BURLINGTON - Teachers and staff in Burlington can breathe a sigh of relief, for now. The Burlington Area School District Board of Education on Monday approved a plan that helped the district deal with a nearly $1 million budget shortfall for the 2009-10 school year that did not require laying off more teachers and staff members.

The board on Tuesday approved a recommendation from the Finance Committee to reduce the district's planned increase in salary and benefits by $323,333. The plan also calls for using $646,667 from the district's fund balance - money that is carried over from year to year.

"What this committee is doing tonight is recommending to the full board that we move slowly, but still move forward in making changes. We need to look at how we do business and how we provide education," board member David Thompson said before the full board voted on the plan.

Close to 80 people, many of them district employees, attended Monday's meeting.

Putting together a budget this year has not been easy, according to district officials. The district started out with an $870,000 budget shortfall when officials thought that state aid would be the same as the year before.

In order to deal with that original budget shortfall the district had to lay off nine employees including two elementary teachers, an instrumental music teacher, a high school tech education teacher and three full-time secretary/aides. The district also cut back some employees from full-time to part-time and cut $25,000 from the high school athletic department's budget. The district also used some one-time federal stimulus money.

Then in July, the district learned that it would receive 5 percent less in state aid after the state Legislature finished its budget. That left district officials scrambling to figure out how to deal with a $970,000 gap.

The district's tax levy is still increasing 3.5 percent from $8.70 per $1,000 of assessed value, to $9 per $1,000.

The plan approved Monday is only a short-term fix for the district, officials said. Administrators and officials will have to reconsider plans to address decreasing revenue during next year's budget planning process.

"This vote tonight buys some time. That's all it does is buys time and allows us to make an orderly transition to different ways of doing business," said Thompson, who is also a member of the Finance Committee.