The Brewer School Department’s new $29.5 million budget is more than $923,000, or 3.2 percent, more than last year’s, mostly due to increases to staff salaries and benefits.
The Brewer school committee on Monday gave second and final approval of the new budget that will support the school department through fiscal year 2026, which runs from Oct. 1, 2025, to Sept. 30, 2026.
The committee’s final approval came roughly a month after the group initially approved the spending plan in its April 8 meeting. Since then, school department leaders have made several tweaks to the budget.
The most notable additions include allocations from the department’s capital reserve funds for two separate capital projects at Brewer High School: demolishing the old tennis courts and replacing it with a parking lot for $250,000 and building a restroom building at the high school’s athletic complex for $375,000.
The city will also chip in $355,000 for the two projects, in addition to $515,000 to support the school department’s spending plan, according to budget documents.
The department cut more than $230,000 from the roughly $366,000 it set aside to cover staff health and dental insurance premiums, because those estimates came in lower than expected.
However, Brewer schools had to add more than $26,000 to pay for a fourth pre-kindergarten class and $10,000 for a manager of the department’s performing arts center.
At nearly $19.6 million, the department’s personnel expenses make up the majority of the budget. Those expenses are going up $562,000, or 3 percent from last year, due to expected pay and benefit bumps for staff.
The school department’s buildings and grounds section of the budget accounts for $2.6 million and jumped by slightly more than $68,000, or 2.6 percent.
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Those increases are counterbalanced by multiple staffing cuts, including a kindergarten teacher, a first grade teacher, a physical education instructor, a science teacher and a special education teacher. Two other positions — a music instructor and an art teacher — were changed to part-time positions.
Those losses are tied to staff retirements or resignations due to “changes in their personal lives,” Gregg Palmer, superintendent of the Brewer School Department, said.
“For staff who want to remain in Brewer, we have found ways to manage openings so nobody will be without a position next year,” Palmer previously told the Bangor Daily News.
