Among the proposed school budget cuts due to lack of funding are more than 20 teaching positions, new textbooks and technology, all extra curricular activities, and some of the funding for high school sports.

Acknowledging that the school district and municipal government will have to make significant cuts to their respective budgets for next year, the School Committee voted on Wednesday, March 21, to reduce the district's requested funding both for education and for the operation of the Transportation Department.

"I have to find a way to make the budget work and open schools in the fall if we don't have enough money," Superintendent Dr. Barry Rabinovitch told the School Committee. "If I have to cut 22 teachers, nothing is sacrosanct."

The School Committee's decision came days after a joint Saturday, March 17 meeting of the Board of Selectmen and Finance Committee, where School Department representatives and town officials candidly discussed the difficult cuts that would need to be made to balance a more than $2 million gap in the town's budget for fiscal year 2013, which begins on July 1.

The underlying budget problem is the fact that as revenue grows, the town’s increasing “fixed” costs for things such as healthcare and insurance grow too, but faster than revenue. Meanwhile, state aid is on the decline.

The School Department also must pay for rising mandated costs associated with special education and for the transportation of homeless students to out-of-district schools.

If the School Committee didn't agree to reduce the district's budget, Rabinovitch explained Wednesday that the town's overall budget would need to be balanced on Town Meeting floor in April, with town and school officials having to argue for funding.

"It'll be department versus department," said Rabinovitch. "In my estimation, it won't be pretty."

Still, Rabinovitch and School Committee members said that the decision to reduce the education budget (often referred to as "net school spending") from the approximately $27.2 million that administrators had determined was adequate -- though not ideal -- funding for the schools, to the roughly $26 million that they estimate is currently available, was not an easy one.

"I don't think there should be any misunderstanding about the difficulty on the town side of this problem," said School Committee Chair Geoff Swett. "These are really tough times on both sides of the town and the schools."

The School Committee voted on the $27 million budget in January, as required by the Town Charter, before firm local aid numbers were released from the state.

"I think in good faith, we should show the community that we recognize that our original budget is no longer realistic and we need to be sensitive," Swett said.

Derek Sullivan, the town's financial analyst told officials on Saturday that among other things in the town’s current working budget, funding for the summer lifeguard program has been cut and funds for a new Personnel Services Director have been slashed.

At least four full-time town employees will be laid off if the budget is approved as is. A 3.75% reduction of employees’ salaries, which would need to be approved by unions, is also proposed, Sullivan explained. That reduction would come from shaving 1.5 hours off of employees’ work weeks.

In an effort to ease the impact of the budget reduction on the school side, the School Committee has proposed a Proposition 2 1/2 override in the amount of $780,000 to reduce some of the teacher layoffs and a debt exclusion totaling $341,000 to fund textbooks and technology.

Both the override and debt exclusions (articles 20 and 26 on the April Town Meeting warrant) would need to be approved both by Town Meeting voters and by the larger electorate at the ballot. Both are unpopular among voters.

An override would increase taxes indefinitely by a yet-to-be-proposed percentage per year, while debt exclusions would increase taxes by a percentage over a yet-to-be-determined number of years.

Rabinovitch estimated that the $341,000 debt exclusion would increase taxes for a "medium-assessed house" in town approximately $4.64 per year for five years or $23.19 in one year.

If the Proposition 2 1/2 proposals are not approved, the School Department will have to move forward with the aforementioned cuts to teaching positions, sports, and other areas. Even if both the override and debt exclusions are approved, cuts to personnel will still be necessary, Rabinovitch said.

The proposed cuts are just that -- proposed. School Committee officials said that they hoped to have discussions in the coming weeks about exactly what and from where in the budget to cut.

"I'm not willing to approve cuts that are going to dismantle the academic framework of Wareham Public Schools while we provide some extracurricular activities," argued School Committee member Cliff Sylvia. "I'll tell ya, extracurricular means everything to these kids, but the key word on that is 'extra.'"

School Committee member Kenneth Fontes said he wanted to keep all options on the table.

"I will vote for anything that involves any other cuts than teachers," said Fontes. "I don't see how we can keep the doors open. ... It's impossible to continue to run a quality education system."

The School Committee voted to reduce the district's proposed transportation budget (commonly referred to as "non-net school spending") to $1.3 million.

If a proposed debt exclusion to fund the purchase of school buses does not garner voter approval in April, Swett explained that the district will have no choice but to reduce the number of routes the department runs by only busing the children it must transport by law (students in kindergarten through 6th grade), charge families for students who ride the bus, or a combination of the two.

Though not all members can attend, the School Committee will discuss the budget with the Finance Committee at the FinCom's Wednesday, March 29 meeting. WarehamVillageSoup will update this story with the time and location of that meeting.