School Administration Looks To Begin 24–25 Budget Process

By Adam Swift

The calendar has just turned to 2024, but the school administration is already gearing up to craft the 2024-25 school year budget.

“Starting in early December, we started looking at the budget for next year, anticipating what our needs are,” said Superintendent of Schools Lisa Howard. “As you know, it is a long process and a lot goes into it from the administrators’ level to the teachers’ level.”

This year, Howard said she would like to get back to the business of speaking with parents as she did in the years prior to the Covid pandemic.

“I’m going to start meeting with PTOs this month in January, and at the PTO meetings, I’ll be doing a presentation for the parents on the budget,” said Howard.

The presentation will include a brief overview of how the budget is put together and where the money comes from to support the schools. Howard said she will also encourage feedback from the parents.

In February, Howard said she will likely send out a survey on the budget to parents.

“The survey I’ve sent out in the past couple of years is kind of boring, so we’re working on making the survey a little more creative and a little more parent-oriented,” said Howard.

Howard said she would also like to start scheduling school committee budget subcommittee meetings to start later this month, once the school committee subcommittee assignments are set.

One factor that is likely to affect the coming year’s budget is the increased district enrollment.

“Currently, we have 1,982 students enrolled in Winthrop public schools, which is a number which is higher than it has been in the past,” said Howard.

The superintendent said the district continues to work on residency and enrollment as it tracks students who have enrolled and those who have withdrawn from the school system.

“Since Sept. 5, we have had 87 students enroll,” said Howard. “Forty of the 87 are original to this country.”

The highest level of increased enrollment is in 9th grade, which has seen 10 new students so far this school year, while pre-kindergarten and kindergarten has had nine new students enroll.

Over that same time period, Howard said the district has seen 46 students withdraw for various reasons. Howard added that she tracks the enrollment data monthly and provides regular updates to the school committee.