The cut was necessary to meet state guidelines for an austerity budget, which a district must implement if a budget fails in two public votes.
Pine Plains voters rejected identical budget proposals on May 20 and Tuesday. The plan called for an increase of nearly 11 percent in the property tax levy.
The resulting $25,440,400 budget will be 3.65 percent larger that the district's 2007-08 spending package, according to Assistant Superintendent for Business and Finance Michael Goldbeck. He said the school board will set the property tax levy in August, when it decides how much of the district's fund balance to apply against it.
Under state law, austerity budgets cannot exceed the previous year's budget by more than 4 percent or 120 percent of the consumer price index, whichever is lower, and school board president Helene McQuade said slashing the required expenses under austerity guidelines accounted for about 80 percent of the necessary cuts.
Those cuts include new equipment, including school buses and athletic, maintenance and administrative equipment; one late bus run per week, on Fridays; the least educational field trips; supplies for administration and curriculum development; library books; and computer software.
In athletics, schedules will be reduced to exclude games that are not part of the regular schedule.
