ORANGE — Orange elementary schools will not see further changes or cuts to the budget approved by the Finance Committee.
The school district — composed of Dexter Park Innovation School and Fisher Hill Elementary School — has proposed a 6.7 percent increase in funding to an overall $6,375,680.
Costs have risen, especially for Special Education and health care, enrollment has declined and the district must give obligatory contractual raises to certain employees. So, despite the increase in budget, the school district has made cuts.
The main cut eliminates three sections at Fisher Hill, meaning teachers will be laid off and class sizes will increase. This cut brings the number of kindergarten, first- and second-grade sections to three each, and raises the average number of students in each class to 23 or 24.
But in a struggling town looking to make more cuts — education makes up more than half of the town’s budget — there have been Finance Committee talks in recent weeks to cut another $60,000 from the elementary schools to balance the budget ahead of the June 18 annual Town Meeting.
The Finance Committee will likely, instead, look at options like cutting from the library’s budget or police and fire.
“If there are any other changes, it will have nothing to do with the schools,” said Elementary School Committee member Dianne Salcedo Wednesday night, having just been briefed by Finance Committee member George Hunt.
Hunt told the committee that the Ralph C. Mahar Regional School District — also funded largely by Orange — made cuts to save money for the elementary schools.
These cuts include late buses and several faculty and staff.
“We went back through and cut, cut, cut on some other things, and we respected that Mahar did what it did, and we’re not touching the elementary schools,” Hunt said.
Hunt said the current iteration of the budget for fiscal year 2019 is extremely tight — leaving $900 of extra money for a town of roughly 8,000 people.
“We did not want to cut positions,” Hunt said.
There will likely be more budget meetings, including a June 11 meeting at 6:30 p.m., before residents vote on the budget at the annual Town Meeting.