The Wareham School Committee approved a $30,751,930 budget for the 2021 fiscal year at the committee’s Thursday night meeting.

Superintendent Dr. Kimberly Shaver-Hood said that the proposed budget meets all the district’s contractual obligations, assumes grant funding will remain the same, and includes a modest increase for fixed costs like utilities. 

In order to get to that number, which matches funding available, administrators reduced supplies and materials, did not include any new staff or capital requests, and will, in fact, have to reduce the staff by as many as 15 positions.

“As we move forward, if this budget number is adopted, certainly our charge is to see what is in the budget that we could reduce to save staff. That’s our number one priority. Our work is not done if this number is adopted tonight. We will continue to work and whittle this down because we don’t want to reduce anyone,” Shaver-Hood said.

School Committee Chair Mike Flaherty noted that the budget includes funds from accounts that the district has typically held in case of unforeseen expenses, like the circuit breaker fund which is composed of state funding for prior-year expenses related to high-cost special education.

Shaver-Hood said that the district will use as little of those funds as possible, but saving staff is the priority.

One possible bright spot for the budget is that state aid is unknown, and the Legislature recently passed a bill that changes the formula used to calculate funding for districts, with the intent of increasing funds for all districts, especially low-income districts. Shaver-Hood said that next year’s budget was calculated using an estimate that doesn’t include possible increases in state funding.

Any additional funding will be put towards staffing.