By Adam Swift
Discussion of the school department’s proposed FY25 budget, along with the potential of a Proposition 2-½ override proposal coming down the road for the FY26 budget, was the focus of Monday night’s school committee meeting.
During her report to the committee, Superintendent of Schools Lisa Howard updated the members on her recent meeting with the town’s finance commission.
During that finance commission meeting, Howard said she advocated for the needs-based budget approved recently for the school committee. Howard said she believed the finance commission members were receptive to the school district and committee’s belief that the needs-based budget is necessary to provide the kind of education Winthrop students need and is a foundational, rather than aspirational, budget request.
The needs-based budget approved by the school committee is $38,734,270, while the level-services budget number for FY25 is $37,634,288.
Howard said she was pleased to see that last week’s meeting with the finance commission was well attended.
“Although there is not any public comment at these meetings, it is a good opportunity to hear about the state of the schools and where we are headed,” said Howard.
The superintendent said she believed it was important to let the finance commission know what the needs-based budget is, as she has done with the school committee, the school PTOs, and the Winthrop Teachers’ Association.
“Being able to share that information with them in a way that is understandable was my goal,” said Howard.
During the finance commission meeting, Howard said there was a discussion about the needs-based budget being a foundational need for the district, rather than an aspirational budget with bells and whistles.
“We asked for what we felt the students needed to be competitive with other schools around them, but we did not go over the top in terms of what we were asking for,” said Howard.
The superintendent said she was able to go through the items being requested in the FY25 budget and then focused on what the current year looks like, as well as what the budget and schools would look like without the needs outlined in the FY25 budget.
“So we were able to provide clarification on that with the understanding at the end that even just a level-services budget, which is what we believe the town is going to be able to afford to give us based on a 60/40 split, we are still going to have about a $1.7 million struggle to be at that level service,” said Howard.
Howard said she also discussed how the schools are working to address the projected $1.7 million gap.
“I did explain to the finance commission that we did freeze the FY24 budget in early March anticipating that we may not receive a full level-service budget or a needs-based budget for FY25,” said Howard.
The plan is to take some of the money that the district doesn’t spend in FY24 and prepay items that it can for the FY25 budget, Howard said. However, she added that there is a limit to what the district can prepay for the next year’s budget.
“The state allows you to prepay certain items,” said Howard. “Because we are 85 percent salary and 15 percent expenses, there is not a lot we can prepay,” said Howard. “Anything we prepay this year will help us offset the anticipated deficit for FY25 if we were to receive the expected funds that the 60/40 split would allow.”
At the finance commission meeting, Howard said she mentioned that the school committee may have an interest in doing two things – establishing an educational stabilization fund and moving forward with an override request.
The override request would have to be made to the town council, who would then approve putting it on an election ballot.
Howard said she has had talks with school legal counsel about how the district could move forward with an override vote, which would likely be for the FY26 school year budget.
“I will talk to (school committee) Chairperson (Jennifer) Powell at some point to see how we want to move forward in the near future with both of these items,” said Howard.
At Tuesday night’s town council meeting, Council President Jim Letterie also touched on the school budget and said in the coming weeks, he will be presenting some plans from the town side to help the schools address that $1.7 million shortfall, as well.
Town Manager Tony Marino noted that a number of communities in the state are facing budget shortfalls and potential override votes. He noted that while some communities are faced with an override to provide services every five to seven years, it has been 15 years since Winthrop has had a budget-related override vote.