Members of the Acton-Boxborough Community,

Our schools are at a critical crossroads for funding.  For the last two fiscal years, we have raised alarms that funding cannot keep up with the needs of the students we serve. The costs of maintaining one of the state’s top school districts on average to below-average funding has become increasingly challenging with minimal state revenues, and caps on local assessments.  Looking back, our FY24 Budget message well summarized the challenges we predicted for FY24, several of which including health care and special education costs, have reached critical levels in the FY25 Budget:

“From early in our budget process, the School Committee and leadership recognized the confluence of ten significant challenges that have strained the FY24 District Budget, including:

• Declining revenues from the state and other non-assessment sources;

• The end of some federal pandemic relief grant programs and the resulting need to reduce/eliminate some programs and incorporate approximately $1M of costs into the district budget that had been funded by these grants during the pandemic;

• Historic inflationary pressures on aspects of the district budget including utilities, supplies and materials.

• An 8% increase in health insurance rates;

• A state-approved rate increase of up to 14% for private special education schools and special education transportation services; 

• Continued disproportionate assessment increases to Minuteman High School due to budget and enrollment increases;

• Continued need for increased funding of critical infrastructure improvements;

• The potential impact of labor negotiations in an extremely competitive and volatile market;

• A period of declining reserves, necessitating a reduction in the use of E&D to balance the budget;

• The limited ability of one community (Acton) to increase revenue through taxes and the guidance of our school committee to limit the Acton Assessment to 3%.”

All that said, last Spring and as late as September 2023, we did not foresee the need to ask the community for a tax override.  We anticipated another year of budget reductions, but at a level that could sustain the long term vision of excellence for our schools.  That shifted in October 2023 as we learned information about the crisis in health insurance, and we received our first quarter reports indicating a significant gap between the special education budget and actual costs.  Our need to use significant FY24 funds, as well as our Excess and Deficiency and Circuit Breaker (special education) reserve accounts to offset these extraordinary accounts has left them depleted and unavailable for use in FY25.  These circumstances have all come together to create the enormously challenging budget scenario we now face.

Over the last several years during a period of declining enrollment, we have seen a shift in our student population and the needs they have.  Nearly one-third of our students are now classified as “high needs” by the state.  We have become a high-incidence district for Multilingual Learners, serving over 400 students who are currently learning to speak English; almost half arrive at our schools with little or no English Language skill.  We continue to see increased needs of our students with disabilities and the lingering impact of the pandemic on students' social skills, particularly in our youngest students who missed typical preschool and other early social activities.

Over the last two years we have reduced forty positions district-wide.  At the same time, we have needed to add specialized staff in order to provide required services for our increasingly high-needs student population.  We have continued to need to add Special Educators, Special Education Assistants, and English Language Educators, while at the same time making reductions in General Education Teachers, Operations Staff, Clerical Staff, and Administration.

All of this brings us to a crossroads.  For several years, we have understood the fiscal limitations of the two communities and have made necessary reductions to present school budgets that work within those constraints.  Those reductions have come at a cost, and while we have prioritized maintaining positions that directly serve students, that becomes increasingly challenging with each year of reductions.  

Based on our school committee guidelines, we are developing two budgets to present to our community.  Our “A” Budget reduces costs by just over $2M, and would require approximately $7.5M in additional revenue from the two communities.  This is in addition to the revenue available from a 3% assessment increase in Acton and the respective 6.77% increase in Boxborough.  

Our “B” Budget reduces costs by $9.3M in order to work within existing resources should there be no additional revenue from the communities.  

While a third consecutive year of reductions is painful to imagine and continues to erode programming for students, the alternative of reducing over $9M in expenses would have serious and long-term consequences for the schools and our students.

This Budget Binder includes detailed information in support of the Superintendent’s FY25 Recommended “A” Budget.  The budget was developed through the work of the administrative team, and incorporates feedback from the School Committee and community representatives.  

This memorandum is intended to describe the budget process, priorities, and guidelines that have driven the development of this recommended budget.

Respectfully,

~ Peter Light,

   Superintendent of Schools