LYNNFIELD — Tuesday night’s school committee meeting started out with an almost 15-minute debate over the progression of the 2026 Fiscal Year school budget recommendations. It was between School Committee Member Jamie Hayman, Superintendent Thomas Geary and School Committee Chair Kristen Elworthy.
The conversation hit a boiling point when Hayman said “I don’t trust you, Tom,” in response to Geary’s questioning of not receiving notice of Hayman’s concerns prior to the meeting.
Discussion began during a motion to approve the minutes of the Jan. 28 meeting, which led Hayman to disagree with the characterization of the budget presentation from that meeting being ahead of schedule.
“Mr. Geary did not indicate a recommendation for an operating budget, but instead provided a summary and update with two options… It’s important to clarify some statements that have been made about the timing of this process,”said Hayman. “… following the meeting, I went back and checked, I have the dates of every superintendent budget recommendation, public budget hearing, and town meeting dating back to 2017. The statement that we are early or earlier than most years is in fact not true.”
According to the information he gathered, budget recommendations from 2017 to 2020 came either in late January or early February, while the years since then have been in late February or early March.
In response, Geary clarified the overall budget process of speaking with other town boards and Town Administrator Rob Dolan.
This includes the yearly budget workshop that is typically held in November being held in December this year, as well as a presentation of the school’s capital needs to the capital committee in early December, which, according to Geary, has never happened in his time at the district.
An additional variable that will delay a concrete budget is the contract negotiations that are currently in discussion with Lynnfield teachers. They have a potential to continue for the coming months.
“We are currently early in negotiations with all of our unions, so it would be presumptuous to publicly communicate any discussions or numbers regarding those publicly,” Geary said. “As we get further into our negotiations, we will be able to have a better estimate of our contractual obligations.”
However, Hayman underlined at the meeting that the committee needs to submit a budget to the public two weeks before the March 18 date when the public hearing will be, regardless of whether negotiations are done or not.
At the Jan. 28 meeting, two aspects of the school’s finances that he pointed out should be discussed further were the one-to-one Chromebook plan for the elementary school and the projected class size of 15 students for kindergarten.
“That presentation, there was no thought about anything in there. We were talking about 15 person classes there,” he said at Tuesday’s meeting.
Geary explained that this number is another variable that is likely going to change with move-ins increasing with the kindergarten enrollment, and thus having a set number could be presumptuous.
“Tom did clarify last week that if the enrollment never budged then he would adjust the numbers… there are going to be adjustments to enrollment,” Elworthy said.
School Committee Member Jim Dillon added that if they want to see a set number for variables like classroom sizes and teacher contracts in the budget, then that is on the committee to go to the superintendent and tell him to put that in the budget.
As it stands now, Geary’s recommendation is an increase of 7.8%, a number that includes an estimate for contract obligations and the level-services that need to be met, along with a $650,000 capital request for technology upgrades.
It’s a percentage that is higher than past years, and it’s part of an effort from the entire committee and Geary to advocate for growth following difficult cuts being made in the district the past few years.
Whether more updates to these figures arrive in the coming weeks, the budget book must be made available to the public for the hearing, with a vote coming at the town meeting on April 28.
“It’s a big deal that the number is where it is, even without additions to the district, that’s a bigger number than we usually would have,” Elworthy said. “But, in the end, we just provide information. We explain what things mean… we vote on the budget we’re proposing to town, but we aren’t in charge of giving ourselves that money that’s given by individual voters in town.”
