The first draft of Wiscasset’s next school budget would save about $1 million, cut the work force and keep all programs and bolster some as Wiscasset becomes a two-school town, officials said.

The proposed spending drop is $250,000 greater than first anticipated from closing a school, Interim Superintendent Lyford Beverage said.

However, the size of the savings could shrink when moving and other consolidation costs are factored in. Those expenses, including lighting, painting and paving work at Wiscasset Middle School, and preparing bathrooms for younger students, are not in the draft, Beverage said. He did not immediately have an estimate on those costs.

The draft includes a new pre-K program and iPads in kindergarten through fourth grade, officials said at a school committee workshop Monday night.

“There definitely needs to be some money spent on the K-4 kids (for) technology,” Committee Chairman Steve Smith said.

“I think it’s a really great starting point, but again it’s a draft budget, so things change,” Smith said. “Things appear, things disappear all the time, so just keep that in mind,” he told residents, employees and reporters in the Wiscasset High School library.

The draft calls for dropping the equivalent of three full-time teaching positions, 2.5 educational technician positions and two custodian positions, Beverage said. Attrition may comprise one each of the educational technician and custodian cuts, Beverage said.

Beverage also anticipates two food service positions ending: one through a retirement, and the other through attrition.

Wiscasset High School music director Molly Winchenbach told the committee that she has heard that the proposed cuts include a music position.

“I would like to really caution you ... I honestly feel that that would hugely impact the program,” she said.

Beverage would not name the programs where the job cuts are being considered.

“At this point in time, I don’t want to elaborate on exactly where they are,” Beverage said. “This will all come to the surface relatively soon,” he added.

Also Monday night, Smith said there’s a chance that two local funds, the Larrabee Fund and Mary Bailey Fund, could be tapped to help make advances in some programs and possibly get the high school a $100,000 Science Technology Engineering Mathematics (STEM) lab.

However, resident Judy Flanagan, a former selectman, told the committee that the board of selectmen has a history of handling the two funds conservatively.

“(The funds) are not going to solve a whole lot of problems,” Flanagan said.

“Or maybe they will. Who knows,” Smith responded. “I think it’s worth making the case.”

The lab is not in the budget draft; the committee could ask residents to consider funding it, he said.

Also excluded from the draft are plans now being eyed to move the superintendent’s office from the middle school to a town-owned building next to the town playground on Gardiner Road. Wiscasset High School’s alternative education classes would move from that building into the high school, officials said.

The $8.4 million budget draft represents only the budget’s spending side, Beverage said. State aid and other revenue figures may be ready in three to four weeks, he said.

Among public comments Monday night, Michaela West urged support for arts programs to help Wiscasset attract more students and keep the ones it has, including those from Alna and Westport Island.

The next budget workshop was set for Monday, April 6, when the committee will meet with Wiscasset Primary School Principal Mona Schlein and curriculum coordinator Pat Watts; other workshops were tentatively set for April 15, April 29 and May 6. All start at 6 p.m. in the Wiscasset High School library.

The draft proposes that this year’s three second grade classes become two third grade classes next year, making them fairly large classes, Schlein said. A third teacher could still be added if needed when enrollment figures firm up, Beverage said.

Smith encouraged attendance at the workshops, where the committee will look at the budget piece by piece.

“That’s where we’re really going to dig into the meat of the budget,” he said.

Voters passed the school department’s first, $9.4 million budget, 300-287, in 2014 and agreed to tap reserve funds for $1.25 million to offset much of the tax hike; selectmen later took $300,000 from the town’s fund balance to get the hike down to 4.6 percent.