busy day. If all the items are added back in, New Gloucester residents would see no tax increase as a result of the budget, while Gray residents would see an estimated increase of 23 cents per $1,000 of valuation, Rich said.

Since the budget’s first draft, additional positions have been cut, including a secretary at the High School and a part-time secretary at Dunn School, Rich said. The district is also planning to postpone additional purchases and professional development, he said.

The personnel cuts now include five full-time teaching positions, including social studies, science and math positions at the High School. The cuts were made in order to preserve programs, and the budget would not cut any classes, Rich said. The cuts were made in the places that could sustain them so that there will be enough teachers to cover the duties, he said.

“We feel we can maintain this,” Rich said. The budget was formulated so that funds were taken from a variety of sources, with no one program or school taking a huge, noticeable hit, he said. “Everybody gets squeezed a little bit,” Rich said.

Reductions in revenue hit the district hard this year, Rich said, leading to the cuts in personnel. Out of a roughly $20 million budget, the district received around $1 million less in state aid, though $515,000 in federal stimulus funds helped lessen the blow. Given that costs increase 2-3 percent each year, it is a feat that the budget includes about $1 million less in spending than this year, Rich said.

“That is a substantial decrease,” he said.

Rich told the council to prepare for a tough road ahead, as Education Commissioner Susan Gendron has warned subsidies will be low the next few years, and the district has little extra money for offsetting taxes. The budget uses just $200,000 from the undesignated fund balance, a reserve account of unused dollars from previous budgets. That is in contrast to the amount budgeted in the past – $800,000 this year. The account has now dwindled, and will likely not be available in significant amounts in the next few years, Rich said.

Councilor Tracy Scheckel said she has heard from residents who complain teachers and administrators are seeing pay increases this year, while town employees in Gray are all taking wage freezes in order to avoid personnel cuts. Scheckel said she would much rather see a wage freeze in the school district than teachers losing their jobs.

Halting pay increases for a year was not on the table, Rich said, as contracts have to be honored with the teacher’s union.

“A wage freeze is an enormously difficult situation to impose on a collectively bargained workforce,” he said, though he can understand the question. “I’m sure there are people who look at that and scratch their heads.”