SCARBOROUGH – The Scarborough Board of Education last week restored into the 2010-11 budget just over four classroom positions following the approval by voters on June 8 of an additional $100,000 in spending.

In its first meeting since voters approved a roughly $35 million school budget – after rejecting a $34.9 million proposal on May 11 – the board allocated the additional $100,000 in funding plus around another $110,000 from the original proposal that had not yet been designated to a particular area, according to board Chairman Brian Dell’Olio.

Restored to the budget were a special education teaching position for grades K-2, a classroom teacher at Blue Point Primary School that is needed due to enrollment changes, an education technician position to support teacher laptops in grades K-5, half a middle school art teaching position, half a high school gifted and talented teaching position, and a .4 physical education teaching position for Wentworth Intermediate School.

The decisions on how to spend the additional funds were made after careful consideration from many parties over the course of the budget process, which included hearings on both budget proposals, Dell’Olio said.

“We certainly had no shortage of citizen input in the process, and we had administration input and committee discussions,” he said.

The board also put in the budget $20,000 for weekend custodial support at the schools.

“It had been an issue where we were constantly scheduling activities over the weekend, but we didn’t have the funding set aside to pay for the maintenance,” Dell’Olio said.

The board added $100,000 from the teacher accrual account into the budget after the first spending proposal, which cut about 30 positions from the current year’s budget, was rejected May 11 by a vote of 493-483. In that vote, 490 voters said the budget was too low, while 386 said it was too high.

On June 8, the roughly $35 million budget passed 2,325-2,029. In a separate question, 2,049 voters said the budget was too high, while 1,194 said it was too low.

“I’m pleased that we can now move forward with the budget we adopted,” Dell’Olio said.