Residents in Easton will be asked to approve a $3.8 million budget for the town’s school district on Monday.
Easton’s school budget meeting will be held 7 p.m. June 5 at the Easton Elementary School cafeteria, where voters will consider the proposed budget for the next school year.
At $3.82 million, the total proposed budget for the single-town Easton school district is 1.09 percent less than the district’s 2016-2017 budget.
The total amount of local funding from property taxes requested in the budget — $3.35 million — is also down by 1.4 percent from last year.
While a number of budget areas would be increased in the proposed budget, including spending on early childhood instruction and district-wide technology, many budget areas were kept in line or reduced from last year.
Last year, Easton voters approved a budget for the school year now ending that came with a 4 percent increase in total spending and a small increase in the local tax assessment of 0.002 percent.
Among Maine’s public school districts, Easton receives the least amount of state funding of any school — $178,836 for the 2017-2018 school year — due to generous local tax contributions from the Huber Engineered Woods and McCain Foods factories, which cover about 80 percent of Easton’s municipal budget.
That amount of state-aid has increased from less than $100,000 in 2015, as the district has seen an increase in the number of students with special education needs.
