SEEKONK — School supporters have succeeded in their petition drive for a Special Town Meeting to vote on financing the new contracts for teachers and other education workers. Now it’s just a question of when the meeting will be held.

Town Clerk Jan Parker said yesterday that she certified 206 signatures on the petition last week. (Supporters collected about 25 or 30 more signatures than the 200 needed to request a Special Town Meeting, Parker said.)

The Board of Selectmen now must set a date for the meeting within 45 days of when the names were certified — or around Nov. 10, seven days earlier than the Nov. 17 date that the selectmen were considering for the regular, annual fall Town Meeting.

It remains to be seen whether the selectmen will choose to move up the regular meeting to combine the two events. The risk in that instance for school supporters, however, is that a combined event could run long into the evening and voters could tire and leave before a vote on the school employment contracts is taken.

The selectmen meet tonight at 7 at Town Hall, and their agenda includes setting the town meeting dates.

The School Committee earlier this month approved new three-year contracts with the Seekonk Educators Association and four other bargaining units that include 3½-percent salary increases this year.

The contracts for all unionized school district employees will cost just under $2.1 million over three years, schools Supt. Emile Chevrette has said, with $557,000 needed in this fiscal year.

But the School Department’s current-year budget does not include money for pay raises, thus the need for voters’ approval to draw the money from the town’s unspent “free cash.” If residents reject the expenditure, the school district will have to renegotiate.

Town officials, meanwhile, have warned that the schools’ salary hikes are unaffordable and will dramatically impact the town’s finances. The town is now in contract talks with its seven municipal unions — three of those deliberations are now in arbitration — and it would likely be forced to provide the same raises to those unions as the school system gives its teachers.

But Chevrette has countered that the School Department has returned $500,000 to the town in the last two fiscal years in money it saved in its operating budget. Chevrette said officials accepted the money with the understanding that it would be later used to help pay for school-side salary increases.

mwims@projo.com