Stonington — The Board of Education on Thursday night offered preliminary support for the proposed 2020-21 budget that calls for a 2.88%, or $1.1 million, increase in spending.

That is less than the initial budget presented by Superintendent of Schools Van Riley, which called for a 3.48% increase. Since then, Riley and school officials have worked to lower the hike.

The board will vote on the proposed $39.7 million budget at its Feb. 13 meeting before sending it to the Board of Finance for approval. In November the Board of Finance recommended to school officials that they have no increase in the proposed 2020-21 budget.

Finance board members were frustrated this fall that, despite several invitations, school officials refused to send a representative to finance board meetings to explain end-of-the-budget-year transfers of leftover money in the school budget. The Board of Finance only has the ability to approve the total amount of the school district's operating budget but does not have line item control.

The school board’s approval of the budget also came after former finance board member Blunt White, who conducted a detailed analysis of the past seven years of school budget audits, sent an email to school board members raising questions about school spending, including why administrative and secretarial salaries have spiked while student population continues to decline.

White’s analysis shows that from 2013-14 to 2018-19, administrative salaries increased 51%, or $781,574, while the number of students decreased 12.6%, or by 292 children. From 2013-14 to 2020-21, secretarial salaries will have increased $260,230, from $763,000 to $1,023,000.

From 2018-19 to the proposed 2020-21 budget, a period which includes the closing of an elementary school and consolidation of the middle school, administrative salaries are projected to drop $118,310 with another decrease in enrollment of 65 students.

Board member Jack Morehouse said Thursday night that he felt having three administrators at the middle school was excessive. He asked if there could be more job sharing to handle administrative duties and use the money from the third administrator for other purposes, such as raises for paraprofessionals, smaller classes, teachers and extracurricular activities.

“It's natural for a manager to look around and say, ‘You know what would help me is more managers,'” said Morehouse, who added he also was commenting as a small business owner and taxpayer who pays $40,000 a year in taxes.

Riley said the plans are to eliminate the third middle school administrator in the 2021-22 budget.

In a Tuesday email to White, Board of Education Chairwoman Alexa Garvey explained the reasons for the increases in administrative and secretarial salaries amid the drop in enrollment.

She said that in 2014, a change in the evaluation system for teachers required more meeting and evaluation time by administrators. This resulted in an increase in the number of assistant principals and deans. Riley said that in 2014-15, the combined districtwide finance and operations position was split into two jobs.

In 2016, Garvey said changes were made to the secretarial staff when it was discovered Stonington school secretaries worked 7-hour days, compared to other districts where they worked 30 to 60 minutes more, and their job descriptions were outdated. She said a comparison with other school districts and the salary of Town Hall secretaries showed school secretaries were underpaid.

Finally, Garvey said over the last two years the school system has begun more innovative programming partnerships with Mystic Seaport Museum and Electric Boat and opened the new Learning Annex, all of which provide education for “students who require a different approach and less traditional format to learn.” This in turn required an additional administrator responsible for the new programs and the students involved in them.

Listing what she said are the many benefits of the sport, school board member Heidi Simmons called Thursday night for increasing the financial support for the high school crew team, which has to raise 75% of its own operating costs.

Susan McVeigh, who heads the 93-member paraprofessionals union, described their many duties and said their salary range of between $15.02 and $17.92 an hour is far less than what other town and school employees, such as secretaries, laborers and custodians, earn and less than what paraprofessionals earn in other towns.

“I’m wondering why there is such an inequity of salaries in Stonington among noncertified staff,” she said.

Garvey said she hoped the upcoming contract negotiations with paraprofessionals will produce salaries comparable with their position.

j.wojtas@theday.com