Topsham residents will be voting Tuesday on a new school budget that would increase spending by less than 1 percent but includes teaching-position cuts.

The proposed $36 million budget for School Administrative District 75 contains $284,000 more spending than last year. Most of that increase will come from federal stimulus funds and go toward reducing district energy costs.

The remainder of the increase is stimulus money that will be used to pay for the district's laptop program, according to Superintendent Michael Wilhelm.

The district received $465,000 in federal stimulus money, Wilhelm said. Take away the energy performance contract and the money for the laptops paid for with those funds and the district's budget is $8,000 less than last year, he said.

The $36,251,534 includes trims from "virtually every segment" of the budget, Wilhelm said. Most cutbacks were made through eliminating 11 teaching positions, a direct result of declining enrollment.

"In order to get the budget where we got it, we had to reduce positions in regular and special education," Wilhelm said. "We took money out of every area of the budget."

The lost teaching positions are scattered among the schools, and are linked to the closure of the Brunswick Naval base, scheduled for 2011. Wilhelm said the closure's impact on school enrollment has been gradual because people who lived in Topsham and worked on the base lived in privatized housing that was being refurbished and had already been half-emptied.

The school budget will not affect the tax base, Wilhelm said. The total local contribution to the school budget is being reduced by 1.14 percent, or $218,958.

Staff Writer Meredith Goad can be contacted at 791-6332 or at:

mgoad@pressherald.com