Salem schools Superintendent Alan Seibert issued a sharply worded statement Thursday regarding the impact that impending state budget restrictions could have on schools, and warned of shrinkage of staff salary and benefits.

During Tuesday night's meeting of the Salem School Board, Seibert unveiled more specific numbers when he presented the budget for the upcoming year -- but crucial aspects of the plan won't be known for some time.

The total budget figure, $42.2 million, is $2.1 million less than that of the current year, a nearly 5 percent drop. The figure was assembled during a period Seibert and Michael Crew, director of business services, cite in their summary as "our most challenging time in school division history."

That degree of concern provides a telling frame of reference for public schools as a whole. Salem's teachers earn an average of $53,000 before benefits, or typically about $10,000 more than faculty in Roanoke and Roanoke County.

Salem's new budget anticipates decreases in both state revenue and federal stimulus funds, and appears braced for the General Assembly's adjournment Saturday, when Virginia school officials will get a better idea of just how lean state aid will be.

Salem's budget summary said the $2 million decrease would be achieved through personnel cuts by attrition, lower pension contributions, dipping of federal stimulus account budgets, and reductions to utility, supply and textbook budgets -- as well as other line-item cuts.

However, the summary also describes the proposed budget as "not the end but the midpoint of the final budget."

"We're about 75 percent of the way there," Crew told the board, acknowledging that Salem schools still need to trim roughly $500,000 to finalize reductions.

"The smaller that number gets, the deeper we're going ... and the harder it is to get," Seibert said of the remaining funds to cut.

According to the summary, it would come from salary reductions and further attrition, as well as "other areas" to be determined by the board.

"We're keeping our options open," Crew said Tuesday.

One revenue-drawing initiative in the budget is a proposed tuition increase for nonresidents, bumping school fees for non-Salemites from $300 to $500 per year. There are about 362 nonresidents in the school system, but that number includes 78 students who are the children of employees, and their tuition would not be increased.

School meal prices, which were raised twice in the past two years, would remain the same, the budget said. Students pay about $1 for breakfasts and roughly $2 for lunches.

City Manager Kevin Boggess said this year's budget would be "incredibly difficult. There are still a lot of unknowns out there with the city and the state."

Last year, an unexpected windfall of $1.4 million in stimulus money filled a deficit in the city's school fund, but he said it was unlikely that kind of fortune would fall twice.

"This will be the year the really painful cuts come," Boggess said.