Supt. Howard Provides Overview of School Budget

By Adam Swift

Winthrop Supt. of Schools Lisa Howard presented an overview of the proposed budget for the 2023-24 school year at Monday night’s School Committee meeting.

Howard presented both a level-service budget, which is typically close to what the Town Council has approved over the past number of years, and a needs-based budget, which includes items the district would like to see added to the budget to strengthen its educational goals and priorities.

In addition, Howard noted that the town will be taking a different approach to the budget process this year. A number of costs typically absorbed by the town, such as staff insurance, liability insurance, and other costs will be shifted to the school side of the budget.

However, Howard said, the town will also be shifting an allocation of funds to cover those costs in the first year of the new approach. Those costs look to total just over $10 million, Howard stated.

The budgets presented by Howard on Monday night were based on the costs absorbed by the school department in past years. She said future School Committee meetings will focus more on those additional shifting costs from the town to the school side of the ledger.

The anticipated level-service budget for the next school year is $26,400,396, an increase of approximately $2.6 million over the current school year’s budget. That figure includes the maintenance of services currently provided by the district, as well as state-mandated increases in areas such as special education.

The anticipated needs-based budget, which includes new positions and programs requested by the schools and the district, is $27,435,671. That figure is a $3,637,921 increase over the current budget.

Howard said the needs-based budget helps the district articulate to the community “what we believe our students need in order to be on the same level playing field us and other schools that our kids compete with.”

In addition to some additional teaching and support staff at each school, the needs-based budget also includes a request to restore the band programs at the Cummings, middle and high schools. Howard said it is the fifth year in a row that request has been made.

The superintendent also discussed a number of the drivers behind the anticipated increase in the requested budget.

“Some of the budget drivers when we are considering and working on and developing the budget as a whole, one of the big ones is to continue to address the academic and social emotional learning recovery from the pandemic for our students,” said Howard.

Additional budget drivers include the recent settling of six of seven union contracts that will drive an increase in salaries, as well as record high inflation that impacts the purchase of supplies, utility, fuel, and transportation costs. Also, Howard said there has been a significant increase in out-of-district tuition costs that were mandated by the state.

The district has also seen increased costs associated with an increase in English Language Learner students and homeless students.

“Another challenge we have been planning for over the past three years is the elimination of stimulus funding,” said Howard. “I believe we’ve done a very good job of looking at that funding and utilizing it in a manner that has helped us with a lot of one-time funding issues around technology and building and facility improvements. But we also had to embed staffing in that to mitigate learning loss for some of our students, especially our youngest students in preK to second grade.”

Budget discussions will continue throughout the next several School Committee meetings, with a meeting with the town’s finance committee scheduled for April 25. The final requested school budget will go before the Town Council in early June.