The Butler School District’s projected $6.4 million 2012-13 budget deficit requires that the school board make tough decisions prior to June 30, the end of the current fiscal year. However, the scope of the deficit and the potential for more deficits in coming years — barring big increases in state subsidies — requires that the board plan for the bumpy roads ahead and establish money-saving strategies for years beyond the coming one.

Because teachers’ wage increases and past increases’ cumulative effect are one of the biggest reasons why the district’s projected 2012-13 budget is $3.6 million higher than 2011-12’s $90.4 million spending plan, one of the board’s biggest long-term focuses must be on teachers’ wages and benefits.

All current budget components considered, the rate of increase of teachers’ salaries is unsustainable over the long run, without a substantial increase of incoming money.

To launch the long-term financial focus, the Butler School Board — indeed, all school boards having budget-balancing problems — need to look back to the years after Act 195, the state’s Public Employees Bargaining Act, was passed in 1970.

It was a time in many districts when all teachers in a bargaining unit received the same dollar-amount salary increase — such as $1,000 or $1,500 — rather than a percentage-based pay increase under which veteran teachers making more money would receive a larger raise than teachers with lower salaries.

Percentage-based pay increases usually end up requiring a bigger outlay for districts than dollar-amount raises.

What the early years of Act 195 mean for school districts of today is the need to return to dollar-amount increases as a means for saving money. School boards should begin standing firm on that position.

An annual pay hike of $1,500 for a district with 300 teachers would mean an increased salary outlay for the district of $450,000, not potentially much more.

In future contracts, the Butler board and others also must take a tougher stance regarding what they require teachers to pay toward their health care coverage. When stacked up against what many employees in private industry are paying, teachers’ payments amount to a pittance.

At the same time, school districts, faced with big funding obligations stemming from the state Legislature’s 2001 action granting teachers a 25 percent pension increase — in effect, a deferred pay increase — must stubbornly factor that cost into how much they’re willing to give in raises now.

Butler’s current early bird contract grants pay increases well above the rate of inflation.

On a talk radio show in Philadephia on Wednesday, Gov. Tom Corbett was correct in suggesting that state residents take their complaints about rising school taxes to local school boards, not the state government, which itself faces serious budget problems.

It was in fact school boards’ persistent shortsightedness of the past and their failure to stand tough against excesses, especially in regard to teach-ers’ well-above-inflation raises, that are at the root of many districts’ — including Butler’s — current money problems.

The Butler School District’s big budget deficit was discussed again Tuesday as the board reviewed potential savings tied to the possibility of 30 teachers retiring.

Unfortunately, those savings won’t come close to erasing the deficit resulting from past bad decision making, and they have the potential to damage the educational program.

The school board must stabilize the district’s financial picture, and it must do so without big future tax increases for property owners. Likewise, taxpayers should frown upon the board’s discussion about the need for a state-authorized sales tax to bolster district finances — which, in the end, would work against the necessity for teachers to be less demanding at contract time.

The Butler board has a daunting task ahead of it, but it has only itself to blame — something district taxpayers need to remember when their anger spikes over higher tax bills.