Montville — The Board of Education is considering a $39,977,718 school budget for next year.

Superintendent Laurie Pallin presented the proposed budget to the school board Tuesday. It represents an approximately 1.8% increase from the current year's appropriation.

In cuts to the overall town budget last year, the school budget suffered most: In March, the Board of Education passed a $40,034,736 spending plan. Mayor Ron McDaniel lowered that to $39,744,736 in his proposed budget, but $39,271,804 was allocated to the school board in the budget the Town Council adopted.

The proposed budget includes a 0.74% increase in benefits ($341,585), a 0.03% increase in purchased services ($15,914), a 0.06% increase in supplies ($30,153) and a $152,857 decrease, or 0.33%, in tuitions.

Rollover costs, including for insurance, fuel and electricity, led to a 1.18% increase. On top of that, the proposed budget asks for replacement computers, full-time paraprofessionals, teacher leaders, an English language arts coach and a security officer at Tyl Middle School, bringing the increase to 1.8%.

Asked on Thursday why the increase was rather modest during the coronavirus pandemic, Pallin cited two reasons.

"We had a number of teacher retirements and resignations; I was able to replace teachers who are retiring with less costly teachers," she said. "That's a loss for us in the sense that we're losing expertise, but it does allow us to budget for teachers (who) come in lower on the salary scale."

The second reason is that the district is anticipating it'll be able to use federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funds set up to address the effects of the pandemic in U.S. schools.

"We're not supplanting anything in the budget, but the increased needs I believe we'll have next year we accommodate through a position that we put through the ESSER II grant," Pallin said. "We didn't put the social worker position or after-school programs in the operating budget, but we think we'll be able to use the ESSER II grant."

Pallin has been trying to hire new social workers for the school system for years. The district's social workers are spread thin at the moment. Pallin said she isn't yet sure if the added social worker will be needed beyond the pandemic.

Pallin identified a host of needs for the school district that she included in the budget, such as retaining the Tyl Middle School security officer being funded this year as part of COVID-19 response efforts.

She noted how helpful having a math coach has been for students to work with outside of class, and said an English language arts equivalent would help students similarly, especially during the pandemic.

The district is having trouble retaining part-time paraprofessionals, Pallin said. She advocated for replacing part-timers with full-timers.

"Currently, districtwide we have 13 full-time paraprofessionals. We cannot retain our part-time paras, we are constantly posting, hiring and training new paras," Pallin said Tuesday. "At Mohegan alone, 16 part-time paras have resigned this school year, and they currently have five vacancies. This model does not feel sustainable. Murphy and Oakdale have each lost six paras and have two and three vacancies, respectively."

Learning during a pandemic will require after-school programs, revising curriculums, use of online electronic resources, increased intervention services, different kinds of summer school and the increased services of social workers, Pallin said.

She said the proposed budget was more difficult to put together than budgets in past years because the district wasn't really able to compare this past year's budget to the new one, given the many changes due to the pandemic. For example, it was hard to determine how much money is needed for transportation because students haven't been using the bus on Wednesdays, given the school's hybrid schedule that has all students learning remotely on Wednesdays, and haven't been bused to sporting events like they have in previous years.

During her presentation, Pallin also highlighted past reductions in the school budget and how that's currently affecting the district. It's having trouble replacing technology at a time when learning is increasingly technology based. This includes a loss of online subscription programs. It's seen the elimination of summer and after-school programs; the loss of a kindergarten-eighth grade English language arts leader; fewer library books and supplies; a loss of elective teachers at the high school and Tyl, including technology education, business and physical education; fewer field trips, and reductions to secretarial, custodial and library media staff, among other issues.

Aside from a period of stagnancy from 2018 to 2019, Montville's school budgets have risen incrementally since 2013, when the budget was $36,632,735.

The Board of Education will take some time to reflect on the proposal, and is expected to decide on it at some point in March.

s.spinella@theday.com