The Butler County Area Vocational-Technical School Joint Operating Committee voted to send the proposed 2022-23 school budget to each board member’s respective school district at a Thursday meeting.

The school’s executive director, Regina Hiler, presented the proposal to the Committee of the Whole at a meeting directly preceding the JOC meeting.

The total operating budget came to $6,305,884. The total increase from the 2021-22 budget is $230,595.

The biggest increase in cost to the school is employee benefits, which went from $1,989,827 in the 2021-22 budget to $2,130,656 in the 2022-23 budget; an increase of $140,829.

Hiler said the increase in the health care cost is because a diagnostic report from Highmark showed a “significant amount of high-dollar claims” made by beneficiaries district recently.

“The big part of employee benefits is a projected 12% increase in our medical, and the projected increase is based on the recommendation of our health care consortium,” Hiler said. “It is not because of anyone newly hired.”

The second largest increase in costs is for employee salaries, which is going from $2,626,617 to $2,752,008 — a $123,391 increase. Equipment costs saw the biggest decrease in the budget, going from $294,200 to $227,900.

Each participating public school district in Butler County budgets money to fund the vocational-technical school because each has students who attend it.

John Conrad, the board chairman who is from Butler Area School District, said the process of reviewing and approving the budget is multiple steps. Each school district board must approve its share, then the collective Joint Operating Committee must vote in favor of passing it, and then the individual board members make one final decision.

“Each individual board member will vote a paper ballot to approve that budget and it has to pass by the majority of the board members,“ Conrad said. ”It’s a three-step process to make sure we really want what we want.“