BUTLER TWP — The Butler School Board Monday night adopted its preliminary budget, which includes a 3.2-mill property tax increase, furloughs of 37 staff positions and a demotion for eight staff positions.

The budget calls for $104.23 million in expenditures and $102.85 in revenue. It called for the district to use $1.38 million from its fund balance, which would draw it down to about $5.2 million.

The tax increase, the maximum allowed by law, would raise the district's rate from 97.8 to 101 mills. It would raise the tax bill for a property assessed at $20,000 from $1,956 to $2,020 — a $64 increase.

The budget was approved by a 5-4 vote with Jennifer Cummings, Suzie Bradrick, Bill Halle and Neil Convery voting against.

Board members Bradrick and Cummings said they were against the budget because of the staff cutbacks.

“I feel that we shouldn't have made so many cuts to the salary part of the budget,” Cummings said.

The board also approved a resolution stating its intent to reduce employees, eliminate its Japanese language program and demote some employees.

“The district has experienced a significant and prolonged decline in student enrollment over the past 10 years,” the resolution read, citing a decrease from 8,280 students in the 2005-06 school year to 6,800 students in the 2015-16 school year.

The furlough of 37 staffers includes nonrenewals of 17 teachers who had not earned tenure and furloughs of 14 teachers, two school police officers and four school secretary/clerk employees. Eight secretary/clerk employees will also be demoted from working year-round to only 10 months per year.

The reductions save the district $1.7 million in salary costs, though it is only reducing its salary budget by $669,625 because of the new hires and a scheduled 2.8 percent increase in salaries.

To earn tenure in the district a teacher must be employed for three school years.

The district will notify each of the affected employees today, King said. Though it is unknown how many, it is likely that some of the furloughed teachers will be brought back before the start of the next school year, he said.

District teacher Lisa Marron asked the board that all the teachers be notified before their names were released to the public.

“It's going to be a hard day at school tomorrow for a lot of people,” she said Monday night.

Most of the affected teaching positions are in the district's elementary schools.

Though it is impossible to know student enrollment ahead of time, the board looked at projected numbers to evaluate how the cuts would affect class sizes, Leland Clark said.

The district had targeted class sizes of 20 children per room from kindergarten to third grade, 24 from fourth to sixth grade. Under the staff reductions the board eventually went forward with, an estimated 93 percent of elementary classrooms would have been within one of those target numbers, he said.

Also Monday night, the board voted to approve a special voluntary early retirement incentive for this year.

Acting Superintendent William Pettigrew said that 13 employees will be paid $7,500 each to take an early retirement. The cash payment was implemented this year by the district to try and entice some staffers to retire, which typically saves the district money in salary costs.

As stated in their contracts, teachers with at least 10 years of service in the district can take a voluntary early retirement. This includes having their health care costs for them and a spouse covered by the district for seven years or until they turn 65 years old.

Board member John Conrad said the rising pension contributions, as required by the state, has created a “crisis.” The district next year will have to cover 32.57 percent of pension contributions. In the 2009-10 school year, that percentage was only 4.78.

Clark and Halle both commented that the district is in a dire situation with its fund balance expected to dwindle to less than 5 percent of its expenditures.

Clark noted that since 2012 the state Department of Education has had the authority to take control of financially distressed districts, and placing them in “financial recovery status.” In cases where this has happened, some of the reasons cited included having too low of a fund balance and not having a plan to become self-sufficient, he said.

“We're dealing with the same issues with these 10 or 11 school districts that were having all this trouble,” he said.

The budget will be made available for public review before being given final approval in June.