BEDFORD -- The Bedford County School Board voted 7-0 to approve a $106.7 million budget proposal Thursday evening.

School board members in a work session Thursday afternoon returned about $277,000 to the budget to preserve stipends for teachers aides and to purchase nine new school buses -- increasing the county's contribution by that amount.

The county's board of supervisors advised the school board to expect $1.5 million less in local funding when crafting a budget for the upcoming fiscal year, but the school board is not yet willing to swallow that cut.

The supervisors are expected to discuss the schools budget when they meet later this month, and they will have the ultimate say in how many dollars the division receives.

"I hope they are making the same tough decisions we are," school board Chairman Gary Hostutler said.

In years past, the school board drafted a budget without any front-end input from the supervisors, then the supervisors reviewed it and decided how much to appropriate. In recent years, the supervisors also vowed to share half of new revenue with the schools.

Troubled economic times put a kink in that process. The supervisors -- without seeing the schools budget -- have said the division has to share the pain of reduced revenue, to the tune of $1.5 million.

The school board's proposed budget includes cutting 33 teaching positions, which is not as bleak as the board thought initially when nearly 80 positions were slated for elimination.

Funding from the federal stimulus package helped reinstate 42 positions. Wages are frozen for the upcoming year, but the division will absorb the increased cost of health insurance premiums. The budget for vehicle replacement was slashed to zero.

In addition to the county's decreased contribution, the school system is expecting $572,000 less from the city of Bedford.