By Jarret Liotta
Despite one member’s last-minute attempt to reduce the size of staff reductions, the Board of Education tonight unanimously approved a revised $116,173,800 budget for the 2018-19 school year.

Teachers Kelly Zatorsky, library media specialist at Bedford Middle School, and Rob Rogers, instructional technology teacher at Coleytown Middle School, watch the Board of Education approve reduction in instructional technology teaching positions across the district, which they spoke passionately against. (CLICK TO ENLARGE)
Jarret Liotta for WestportNow.comRepresenting a 1.6-percent increase over the current budget, the approval followed a lengthy discussion over $972,000 in last-minute reductions and staff cuts proposed by Superintendent of Schools Colleen Palmer.
This figure, coupled with $1,078,000 expecting to come from the school’s bargaining units joining the state health plan, add up to the $2,050,000 cut made by the Board of Finance last month.
Noting that the district would be “spreading our resources a little more creatively,” Palmer put forward plans that includes cutting two instructional technology teaching positions across the district, one elementary teacher, one paraprofessional, and 0.5 FTE equivalent for a middle school literary coach, a math intervention teacher at Bedford Middle School, and a secretary, among other cuts.