Superintendent of Schools Deborah Wheeler is preparing to present her first proposed budget to the Board of Education. Wheeler, on the job for about 10 months, will unveil a spending plan of $16,368,581 for 2010-11 during the board's meeting Wednesday at 7 p.m. at the intermediate school. The proposed budget is $454,581, or 2.86 percent, higher than this year's budget of $15,914,000.

On Monday, Wheeler gave the board's finance committee a peek at the proposal, which she described as a well-thought out plan conceived by the school system's administrators. To control costs, however, the plan calls for a reduction of 7.1 staff positions.

A total of 3.6 teaching jobs would be cut, as well as three paraprofessional jobs and one-half of a clerical position.

Wheeler's plan also calls for a pay-to-play policy for high school athletics. The policy would generate an estimated $40,000 in revenue that would be used to cover the cost of transporting teams to games.

It's been a few years since the last time the board adopted a pay-to-play policy. The last one didn't go over well with parents and was eventually scrapped. Wheeler said Litchfield would be one of just a few school systems in the state with a pay-to-play policy.

Incorporating the policy into her spending plan was a tough choice, Wheeler said, but a necessary one in the effort to control costs. Another tough choice, she said, was eliminating middle school sports.

Wheeler told the finance committee that the board is being asked by the Board of Finance to contribute an extra $62,000 toward its pension fund. The finance board, citing growth that has left the town with a pension liability of about $10 million, wants the school board and the Board of Selectmen to add more money to the pension pot to keep it healthy.

The school board's finance committee touched on the request briefly and didn't seem pleased with it. Board member Wayne Shuhi suggested the $62,000 come from the town's fund balance. Committing that amount to the pension fund, Shuhi said, would force the board to cut more staff.

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