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The school community and School Committee got a first look at the new pared down budget on April 9 — and it wasn’t pretty.
“Tonight we are presenting a first draft, a first round of a 5% budget,” said Superintendent Dr. Frank Hackett. “You’re going to hate most of what’s on it.”
With the failure of the $11.5 million Proposition 2 ½ override in March, Hackett has been tasked with cutting $3.3 million from the school budget, which will leave the district with a budget that is only a 5% increase over the fiscal year 2026 budget. And he warned that even that might not be enough.
“There’s talk within the community that we’re not going to be starting a Town Meeting with a 5% budget,” he said. “It’s going to be less than that, and it could be as low as 3% so that’s another million dollars.”
How it looks so far
Hackett said the presentation was only a first look and he would take the committee’s thoughts and concerns into account before making his final recommendations.
The first round of cuts included 35-38 full-time employees (FTEs) across multiple categories.
The breakdown
• Central Office and district-wide positions: 7 FTEs
• Teachers: 15-18 FTEs
• 5-6 general classroom positions in K-5
• The reduction of a Grade 6 team at McCall Middle School.
• Additional cuts in instructional coaching at McCall (currently unfilled) and elementary math specialist.
• Administrative assistants: 3-4 FTEs
• Education Support Professionals (ESP): 12-15 (but not those who work directly with students with individual education plans). According to their contracts, it will be last-hired, first cut and it will be district wide.
• Special Education – Still reviewing needs
What is not being reduced
• No planned reductions in the number of class sections at the high school.
• Social Emotional Learning coaches
• Classroom supplies and other instructional resources.
• The new literacy program, Arts & Letters, which is being presented in a separate article at Town Meeting and is not part of the 5% budget.
Hackett said administrators still don’t know who exactly will be affected by the budget cuts because they are still sorting through seniority, licensure and assignments, but he hopes to notify those who would be losing their jobs by the end of April.
School Committee member John Bellaire questioned why Hackett chose not to cut core sections at the high school.
“If you gave me $1 to spend on any grade, K-12, I’m going to spend it on Kindergarten, recognizing the return on investment,” he said. “The difference between a kindergartener and a first grader is the difference between reading and not reading, whereas in the 11th or 12th grade, a lot of those students are taking some of the same classes anyway.”
Hackett said Bellaire’s comments were exactly the kind of feedback he was seeking from the committee and he could revisit the decision if they liked.
Committee member Tom Hopcroft said he agreed with Bellaire, but said decisions people make in high school often determine the trajectory of their entire career.
When it came to reducing central office staff, School Committee Chair Tim Matthews asked how close to the classroom are those cuts.
Hackett said none of the staffers would have direct face time with kids, but they would be the ones working with educators around professional development and coordinating curriculum. He also noted that central office would take one of the biggest hits with a $700,000 to $800,000 reduction district wide.
“Which is obviously almost a third of the total reduction,” he said.
Hackett said he would try his best to manage the loss of a sixth-grade team at McCall through attrition and retirements, but he couldn’t promise it wouldn’t ultimately result in layoffs.
Bellaire asked if the layoffs would be evenly distributed across the schools.
Hackett said the only school that would not lose positions is Lincoln Elementary because their class sizes couldn’t take it.
It was cutting the math specialist that Stefani Mnayarji said broke her heart and she worried it could result in a serious inequity across all the schools.
“How do I get my child the support they need if they don’t have an IEP?” she wondered, referring to an Individual Education Plan, which districts are required by law to fund. “And that was one of our answers, and that was what we advocated for, and now it’s gone … this is one of the things to be angry about.”
When Matthews asked what a 3% budget might look like, Hackett said that’s when they start looking at things like world languages and AP sections, programmatic eliminations, which so far they have been able to stay away from.
Committee member Karen Maruymama Bolognese said an exercise had been started in March looking at what a 3.8% budget would look like and it would not meet special education legal and ethical obligations.
Or union contracts, Mnayarji added.
Athletics will also not be spared. A $300,000 deficit in the Athletic Department was not included in the 5% budget. Matthews said the options to make up that deficit is to raise user fees or either cut athletic programs or make deeper cuts to the operational budget.
Hackett said getting to a $1 million reduction wasn’t easy, getting to a $2 million reduction was worse and getting to a $3 million reduction was truly a numbers game.
“It’s addition, it’s subtraction … that’s where we are,” he said. “So none of these decisions are good, but what I’ve tried to do is to make sure that we stay within our contractual obligations, we stay with class sizes that are manageable, that we do everything we can outside a classroom. We protect special education, special needs services.”
The School Committee has a meeting scheduled for Tuesday, April 14, from 1 p.m.-2:30 p.m., and is expected to finalize the budget at its Thursday, April 16 meeting, which is scheduled to begin at 6:30 p.m.
Chris Stevens is an award-winning journalist who has spent 25 years chasing, editing and photographing stories on the North Shore. She is the co-founder and managing editor of Gotta Know Medford.
