MARIETTA - No public speakers turned out to comment as the Marietta Board of Education adopted its fiscal year 2011 budget Wednesday night.

The board voted 5-0, with members Logan Weber and Stuart Fleming absent, to approve a budget that gives no raises and no tax increases, keeping the millage rate at 17.97 mills out of a total maximum of 20 mills allowed.

The board approved a budget that has revenues and expenditures balanced at $74.24 million, which is $6.58 million, or 8 percent, lower than fiscal year 2010's original budget of $80.82 million.

The fiscal year begins July 1.

"I'm very satisfied with our fiscal year 2011 budget because it was less painful than last year's," Board Chairman Randy Weiner said.

To balance the budget with declining revenues, Superintendent Dr. Emily Lembeck presented the board with a plan to cut positions and increase class sizes by on average one student each. She recommended that 41.5 positions be cut system-wide, which breaks down into 25 teacher positions, 1 speech language pathologist, 1.5 counselors, 2 graduation coaches, 5 central office positions and 7 paraprofessionals.

But many of those have already been hired back, she said.

"Due to retirements and resignations, we were able to rehire all but five people at this time," Lembeck said.

Lembeck has also called on teachers to take three furlough days for the coming school year. She and her three assistant superintendents will lead the way on furloughs by taking 10. Directors and administrative assistants will take five furlough days, as will school-based administrators.

Lembeck's proposed 10 furlough days will cost her a pay cut of $10,268, while the teachers taking three furlough days translates to an average pay cut among teachers of $878

The budget also uses $1.2 million of the district's $14 million reserve fund.

Lembeck said she expects amendments to the budget in the coming year.

"We do not have the final amount of revenues that we will receive," she said. "We still have to find out what the tax digest will be. The state revenues fell again this month by 6 percent. I'm not sure if the decline is going to continue. Given the unknowns, I feel that the board approved the budget tonight with the best information available for us regarding revenues, and that the budget must be approved by June 30, so there still is a lot of information that we don't have back."

If future funding shortfalls present themselves during the coming fiscal year, Lembeck said the board will have to look at the tax sheltered annuity benefits teachers receive, as well as dipping further into reserves or even more furlough days.

"I'm just hoping that we don't have to do that," she said.

In other business, the board heard a request from Marietta Charter School, a k-5 school, to renew its charter for another five years and add a sixth grade.

The charter school opened in August 2006 with a five-year petition that expires July 2011. It has a student enrollment of 184 students and 13 teachers, district spokesman Thomas Algarin said.

The board will vote on the matter June 28, at which time Lembeck will bring a recommendation, which she has yet to do.

Weiner is having doubts about the request.

"I have concerns whether the students will enter the seventh grade at a disadvantage due to lack of Carnegie level foreign language, lack of a real band program, lack of gifted instruction," he said.

The Marietta School District has a student enrollment of about 7,800 students and 1,218 employees, of which about 600 are teachers.