Don’t miss the gift just placed before Butler School District’s taxpayers.

The 2018-19 budget — Superintendent Brian White’s first for the district — proposes zero tax increase, zero deficit and zero reduction of reserve funds — a feat deemed virtually impossible by previous Butler school boards and administrations for nearly three decades.

That’s no exaggeration. Butler schools have increased property taxes 25 times over the past 27 years — over the vehement objections of retired home owners on fixed incomes.

What an amazing streak. So when a new superintendent shows the school board (and the tax-paying public) how to get by without raising taxes, without laying off ranks of employees and without wiping out the rainy day fund, we should sit up and take notice. Heck, maybe we should jump up and shout, “Hallelujah!”

So it turns out, in White’s bold first attempt, that a balanced budget is not impossible. Still it’s risky and difficult to accomplish. It will take work, especially for a school district like Butler, which runs long on real estate and short on student enrollment.

The difficulties include an anticipated slight reduction in teaching staff, brought about by attrition rather than furloughs. White, who was hired in August, says the district would eliminate 11 teaching positions and two clerical posts through resignations and retirements. That’s a far cry from the 26 furloughs in 2017-18; and 44 job eliminations the year before that, when a consolidation closed five elementary schools.

(For the record, 2015-16, when those schools closed, was one of the two years in the past 27 that did not require a tax hike.)

One year ago, we criticized the school district and its consultant, Thomas & Williamson, for projecting an annual savings of $3.5 million from that consolidation — and yet the tax increases continued. “There was a widely held assumption among the residents of the Butler School District that the consolidation ... would improve the district’s financial circumstance. ... It was widely understood that the move would save us money,” we wrote. “However, it fuels the public’s skepticism to see expenses outpacing revenue as if the sacrifice of consolidation had no effect at all.”

This week, we have witnessed a complete turnaround in the administration’s approach and attitude toward the community whose tax dollars sustain it.

The school board has until the end of June to lock into a budget. The board is under no obligation to adopt a zero-tax increase. But a balanced budget would serve as a mighty gesture of respect to a community in desperate need of a restoration of faith in its school officials.

Let’s proceed on the optimistic assumption that we can do this.