The School Committee isn’t ready to accept the Superintendent’s budget proposal just yet.

At Wednesday night’s School Committee meeting, the Committee elected not to vote on the proposed $27,842,986 budget for the 2015-16 school year, which reflects 3.58 increase over this current school year.

Those not in favor of voting argued against the meaning of the vote, saying that as school officials are expected to continue to develop the budget prior to Town Meeting on April 27, there was no current need to rush into a vote.

"(The committee should) give the process some time, so when we actually do vote on a number, it’s a number that we feel has been vetted and a number we’ve continued to work on,” said committee member Rhonda Veugen.

The proposed budget, which is $963,331 more than requested than for this current school year, is expected to be trimmed after being presented to Town Administrator Derek Sullivan. Sullivan has said that both the school and town budgets “outpace available revenues” and thus will need to be cut down.

Although Superintendent Dr. Kimberly Shaver-Hood and others suggested a vote take place, and committee member Melvin Lazarus made a motion to take a vote, he was not seconded by any of the other committee members.

As noted, Veugen was opposed to voting at the time, as was committee member Geoff Swett. Acting chair Michael Flaherty declined to second as he was not permitted to do so as chair of the committee, though he did say he was in favor of voting on the current number. Committee Chairman Clifford Sylvia was absent from the meeting.

“I think we would like that vote (today) just because it's a number from the School Committee,” said Shaver-Hood. “The number can go down, but it cannot go up.”

Swett, like Veugen, argued that voting on a number that was subject to change was “not particularly meaningful.”

“I think we need to acknowledge here that more work needs to be done,” he said. “I share my colleague’s concern about making a meaningless vote.”

Lazarus disagreed.

“We all know that there are going to be modifications to budgets both for us and the town,” he said. “However the Superintendent and Mr. (Business Manager Michael) MacMillan have worked hard to come up with a number. It is incumbent upon us to support them.”

A second motion made by Swett to have the meeting “tabled” to the March 18 School Committee meeting was also voted down.

Later in the meeting, Veugen made a statement saying that the lack of approval should not be looked at negatively.

“It should not be interpreted as a lack of confidence (in the school officials’ proposal),” she said.