REGION — At their April 12 meeting, SAD 44 board members unanimously approved a proposed FY’ 22 school budget of $12,393,532 to send to district voters in June.

If approved, the budget would increase $253,571 over last year’s budget of $12,139,961. The total increase is 2.09%.

“One of the things the budget committee was focused on was trying to keep the impact to the taxpayers as low as possible while still getting all the programs we felt were important and needed to be funded,” Board Chair Danny Whitney said.

Also during the budget presentation, member Erin Cooley said 92% of the budget consists of salaries ($7,143,470, 57.6%), benefits ($2,210,152, 17.8%) and fixed costs ($2,028,835, 16.4%). Some of the fixed costs are programs such as Bethel Area Arts and Music, 4H Learning Center, Region 9 and the Northstar program.

The remaining 8% of the budget, which is just over $1 million, covers professional services, books and supplies, Jobs for Maine Grads Services, improvements to secondary education, among other things.

All budget related documents can be found on the SAD 44 website: sad44.org.