Unemployment Insurance - The Governor's Office recently announced a multi-billion dollar deficit in state-wide unemployment insurance. It is possible that these costs will be passed on to employers beginning in FY26. We are following updates on this topic to better understand the impact on the school district budget. Options moving forward: The administration needs guidance from the school committee about how additional revenues and expenditures should impact the overall budget Options for the school committee include: 1. Recommended - Leave the assessments to the two towns at current levels. Use the additional state revenue to increase the district’s operating budget to reflect additional revenues and expenses. 2. Not Recommended - Leave the budget increase of 3% unchanged and use the additional revenues to further reduce assessments to the towns. Make further reductions to staff from the current budget proposal. Should the school committee choose the first option, the administration would return with a recommendation for the allocation of any additional revenues beyond expenses. My early thinking is to focus on the restoration of Tier 2 & 3 interventions for students and consider the unmet need for multilingual services if additional revenues become available. Long-Term Outlook & Efforts to Reduce Structural Funding Challenges FY25 In FY25, the District made structural changes to health insurance - changing insurance providers, and introducing an insurance opt-out program that is saving the district approximately $600K in the FY26 Budget. The District also addressed another significant structural budget deficit by limiting the use of Excess and Deficiency (E&D) funds to one-time uses. FY26 The school committee also convened an Elementary Budget Task Force to consider additional structural budget changes at the elementary level, some of which have been incorporated into this preliminary budget proposal. This resulted in several hundred thousand dollars of additional cost savings. These savings maximize efficiency, but we recognize they also compromise some of the educational programs that the students and families have come to rely on. Administration carefully reviewed class sizes across all levels of the system and has made reductions to general education classroom staff. The resulting reductions in general education staff parallel the historical reduction in students since regionalization. Class size projections for FY26 continue to remain within school committee guidelines, though this is an increase from what students and the community have come to expect in recent years. In addition to the steps above, the District has entirely eliminated the use of E&D funds from the proposed budget. We have nearly completed paying run-out claims from the health insurance trust and have reduced this part of the budget appropriately.
To develop engaged, well-balanced learners through collaborative, caring relationships. WELLNESS • EQUITY • ENGAGEMENT
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