Waterford — The school budget proposal that the Waterford Board of Education will consider this week would increase school spending by $1.4 million, a jump mostly driven by increases in staff salaries and benefits, health insurance, heating, energy and transportation costs and tuition for magnet schools and special education.

Superintendent Thomas W. Giard presented his proposal, which suggests an increase of 3.14 percent over current funding, at a meeting with the school board Monday.

It’s a similar bump to the one Giard proposed last year, before the town’s Board of Selectmen, Board of Finance and Representative Town Meeting whittled his 2017 budget down to a 1.14 percent increase over the previous fiscal year's spending plan. The cuts last year, which happened amid uncertainty over state education aid and the financially struggling magnet Friendship School, included a $500,000 cut by the RTM, which was the largest that body had made in several years.

But citing fixed and contractual costs, Giard came to the school board this week to ask for a total of $47.3 million in expenditures for the 2018 fiscal year, which begins in July.

He joined superintendents across the state who are presenting their budget proposals for next year without knowing whether Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s proposed dramatic cuts to state education funding to most towns will survive negotiations with legislators in coming weeks.

Giard’s budget proposal included a number of savings measures, including the adoption of high-deductible health plans for staff and the implementation of the school board’s decision last year to end an agreement with New London to help fund pre-kindergarten students at the Friendship School.

Waterford’s contribution to funding the Friendship School, which is run by the regional nonprofit LEARN, threatened to be one of the major contributors to the 2017 Waterford school budget last year.

The issue temporarily was resolved when money held up at the Office of Early Childhood was distributed to LEARN, but the school board still felt burdened by the 2017 cuts in state education aid and worried about the threat of even bigger cuts this year, so it announced in July that it would pull out of the decadelong agreement with New London to fund the school.

The move will save Waterford the tuition it would have paid for the approximately 200 Waterford pre-kindergarten students at the school — many whose families may now be charged tuition for their child to attend pre-kindergarten — but it also has disappointed advocates of the unique urban/suburban partnership that once signaled a commitment to free pre-kindergarten for both Waterford and New London children.

New London school officials have not said whether they will be able to support the families who might have planned to send pre-kindergarten-age children to the Friendship School for free. Both districts still are obligated under federal and state laws to cover the tuition cost of any kindergarten student age 5 or older who is accepted to the school, as well as all students’ special education costs.

Giard will discuss the budget again with the school board at a 6 p.m. meeting Thursday at the Town Hall, and the board will vote on his proposal later this month.

m.shanahan@theday.com