MIDDLETOWN — Parents, teachers, school officials — and a 12-year-old Gaudet Middle School student — last night urged the Town Council not to cut the School Department’s budget request, saying the school district shouldn’t be forced to consider eliminating all-day kindergarten, middle school sports or a school nurse.

The School Department would be hit with a $186,000 cut to its spending request if the council holds to a 3-percent tax increase — and a $61.3-million budget — for the next fiscal year, beginning July 1. Town Administrator Shawn J. Brown had proposed a $61.6-million budget, but the council wanted to examine whittling down that 3.91-percent tax hike.

Besides potential slashes to sports or kindergarten, the school district would have to consider cutting Middletown High School’s dean of students, reducing the number of after-school activities, dropping one bus route, eliminating noncertified staff positions, or a combination of some of those options, Schools Supt. Rosemarie K. Kraeger told the council last night.

Kraeger said she would only support cutting a school bus. “These other things,” she said, “cut to the heart of what makes Middletown special.”

The school district was one of the first in the state to offer all-day kindergarten, Kraeger said, a program that has been shown to boost students’ long-term achievement.

Kraeger said the school district has weathered two straight years of budget cuts, including reductions to literacy and math-support instructors. The proposed fiscal 2009 budget calls for cutting 16 additional positions.

“What we need to look at is the cumulative effect over the past two years on the school system,” Kraeger said. “We are at the breaking point.”

Morris Hirsch, parent of a just-graduated Middletown High student, said his daughter’s class shrank over four years, as students dropped out or transferred to private schools.

“There’s a lot of ways that we could be doing better and not losing all these students,” Hirsch said. “They all cost money, but you really need them. We need academics, we need sports, we need arts programs, because all these things are the hooks that keep kids in school who otherwise wouldn’t be there.”

“I understand times are very hard,” Hirsch added. “This is just the wrong place to be making cuts. We’re destroying a good school system.”

Karen Roarke said she sometimes thinks about enrolling her third grade and seventh grade daughters in private school.

“The town takes money to run,” Roarke said. “Instead of not spending it, we need to just realize that we need this money to run our town.”

After Roarke asked, town officials said that the average homeowner would have to pay about $23 more annually to maintain school spending at the proposed level, versus reducing it by $186,000.

“This seems like an awful lot of heartache for [the cost of] a meal,” Roarke said.

Middletown High School teacher Keith Holubesko, the parent of a 6-year-old, got on his hands and knees, begging the council, in jest, not to cut all-day kindergarten.

“It’s their first real experience with school,” Holubesko said. “You want those kids to have a great experience. You want them to feel ready. It will be tragic, it will be letting down our kids, if we let our kids go without all-day kindergarten.”

Then there was Ali Borges, a Gaudet eighth grader, who said that being on the school’s basketball team has taught her teamwork and given her a sense of pride in her school.

“I hope you will reconsider,” Ali said. “You will be letting down a lot of kids.”

On the municipal side, a 3-percent tax-hike level would be cutting $124,000. The town’s finance office has identified $193,000 worth of cuts, but also upped the utility line item by $68,000 because of the jump in oil and gas prices.

The council made no decision on the budget last night. It set the budget adoption meeting for 6 p.m. on June 30, the last day the council has to adopt a fiscal 2009 budget. The School Committee, meanwhile, meets Thursday, June 26, and will probably discuss the potential budget cuts.

In other action at last night’s busy council meeting, Town Solicitor Francis S. Holbrook II told the council he needed more time to review former Town Administrator Gerald S. Kempen’s latest request to meet with the council to “seek redress” of recent issues related to his departure. Holbrook said Kempen’s request for a closed-door meeting on the matter “may violate Open Meetings Law.”

State law permits public bodies to hold closed meetings to discuss, among other things, pending litigation and personnel matters.

Holbrook declined to elaborate when queried by The Journal after the meeting. Kempen and his lawyer, Michael T. Brady, were in the audience last night.

mwims@projo.com