Montville — Responding to an unpredictable state budget year that could mean future cuts to school spending, the school board is preparing to end the contracts for three non-tenured teachers.

The board voted unanimously on Tuesday to tentatively cut the positions of a math teacher and an English teacher at Montville High School and an Oakdale Elementary School teacher.

The teachers have been notified of the decision, Levesque said.

If the Town Council passes a budget that keeps the superintendent’s spending request intact, the decision could be reversed and one or more of the teachers could be asked to return.

“It doesn’t mean that they will go, but they might,” Levesque said Tuesday at the school board’s meeting.

When Levesque initially presented his budget proposal in February, he said he thought the district could keep the budget increase in 2018 at a 1.84 percent jump while avoiding layoffs.

Five teachers have decided to take an early retirement incentive the district offered, he said Tuesday, which will reduce the district’s budget request by $230,000.

But further cuts could still come from the Town Council next month as they make their final decisions about town-wide spending in the 2017-2018 fiscal year.

Last year, the school budget proposal went down by about $600,000 between the school board vote and the final Town Council vote, a cut that Levesque predicted would be "devastating" but due to several retirements did not lead to layoffs.

Planning to end the three teachers' contracts does not affect the school board's proposed budget, and rather was a preemptory move in case school spending is cut further, Levesque said.

The new spending request, after the savings from retirements, will be passed on to the Town Council’s finance committee as it holds public budget hearings and meets with department heads in April and May. The request would increase spending in fiscal year 2018 by 1.2 percent over the current year, Levesque said.

The Town Council has scheduled public hearings at Montville High School for the general operations budget at 6 p.m. April 25 and the school budget at the same time the following day.

The council's Finance Committee will hold meetings with department heads before developing their own recommendation over the next several weeks, and the Town Council will take a final vote on the 2018 budget in May.

m.shanahan@theday.com