The Bangor School Department’s new budget is $3.9 million more than its last, stemming mostly from increases to teacher salaries, new educator positions and projects at the high school.
Although the $60.4 million budget for next school year is 6.9 percent higher than the current one, the spending plan is nearly $300,000 lower than the department’s initial proposed budget, according to budget documents. The increase is close to the $3.4 million boost in last year’s school budget.
The Bangor school committee last week unanimously approved the proposed budget, which will fuel Bangor’s schools from Oct. 1, 2024, to Sept. 30, 2025.
Taxpayers won’t know how the new school budget will impact their property tax rate until the city and county finalize their respective budgets. Bangor’s current tax rate is $19.15 per $1,000 of value, meaning a home valued at $300,000 will receive a $5,745 tax bill.
The $3.9 million increase from last year’s budget partly stems from a $1.1 million — or 3.3 percent — boost to existing teacher salaries and benefits. By comparison, the existing budget came with a nearly $780,000 increase to teacher salaries from the year before.
Another $936,200 in the proposed budget will support 19 new positions, including seven special education teachers and nine special education ed techs, one part-time position and three multilingual educators.
The additional special education positions are needed to accommodate a swell in special education students, according to the department.
Projects at Bangor High School, including the renovation of a science, technology, engineering and mathematics classroom and upgrades to a loading dock, add another $790,000.
Major increases in the school budget include a $1.2 million jump for regular instruction and roughly $826,400 more for special education — 4.9 percent and 7.5 percent increases, respectively, compared with last year’s funding.
At about $25.6 million, the regular instruction category is the largest slice of the school budget and covers teacher salaries and all instructional materials and supplies used in classrooms. The proposed increase comes from bumps to teacher salaries, renovations to a Bangor High School classroom and new textbooks.
The special education category, which supports all special education programs including instruction, speech pathology, psychological evaluations, physical and occupational therapy and social work services, is the second largest portion of the overall budget. The boost in the special education budget comes from hiring new special education educators.
Additional large boosts to the budget include a $641,000 jump in the facilities maintenance and $543,000 rise in the student and staff support portions. Each is up roughly 10.6 percent from the previous year’s spending.