Montville — A nearly flat school budget won't impact programs and staffing as severely as officials predicted, but the town's Board of Education agreed to several cuts Thursday night to accommodate a bottom line more than $600,000 below what they approved earlier this year.

The board rejected Superintendent Brian Levesque's proposal to implement a $100 per year pay-to-play requirement for students to participate in sports teams, drama club and marching band, but accepted several other cuts Levesque said would be needed to meet the almost $617,000 in Town Council cuts to the board's original budget.

The final budget approved by the Town Council totaled $37.7 million, a $100,000 increase over the current school spending plan, which expires June 30.

Levesque said several people have retired or resigned since the first version of the budget was passed, creating less need for cuts.

But, he added, lower-than-expected tuition for students attending Montville Public Schools from out of town and additional cuts in the recently passed state budget put the district farther in the hole.

Many of the cuts will have little or no impact on staffing or programs in Montville schools.

Of the five paraprofessional positions eliminated Thursday, four were vacant part-time positions and the other was a full-time paraprofessional who has retired.

Other cuts include plagiarism-detecting software that is rarely used at Leonard J. Tyl Middle School and the salary for a rifle club coach who leads the team on a voluntary basis.

But the new budget also will eliminate an assistant principal position and a part-time secretary at Montville High School, head teacher positions at the high school and at Tyl Middle School, and three elementary library assistants.

A vacant Spanish teaching position will be filled with a teacher who has four class periods instead of a full five, and the middle school basketball and soccer programs will be eliminated.

"People have really worked hard and very collaboratively," Levesque said of his meetings with principals about the cuts. "There was a lot of give and take throughout this entire process."

The school board chose to accept a solution — which included postponing the replacement of a carpet at Tyl Middle School and the elimination of one day a week that students staying late at school can take a bus home — that avoided implementing the pay-to-play requirement that would have brought in about $25,000.

Asking parents to pay for sports and other activities was "just not Montville," the board members agreed.

"I find it a very hard pill to swallow," said board member Colleen Rix.

The school board also accepted changes that included eliminating the Project O environmental education program at UConn Avery Point, an assistant baseball coach and the Academic Decathalon team, which has not attracted enough student interest.

m.shanahan@theday.com