By Adam Swift
The school committee held its first meeting Monday night since the passage of two school override questions totaling just shy of $5 million passed at the polls on Saturday, April 4.
It was a relatively short meeting, as Superintendent Lisa Howard expressed her thanks to those who helped make the overrides a reality, and the committee voted not to make Winthrop a school choice community.
The first override question, for $3.5 million, will help provide for a level-services budget for the 2025-26 school year. The second, for $1.4 million, will fund an education stabilization account that should help ease the district’s financial burden for several years after that.
“I think I speak for the entire school district, and hopefully for the school committee, that we are very grateful for our community for reconsidering the request we had put out in November,” said Howard. “The passing of this override, I believe, is going to enable us to maintain a level-service budget for this year. I want to personally thank the override committee and all the volunteers, who did a lot of work from September to November, and then did a lot of reflection and looking into how to better educate the community.”
One of the biggest changes from last November to this April, Howard said, was the inclusion of the $38.5-million fire station debt exclusion on the ballot.
“At first, that was a little bit concerning for us, but with the help of the override committee and the vision of the override committee and other volunteers who might not have been on the committee … about partnering with the fire station and treating both the debt exclusion and the school override questions as one real vision for the future of our schools and the town as a whole,” said Howard.
The superintendent said the passage of the funding for the school stabilization account will allow the district to maintain a sense of financial stability in the next several years.
“It’s going to allow us to continue to provide the high quality education and a safe and supportive school environment that we currently have,” said Howard.
In the coming weeks, Howard said the school district will be presenting the proposed 25-26 school budget to the finance committee on May 1. She said she will be sharing that presentation with the school committee before going before the finance committee.
School committee member Suzanne Leonard expressed her gratitude for those who helped make the school overrides a reality.
“I just want to say, there was something, dare I say, kind of magical about that day in the town,” she said. “I saw families I knew walking to the polls, I ran into principal O’Leary knocking on doors, I ran into you and your dad, Lisa, at the campaign headquarters.”
In other business on Monday night, the committee voted not to allow Winthrop to be a school choice district.
“If you vote to have school choice, then it would open it up for any student from another community to be able to come to school here in Winthrop,” said Howard.
The vote does not preclude students from Winthrop from attending other districts that do allow school choice, Howard said.
The superintendent also stated that the Winthrop Teachers’ Association has asked to start negotiations with the school committee on a new contract.
“Their contract ends at the end of this school year,” said Howard. “We have set our first meeting for May 6.”