PARIS — School Superintendent Rick Colpitts told the Oxford Hills Board of Directors Monday night that a proposal to merge the Waterford and Harrison elementary schools to save the district about $95,000 has been approved by teachers.

The plan would bus prekindergarten-through-second-grade students to the Waterford Elementary School and third-to-sixth-grade students to the Harrison Elementary School. Parents have been informed of the idea, which is being proposed to help reduce a projected budget deficit for the coming year.

Waterford now has about 80 kindergarten-through-fourth-grade children plus per-kindergartners this year. Harrison has about 215 kindergarten-through-grade-six students including Waterford’s fifth- and sixth-grade students. Previous budget cuts necessitated the shuffling of some of the fifth- and sixth-grade classes out of their own neighborhood schools throughout the district.

An idea to provide shuttle service between the two schools to ease the burden of parents picking up children in both schools is being looked at. Colpitts said it would necessitate another bus driver at a cost of about $10,000.

While there are no firm numbers yet for the fiscal year 2013, preliminary figures show an approximate $35.3 million working budget that does not include most utilities, negotiated pay increases, program needs, etc.

Given a $35.3 million dollar budget – if the local increase were zero, the local assessment would increase by zero and $1.3 million would have to cut from the current proposed budget. If there were a 5 percent increase in the local share, the local assessment would increase by 5 percent and $296,000 would need to be cut from the existing budget. Under a 7 percent local share increase, there would be a budget surplus of $23,000.

 Preliminary budget hearings are being held with each of the district towns in April beginning with the Oxford and Otisfield hearing at the Oxford Elementary School on April 4.

Norway and Paris will meet at the Paris Elementary School on April 5; West Paris and Hebron will meet at the Hebron Station School on April 11; and Waterford and Harrison will meet at the Harrison Elementary School on April 12. All meetings begin at 7 p.m.

Colpitts told the directors that he will present the board with the budget at its next meeting on April 2 and then meet with town officials from the eight district member towns on April 10 to review the numbers.

He said he will have budget figures at the April 2 meeting and an assessment impact calculated for review.

In May, the Budget Committee will finalize the budget and present it to the Board of Directors for adoption prior to the budget hearing in June and the validation referendum in all eight towns.

Monday night’s meeting was held at the Paris Elementary School as part of a plan to rotate the board’s meeting place three times a year.

ldixon@sunjournal.com