Selectmen approved a $12,961,736 total budget for Upper Cape Cod Technical Regional Vocational School Tuesday night, including Wareham's $2,836,635 portion of the budget.

Selectmen heard a presentation from Upper Cape Superintendent Robert Dutch Tuesday evening. He explained that the budget for the school, which is the district vocational school for Wareham, Bourne, Marion, Sandwich and Falmouth, increased by 4.42 percent this year.

Wareham's assessment is based on the number of students it has in the school. This year it is 243, a slight increase over last year's number of 236. For this reason, Wareham's assessment increased from last year's number of $2,747,881.

Wareham's enrollment increased 2.88 percent last year and its assessment increased 3.23 percent from last year.

"Our enrollment in increasing, yet we've not added staff," Dutch said.

Dutch said 45 percent of the increase in the total budget comes from fixed costs such as healthcare and employee benefits. Two other areas where there were large budget increases were in the athletic department and the student activities.

The athletic department budget rose nine percent from $242,038 to $266,214. Dutch said that in the past two years, the number of student athletes at Upper Cape rose from 37 percent of the student body to 51 percent.

The student activities budget rose 36 percent from last year, from $77,543 to $121,765. Dutch attributed this to the increase in the number of students in co-curricular groups such as Future Farmers of America and Skills USA. He said because the groups are co-curricular, the costs for the groups, such as travel to competitions, must be paid for by the school.

Dutch also said he felt the 45-year-old school building was well maintained. When asked by Selectmen how it was kept in such condition, he said that students are routinely used for things such as groundskeeping, plumbing and electrical work.

Dutch said he is working with Wareham Superintendent Dr. Kimberly Shaver-Hood on providing for students who apply but aren't accepted to Upper Cape.

"We're going to continue to work toward finding a solution to providing access to those students who want a career, a trade, without them enrolling to Upper Cape," he said. "We don't want to be a drain on the system."