Under no circumstance should the members of Butler School Board consider a property tax increase for the 2015-16 academic year.

The board on Monday night proposed a 2015-16 budget of $100.8 million. That’s $800,000 more than the current budget. It includes a $4.4 million deficit.

The current budget is $100 million. The tax rate stands at 94.8 mills per dollar of assessed real property value. That’s $94.80 in school tax for every $1,000 of assessed value.

Administrators say the projected $4.4 million gap is a worst-case scenario. They anticipate a $1.9 million increase in state revenue to cut it nearly in half.

Even so, the district is undergoing a consolidation, which will close five of the district’s 11 neighborhood elementary schools. A projected $1.5 million in annual savings from the consolidation ought to cover the rest of any anticipated deficit.

While we’re on that subject, only a month ago the consultant hired by the board, Thomas and Williamson, put the projected annual savings closer to $3.5 million.

Board members and administrators said the savings from the consolidation would help ease the barrage of tax increases — 23 increases over the past 25 years.

As always, labor costs eat up the biggest wedges of the budget pie. Salary and benefits for next year make up the majority of the budget — $43.2 million for wages and $27.8 million for benefits, or $71 million combined. That’s $3 million more than the current year despite the elimination of 10 teachers and nine support staff through attrition, and several other positions furloughed in the consolidation.

With an enrollment of about 7,200 students, the proposed budget boils down to $14,000 per student in spending next year. For the sake of comparison, the Federal Poverty Guidelines threshold for a single-person household is $11,770. If the per-student cost was equal to the poverty rate, the school budget would be $84.7 million.

The national average for per pupil spending was $10,667, for 2011-12 school year. In Pennsylvania, the per-student spending average was $15,341 for the 2012-13 school year.

Even if a tax increase were an option — and this bears repeating: it’s not an option — the state maximum-allowed increase of 2.3 mills would generate only $943,000 in revenue, less than 1 percent of the proposed budget — hardly worth the public wrath that the increase would unleash.

Board members on Monday did not discuss whether there would be an increase in the property tax rate, but several said their support of consolidation hinged on the savings countering any property tax hike.

That’s the public’s perception, too. In this case especially, perception should be reality. The public expects the financial benefit that was promised by the proponents of school consolidation.

Were any board members taken in by Thomas and Williamson’s overly optimistic savings projection? Would any admit to it now?

Even if they did, it would be foolish not to take every action to deliver on that promise of financial benefit. That means cutting the proposed budget.

Under no circumstance should the school board consider increasing the property tax rate for the 2015-16 school year — or for a few years to follow.