FY2026 SUPERINTENDENT’S RECOMMENDED BUDGET
ACTON-BOXBOROUGH REGIONAL SCHOOL DISTRICT FY26 DEPARTMENT/PROGRAM OVERVIEW
DEPARTMENT:
ADMINISTRATOR:
Community Education
Erin Bettez
ORGANIZATION/PROGRAM DESCRIPTION
Community Ed. offers a wide array of programs, activities and services. Our key business areas are general programming/classes for adults and children, Extended Day (before and after school childcare at 5 locations), summer activities including the Summer Day Program, Driver Education, and overseeing Use of School Facilities. Community Ed. currently has an office staff of 4.6 FTE, we pay the salaries for 4.2 FTE of district custodians ($290K), and we have several dozen staff working on site with children each day at Extended Day. Extended Day staff includes full-time benefited positions (Site Coordinators/Asst. Site Coordinators/Benefited Assistants) as well as many part time positions. We hire scores of part-time and seasonal workers each year. In addition, we partner with more than 100 independent contractors and vendors annually. SELECTED FY25 ACCOMPLISHMENTS With two key retirements in our office in FY24, we rearranged assignments to better distribute workload and reduce some personnel costs. We have provided over $190K in scholarships to children attending Extended Day during the 24-25 School Year. We provided 10 scholarships each week (approx. 10% of enrollment totalling $23,030) for children to attend our Summer Day Program. FY26 BUDGET PRIORITIES, INITIATIVES & BUDGETARY CONSIDERATIONS We were pleased to be able to support so many scholarships at Extended Day, but our current amount is unsustainable so we are seeking to cap scholarships in FY26 at a figure still TBD. Staffing Extended Day continues to be a challenge. To attract and retain staff we have had to increase pay/hours/add benefited positions. More staff are needed to support students with special needs. Food/health insurance/supply costs continue to rise quickly. We are carefully assessing expenses and revenues and planning fee increases to ensure that Extended Day has sufficient resources to meet program costs. Our ability to expand programming (and generate revenue) is impacted by limited access to space in the schools. We hope to work with central office and building administrators to increase access to school spaces, particularly before and after school. SUMMARY OF CHANGES FROM FY25 TO FY26 Though initially planned for FY25, in FY26 we are adding a new full-time Extended Day position. This Assistant Site Coordinator will help with program-wide operational tasks/training and also be available to step in as needed at any of our sites.
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