South Portland school superintendent Tim Matheney said the district needs to cut $5 million from its proposed budget, and that it will result in layoffs.
Matheney said the current budget is up more than eleven percent, which he believes is more than voters will accept.
"We have not taken forward a 11.4% local budget increase in anyone's memory in this district. We saw that as an untenable increase," Matheney said.
And he said labor represents the largest share of district costs.
"We will need to reductions in employee positions. We will seek to minimize them every way possible but as I just noted, 80% of our costs are our fantastic employees," Matheney said.
Matheney said employees with be alerted in the next couple weeks if they are going to be let go.
He attributes rising costs to factors such as increased demand for special education teachers, declining federal funding and decreased philanthropic funding for the adult education program.
Matheney has instituted a non-essential spending freeze across the district through June 30.
