By Adam Swift
The School Committee unanimously approved a request for a $4,950,000 Proposition 2-½ override at its meeting last week.
The override would help cover expected shortfalls in the school budget for three years, beginning with the 2025-26 school year.
At its next meeting, the town council will vote to place the override request on the November ballot. If the override passes at the polls, the average homeowner will see an increase in their property tax bill of about $935 per year, according to Town Council President Jim Letterie.
During the school committee meeting, committee members and Superintendent of Schools Lisa Howard spoke about the necessity of the override to help keep education in the town up to the level necessary for its students. The school officials also spoke about the challenge of arriving at a figure that would help fund the schools while still being palatable to voters.
“We discussed several different options up as high as $9 million for an override, which would get us through Fiscal Year 2030,” said committee member Gus Martucci, who chairs the finance subcommittee.
The finance committee eventually settled on the $4.95 million figure, which he said would be a three year plan for the schools to remain at a level-services budget beginning in FY26. About $3.5 million of that figure would be earmarked to help cover the expected budget shortfall for FY26, with the remainder placed in a newly created school stabilization account to help fund the FY27 and FY28 budgets.
“It’s hard, because now we have to look at not only the needs of the kids, but we need to look at the taxpayers and try to figure out what they are willing to pay,” said Martucci.
Martucci said that he believes Winthrop has a great school system, but that the override is needed to ensure it stays that way.
“If we don’t get that amount of money, I’m afraid the school department will not be as great as it is right now,” Martucci said, possibly leading to staff cuts, a loss of services for students, and increased class sizes. “The committee thought that would be the best number to put forward seeing that it would be a number that would let us maintain services, but then again, we’re not really asking for the townspeople to really dig into their pockets and hurt themselves, because right now, it is tough. We thought it was a fair number to be able to maintain what we have right now.”
Howard noted that this is the first school override that has been requested in Winthrop in 15 years, adding that in many communities across the state, overrides to help fund the schools are requested every three to five years.
The superintendent also spoke about the financial hardships schools are facing not just in Winthrop, but across the country and the globe.
“The cost of education not just in Winthrop, but in the entire world … on average is increasing far above 2-½ percent,” said Howard.
Under Proposition 2-½, municipalities can only increase property taxes, one of the main sources of school and municipal revenue, by 2-½ percent per year.
Howard said that the cost of health insurance alone increased by 9.5 percent over the past year, and that costs have increased in almost other areas across the board, as well.
“If all the town can come up with every year is 2-½ percent more, and everything we do costs over 3 to 9.5 percent more, you can see that eventually our ability to pay the bills runs out, and there are expenses we have to have to keep the school running,” said Howard.
In building the current year’s FY25 budget, Howard said the school department had to drain a number of its outside revenue accounts in order to close the gap to provide a level-services budget for students.
“Our number one priority was not to reduce our teachers or our support staff so our kids didn’t suffer and so that our class sizes stayed the same,” said Howard.
As the school department goes out to ask for the override, Howard said it is important to be realistic about what the residents will be likely to approve and can handle financially.
“I want a $9.8 million override; I will talk to you about that on the flagpole at town hall because I want everything for our students,” said Howard. “That is not reasonable in the world we live in right now. What I don’t want is to open the doors of the school next year with 30-plus less humans to educate, keep safe, and take care of the students of our community, and that message is going to keep coming, I can promise you that.”
For all of the school committee members and district staff at last week’s meeting, getting out the facts about the override is of utmost importance.
“It’s an awful lot of money, $5 million, no matter how you slice it,” said Letterie. “We want to be factual and get out as much information as we can, because it is for the benefit of our kids. The school system has done an incredible job of keeping class sizes in the low 20s, and we don’t want to see them in the high 20s to low 30s.”
Letterie said he has a list of 80 cities and towns in the state that have gone for an override in the past two years.
“Some of (the overrides) are small because they continue to go for overrides (every few years),” said Letterie. “The school committee has done an awful lot of work on this, along with the superintendent, to get to a number that they think is palatable for the taxpayers as well as providing services to our children.”
While the school committee cannot campaign for the override as a whole body, individual members can stump for the override and provide information to the public.
Howard urged residents to make sure they get factual information when it comes to the override, and to direct any questions about it to her, individual school committee members, or a newly formed citizens’ committee on the override that is being organized by Gillian Texiera.
During a public hearing before the vote on the override figure, several residents spoke in support of providing more funding for the schools, including current town councilor and former school committee member Suzanne Swope.
“We have tried everything we can,” said Swope. “I have been on the school committee for the past six years to try to make this work, and believe me, there is no one who has worked harder than Lisa Howard to make this happen.”
Swope said the schools and the town have to work together to make the override happen in order to provide the best education possible for its students.
School Committee Chair Jennifer Powell said the role of the committee members now is to help residents know what the override is about, what the potential for the schools is, and what will happen if the town does not pass the override.
“If this is approved, the schools are in a position to move forward and promote a better education for our children,” said Powell. “We will have the supplies and the resources that we need in order to give the kids the best education possible. If this doesn’t pass, we will be constrained on a number of fronts; it will likely mean staff cuts, it will likely mean larger class sizes, and it will mean that we will be constrained in what we can offer and provide on the educational front.”
The town council is expected to take up putting the override question on the November ballot at its next meeting on Tuesday, August 6. While Powell said she expects the council to approve putting the override on the ballot, the focus over the next week will be getting people to the council meeting to voice their support for the schools.