BERNE — Board President Joan Adriance’s absence was felt at the Berne-Knox-Westerlo school board meeting on April 20.

The remaining four board members were evenly split, failing to adopt the proposed $22.3 million budget for next year and disagreeing on whether to increase the overall amount of levied taxes by half of a percent or not at all — a difference of almost $56,000.

Some of the reductions that Interim Superintendent Joseph Natale offered in order to keep the tax levy in check included lowering the budgeted figures for business office staff, for a new football program, for special education, and for students to attend advanced programs.

The board is holding a special meeting today, April 23, at 4 p.m. in the district business office to vote on adopting spending plan of roughly $22.3 million with Adriance, the fifth board member, participating through video-conferencing.

Voters will cast their ballots on May 19.

“You have three votes, you don’t need me,” board member Vasilios Lefkaditis said as the Thursday meeting was scheduled, adding that he wouldn’t participate.

Lefkaditis and Gerald Larghe, the board’s vice president, voted against raising the tax levy by 0.51 percent, favored by Earl Barcomb and Russell Chauvot, and then voted for not raising it at all from $10,890,200 for this year’s budget. The levy makes up about half of the revenue that funds the district and hasn’t changed for BKW’s past two budgets. In years past, levy increases at most school districts were regularly above 2 percent, until a state law limited them in 2011.

The choice for the BKW Board Monday was framed by three options laid out by Natale, who expected the board would choose one of them and adopt the budget as its own.

“It was very disappointing,” Natale said Tuesday of the votes. “We were looking at one half of 1 percent increase of the budget — that’s all — which is a sound budget, educationally, still.”

Chauvot and Barcomb voted to reduce spending in several areas that were known to be underspent this year — the option for teachers to take on a sixth class, working on developing curriculum over the summer, coaching for teachers to adapt the Common Core standards, and grant writing. Also included in their vote were new reductions — lowering allocations for staffing in the business office and for a fledgling football program that pulls from three different districts.

On top of those reductions, Larghe and Lefkaditis voted for additional reductions that involved a cap on sending students to two Board Of Cooperative Educational Services programs: New Visions, where students study fields like law and medicine, and Tech Valley, a high school focused on hands-on learning where BKW currently pays for tuition for three students with one more planned to start as a freshman in the fall. For both programs, BKW is partially reimbursed for the tuition fees the following year.

Another final reduction, of $17,000 from special education, Natale said, accounted for a one-time initial cost for software, used to manage Individual Education Plans and Medicare reimbursements, that has already been paid. It also assumed a reduction to the money allotted for contracts for therapeutic services and psychological evaluations.

Natale said the “squeeze” on special education required more conservative budgeting for placements for state-required services to special-needs students.

“I think what we did is, we figured, if we have an additional placement, it may only be for a half year,” Natale said of budgeting for special-education placements.

Lefakditis said the details of the reductions were less important than the idea of putting more tax money into the district, which he considered anathema.

“To me, it’s more philosophical,” said Lefkaditis, saying specific programs wouldn’t be affected “in the big picture” because money can be moved around in a budget. Barcomb countered that, to him, Natale’s vision of what the budget reductions meant was very real and specific.

On Monday night, Natale suggested that the board members split the difference between their two figures, but no motion was made.

At one point, he was frustrated by the board’s considering whether it should act on a request by a resident to raise the exemption limit for veterans’ school taxes, joking with the veteran, “You get a 1-percent increase; I get a decrease.”

Other business

In other business, the board:

— Heard from Annette Landry, a guidance counselor for the district, speaking for a committee that reviewed valedictorian and salutatorian policy and weighted averages in the school. She said its recommendation was to drop the passing grade from 70 to 65 for all seventh- and eighth-grade classes and to weight college-level Advanced Placement courses by 1.04.

“The idea behind that is more students might elect to take that class,” Landry told the board.

On grading, Landry concluded, “In Berne, we want to make sure, if I’m doing 91 work, I’m getting that grade.”

For valedictorian and salutatorian policy, Landry said, the committee recommended that students who attend Tech Valley High School not be eligible to become valedictorian or salutatorian at Berne-Knox-Westerlo’s commencement, since they don’t attend classes in the district after eighth grade.

If adopted by the board, the revised policies would apply to next school year;

— Heard from Edward Ackroyd, a former board member and Vietnam veteran who pushed for the same board to pass a resolution last year applying the veterans’ tax exemption to school taxes, which it did. He asked that the board look at the issue again and go to the highest exemption limit of several options offered by the state.

If the maximum exemption were granted, Business Official Lauren Poehlman said, tax rates for all non-veteran property owners would increase by an estimated 0.8 to 1 percent. That’s on top of the increase last year, which displaced the levy by slightly less, when the board chose the state’s default exemption, known as the “basic maximum.”

Applications for the exemption, which is the same for municipal and school taxes, have to be submitted to the state’s Department of Taxation and Finance by March 1 of every year. It has to be applied for only once.

Larghe said it would be put on the agenda for board discussion on June 1; and

— Voted, 4 to 0, to go into executive session to discuss the employment history of a particular person.