Budgeting Strategies
We employed key strategies: • Careful Class Size Management: Aligning class sizes at all levels with School Committee guidelines. • Elementary Budget Task Force Recommendations: Implementing reductions in elementary general education assistant hours. • Tier 2 & 3 Intervention Review: Examining intervention group sizes and schedules to maximize student support to provide math, reading, and social emotional support for students to the maximum extent possible. We will not be able to provide the level of intervention services we currently have and will need to prioritize how services are delivered to students. Budget Drivers and Significant Financial Changes Key budget drivers include personnel costs, special education, utilities, and health insurance. Significant financial changes include: • Retirement of Excluded Debt: - $1.6M JHS/SHS debt was paid off in FY25; This reduced the FY26 district budget by $1.6M (and also reduces town revenues by a proportionate amount) • Health Insurance: +3.3% budget impact - overall rate increase of 14.84% per MIIA ($1.1M). This was mitigated by reduced runout claims (Acton Health Insurance Trust) budgeted by $450K. We also saved $613K by implementing a Health Insurance "Opt-Out" program for employees. • Attrition: - $448K Reduced from personnel budget due to resignations, retirements, & leaves of absence. Balancing Act: Efficiency vs. Effectiveness Balancing resource efficiency with educational effectiveness is paramount. Reductions over the past years have strained our system. While we maximize resource efficiency, we acknowledge educators are stretched thin. This budget aims to optimize resource use, but not all programs and services can be maintained at previous levels. For the first time in our four years of budget reductions, we have had to reduce direct support to students who need it the most. Specifically, we have reduced one of our elementary math specialists, four elementary reading assistants, and could not add necessary English language educators to support our growing population of multilingual students. This represents a significant shift in our ability to support our students effectively and is reflective of how thin our district staffing has become. FY26 Staff Reductions Our FY26 Budget reduces about 20 FTE: • Elementary: 1.0 Math Specialist, 4 Part-Time Reading Assistants, 25% of General Education Assistants Hours, 1.0 Certified Librarian replaced by Library/Media Assistant, Reduce 1 Kindergarten Section • Junior High School: 1.0 Science Teacher, 1.0 Math Teacher, 1.0 Social Studies Teacher • High School: 2.0 Social Studies Teachers, 1.0 Math Teacher, 2.0 English Teachers*, 1.875 Campus Monitor, 19 hr STAR Program Assistant - .475 FTE o *1.0 FTE English teacher already reduced at the start of 2024-2025 due to attrition
• Special Education Coordinator (elementary district-wide) • Human Resources Administrative Assistant position
05/2025
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