MARION — After Town Administrator Jay McGrail presented a $170,000 deficit budget to the Selectmen in February, the Old Rochester Regional School District has proposed Sippican School and junior high and high school budgets that will close the gap.

District Superintendent Michael Nelson and Assistant Superintendent Howie Barber presented a $6.5 million Sippican School budget and a $19.9 million junior high and high school budget to the Selectmen and Finance Committee at a joint March 15 meeting.

“I really appreciate all the work they did to get it down to where we are today,” McGrail said.

At a February ORR School Committee meeting, the district administration proposed a $20.3 million junior high and high school budget.

The proposed budgets reflect an increase of 2.47% for Sippican School and 2.43% for the junior high and high school.

But the budget increases are met with a much smaller increase in state aid from around $860,000 to $872,000 — only about .01%.

“The state is only giving us approximately $12,000 more,” Barber said.

Members of the Finance Committee and Selectmen gave their thoughts on how the district may be able to save money in the future.

Committee member Shay Assad said that school choice, a program in which families are able to elect to send their children to schools outside their district which have chosen to accept them, ought to be fully vetted and investigated. He suggested that a team be put together to study the program to ensure the $5,000 ORR receives per school choice student is worth the cost of educating those students.

Nelson responded, saying that while there were no school choice students at Sippican School, he would bring it up with the School Committee at a future meeting.

Committee member Karen Kevelson questioned the district’s $50,000 allocation for substitute teachers in the Sippican School budget.

“For a school like Sippican to have $50,000 in sub pay is a lot,” she said.

But Barber noted that much of that funding tends to go toward long-term subs who cover teachers who are out of work for extended periods of time, usually on maternity leave.

He added that the number of teachers who require long-term leave varies year-to-year, and one long term substitute is “$13,000 minimum” — or more, if the substitute has a master’s degree.

The discussion then shifted to declining enrollment at the middle and high school levels, with committee member Peter Winters wondering why a declining enrollment doesn’t equal a decline in the $5,000 spent per student.

“Any one year doesn’t give them the flexibility to cut expenses,” Selectman John Waterman said, adding that the district should conduct a study to better understand where enrollment is headed long-term, and make financial decisions from there.