The Pembroke School District faces cuts in sports and staff in the coming year’s budget if a special education expense deficit in the current budget cannot be defrayed by the School District Meeting on Saturday, March 8.

After the Pembroke Budget Committee asked the School Board and the Board of Selectmen to further shave their budgets, which were already levelfunded, to reduce a potential 10 percent tax increase, the only things left to cut were co-curriculars and teachers.

School Board Chairman Clint Hanson said four teaching positions, one from each of Pembroke’s schools, will likely have to be cut from the proposed 2008-09 budget if the district does not see a significant reduction in its special education costs.

A special education student moving out of the district, for example, could amount to the savings needed to keep teachers and all sports on board, Hanson added.

Pembroke Academy golf and lacrosse will likely be pulled from the co-curricular part of the budget, Hanson said. A “pay to play” plan would not be implemented, he added.

“The board decided several meetings ago that would not be the appropriate way to go forward,” Hanson said, adding the system “creates more problems than it’s worth.”

The board was able to knock about $80,000 from its proposed budget by reducing a deficit appropriation line they included to remedy the $500,000 in unexpected special education expenses to the district this year and a technology appropriation.

The deficit appropriation stands at about $250,000, Hanson said, a number that could be reduced further depending on the most updated numbers for special education costs.

“That’s always going to be a floating number,” Hanson said, adding if the extra money for the hiked special education costs was in the current year’s budget, the School Board’s proposed $23.2 million budget would be within the Budget Committee’s limitations.

During budget deliberations, the Budget Committee asked the School Board to cut $310,000 from its proposed budget to soften the blow of a potential 9 percent increase in the school budget.

If both the school and town proposed budgets and all warrant articles went through, Pembroke taxpayers would have seen a projected 10 percent increase in the tax rate to $25.95 per $1,000 of assessed value. For someone living in a $200,000 home, that’s an extra $448 on the tax bill.

With the $310,000 in school budget cuts and $150,000 in town budget cuts, the projected rate calculated to $25.18, a $1.52 increase over the current rate of $23.66 per $1,000 of assessed property value.

For the same residents owning $200,000 homes, that’s an extra $304 on the tax bill.

Budget Committee Chairman David Freeman-Woolpert said the committee realizes the school district’s plight, and knows that any cuts to the budget will impact the school district in some way. The Budget Committee is proposing a school budget of about $22.9 million.

There is no “fluff” in the school’s proposed budget, but a combination of staggering special education costs, higher county taxes and the second year of the teacher’s union contract, all items the board cannot control, have increased the school’s budget.

“Every discretionary line has already been level-funded or reduced,” said Hanson, including supplies.

Another article on the warrant asks voters permission to do away with a road trust fund currently in place and transfer the funds to offset special education costs.

Another article asks to take $77,498 from the a capital reserve fund to make repairs and improvements to the school buildings, including ceiling tile and floor replacements at the Hill and Village schools, re-painting the stripes in the Three Rivers parking lot and replacing an area of Pembroke Academy’s roof over the art department.

The annual School District Meeting will take place on Saturday, March 8, at Pembroke Academy, at 10 a.m.