WINTHROP — Residents of Winthrop voted 253-87 on Tuesday to pass a $13.5 million school budget.

The $13,452,389 spending plan represents a $702,788 increase, or 5.51%, to last year’s budget. Taxpayers are being asked to fund $282,880 of the increase, a jump of 3.76%.

Winthrop Superintendent Jim Hodgkin Submitted photo

The proposed budget had faced several challenges after two members of the Winthrop School Board voted against it, which led the Winthrop Town Council to vote against the budget June 4, citing a lack of support and inconsistency in the School Board’s budget presentation.

Without the Town Council’s support, the budget went back to the drawing board June 12, missing the June 11 referendum.

In the newest budget, Superintendent Jim Hodgkin cut $90,000, including $71,000 from the regular instruction portion of the budget, which he was able to do after a few teachers on the upper end of the pay scale announced their retirement.

In a statement on the district’s website, Hodgkin said the main increases to the budget are salary hikes mandated by union contracts, a bond payment for a new boiler, lighting upgrades, the addition of three teachers and the return of the transportation department, which had been contracted out in previous years.

The School Board voted on the new version of the budget at a special meeting June 12.

Four board members voted in favor of the budget, while Ivy Corliss, one of the votes against the original budget, opposed it.

Corliss said she still had not received information she needed from Hodgkin — specifically, from the district’s transportation department — to make an educated vote on the budget.

Town councilors voted again June 24 on the updated budget. The vote was 4-2, with Linda Caprara and James Steele opposing the spending plan.