BUCKFIELD — The Regional School Unit 10 board of directors will reduce their most recent budget proposal for the district’s 2023-24 budget by $160,000 due to cost savings from health insurance, according to Superintendent Deb Alden .

“We just found out that the (district’s employee health insurance) has set their ‘ceiling’ at (a) 6% (increase from last year’s insurance costs). That is allowing us to cut our budget by (about) $160,000,” Alden wrote.

The cut will allow the district to reach a less than 5% average increase in tax assessments for each of the district’s seven towns, as the board of directors requested during their prior meeting on March 13. With the updated budget proposal reflecting the lesser amount for health insurance as well as other cuts in the budget made since the prior meeting, next year’s budget now stands at $33.1 million, a 7% increase from this year’s budget.

At Monday’s board meeting at Buckfield Junior-Senior High School, the directors also heard individual budget proposal plans for next year from administrators of the Nutrition department, the Building, Grounds and Transportation department, and the principals for Buckfield Junior-Senior High School, Hartford-Sumner Elementary School, Meroby Elementary School in Mexico and Rumford Elementary School.

The principals of Mountain Valley High School in Rumford and Mountain Valley Middle School in Mexico gave their budget proposals during the March 13 board meeting at MVHS.