ADAMS TWP — The band community’s pleas were answered when the Mars School Board passed a final budget Wednesday night that kept a middle school music teaching position that was scheduled to be cut.

The Mars School Board passed its 2018-19 budget during a special meeting Wednesday. The $49.8 million budget includes a 2.4 percent increase in the millage rate. The millage rate will rise from 99 mills to 101.376 mills.

The music teaching position was saved by using actual costs instead of budgeted estimates for the district’s various contracted services, said Dayle Ferguson, school board president. She said late news was received that the music teacher on the chopping block was the only one qualified to teach the strings program in the district. “The absence of this specialized skill set would be an unrecoverable blow to this curricular program,” Ferguson said. “That simply was not acceptable to us.”

Parents, students and music program graduates had been attending recent board meetings to show support for the program and speak out against the proposed cut.

Although the position will be kept, Ferguson said the district’s music staff assignments will be realigned to accommodate more “balanced access to the … resources, but not necessarily to maintain the status quo of small group lessons at the middle school. There will be some changes.”

The 2018-19 budget also adds two positions — a K-12 guidance counselor and a full-time elementary literacy specialist — and expands the special education program by creating an elementary Life Skills program and implementing a multitiered system of support.

Additionally, the school board approved the hire of Travis Mineard as the director of special education at an annual salary of $118,000. Mineard is currently the coordinator of special education for Ambridge School District in Beaver County. He will start at Mars sometime in July.

The budget eliminates the ninth grade football team program, but the team hasn’t competed in two of the last three seasons due to low enrollment numbers, Ferguson said. Ninth graders will be eligible to play on the school’s JV football team.

The 2018-19 budget is 4.3 percent, or $2.1 million, higher than the current year’s budget.