EASTPORT — The City Council and the public will get their first look at Eastport’s 1991-92 school budget next week and, thanks to a host of state and local problems, it won’t be pretty, Superintendent Paul Malinski said Wednesday.

Malinski will present the budget at 7 p.m. Wednesday, April 17, at Shead High School. The meeting is scheduled for the home economics room, “but I’m going to make sure a bigger room is available,” Malinski said.

“I hope to see a lot of parents and people who don’t have kids in school now. We don’t know yet just what the Legislature’s going to do about funding education, but Eastport will get less, for several reasons. I want everybody to know what’s being spent and why.”

What’s being spent — about $2.3 million is proposed — is not quite 4 percent more than last year. It’s likely to cost Eastporters a lot more in local taxes because of the state’s money woes and a population blip, valuable Eastport shoreland and the city’s thrifty past.

This year, the state reimburses Eastport for all but about $350,000 of its school budget. The McKernan administration wants to reduce the state’s support for schools by a flat 13 percent across the state, a plan that would cost Eastport an additional $156,000. That plan, Malinski said, “is regressive; it hurts poorer communities more by taking a big chunk, and richer communities less. I don’t want to scare people by saying how much the local share could go up when we don’t know yet. The Legislature is what counts, and I don’t think they’ll have this settled until June. I do think, based on what I hear from other superintendents around the state, that the flat 13 percent cut won’t stand. Some tell me they think it will be only 5 or 6 percent. Some think a flat statewide cut won’t make it at all.”

A flat cut combined with the ever-increasing valuation of shorefront land, Malinski said, “would be an absolute disaster for small, rural towns on the coast, like us. I just hope the Legislature gets that message from people before this is settled.”

Eastport has little room to spare in its state reimbursement because the city traditionally has spent a smaller-than-average portion of its total budget on education. “Over the last 10 years, Eastport has put about 37 percent of its total local budget into education, while the rest of the union and the rest of the state has averaged 50 to 60 percent,” Malinski said. “They’ve been frugal, no frills, no real extras, but that means now that any cuts are down to the bone.”

To make matters worse the school system will experience a one-year population drop of seven or eight students next year. Since the state reimburses the city at a rate of about $3,200 to $4,600 a student, depending on the grade level, “we’re talking real money here,” Malinski said.

“Of course, the population drop is spread out over all grades, so there’s no way we could eliminate a teacher to make up for it. We lose $25,000 to $30,000 with no way to make up for it. We expect the population to go right back up the next year, but it’s going to hurt us right now.”

If anybody comes to the meeting next week with plans to cut the school budget, “it’s already been done,” Malinski said. “We started with budget requests totalling $2.5 million. The principals cut $60,000, I cut $48,000, and then the School Board cut another $62,000. We cut two teachers by attrition, one part-time custodian, one worker in the union office, one crossing guard and one kitchen worker.”