LYNNFIELD — Superintendent Thomas Geary and the School Committee presented the Fiscal Year 26 (FY26) budget at Tuesday night’s meeting, during which they emphasized the need for the first operational budget override in 15 years.
Geary explained that the FY26 budget now stands at an 11% increase from last year, a figure that was 7.8% at the Jan. 28 School Committee meeting when the budget was last discussed, and representing a total operating budget of $34,196,514.
“We’ve done terrific work over the years and especially in the past 15 months to build and repair,” Geary said during his presentation. “The impact of no override would be nothing short of catastrophic for this district.”
Committee Chair Kristen Elworthy and Committee Member Jenny Sheehan of the School Budget Subcommittee highlighted the diligence shown in the past months to communicate with the town about the school district’s needs as rising costs in special education and contract negotiations have necessitated different thinking this year.
“The budget subcommittee, the superintendent, the entire committee, we’ve been collaborating with town officials, particularly the Select Board and our town manager, over the past several months to make sure they are very aware of our district’s financial needs,” Elworthy said. “The town is in need of an operating budget override at the same time as we are to meet their own obligations. As a result, the town is in the process of proposing that operating budget override.”
Geary explained that the district’s driving principle for the FY26 budget was to “support the mission of the Lynnfield Public Schools (LPS) and support the frameworks of the Vision of the Graduate.”
This framework establishes pillars that LPS wants all graduates to encompass: communication, problem-solving, literacy, resiliency, and global citizenship.
Geary also took the time to highlight a few of the district’s achievements in recent times, like high rankings in Massachusetts, accessing multiple grants, and all students meeting or exceeding Massachusetts Department of Elementary & Secondary Education targets for MCAS.
With those accomplishments in mind, Geary went on to lay out the budget priorities that will allow for continued success at Lynnfield’s schools.
“Continue to provide programming and opportunities that will maintain educational excellence for all of our students, continue to support technology for 21st-century instructional practices for students, and continue to be able to hire and retain exceptional staff by providing fair and competitive compensation and benefits,” Geary said. “These have driven the process. It’s what’s really going to make us go through next year.”
Breaking down budget expenses, 82.2% goes towards salaries, 10.5% on tuition/transportation, and 7.3% is left over for, as explained by Geary, “to progress with our strategic planning and to progress on our work with the Vision of the Graduate.”
A source of stress on the budget is the rising costs of out-of-district tuition for students who need special education, which has risen from just over a million dollars in FY22 to just below three million dollars.
“I want to be clear, it’s a legal obligation and more importantly, a moral obligation to provide for every single student what they need,” Geary said. “That said, financially, special education statewide is a broken system, it’s been that way for a long time, and it’s far more than a Lynnfield problem.”
School Committee Member Jamie Hayman concurred with this characterization, further pointing out how Lynnfield is actually below average in terms of the percentage of students being sent out of the district.
“This is not a cost that is not willy-nilly, it’s not ‘throw money at it and send kids out-of-district because we can’t fix it’, it is only when it’s necessary,” he said. “The challenging part of this budget that I see is, it’s necessary, it’s very necessary for kids, and it’s becoming increasingly expensive at a rate that is even more than eggs at this point.”
Another important aspect Geary went over was class sizes. Current LPS guidelines are 20 students for kindergarten, 22 for grades one through three, 24 for grades four through 6, and “reasonable class size” for grades seven through twelve.
“People live here for class size; that’s one of the big things they come for,” Geary said. “We are within range for each grade… we fit into the class size guidelines pretty well for next year.”
With this context provided, Geary explained how the budget increase moved from 7.8% in January to now being 11%.
The presentation’s reasoning included non-capital technology needs like subscription fees and annual payments, further progress on collective bargaining, and clarity on special education costs.
Consequently, an override, Geary said, is now necessary to maintain the overall educational experience of students and to avoid any layoffs, larger class sizes, and lost progress on stated goals.
“An override is not a blank check. We have to balance fiscal responsibility, an obligation to all of our residents, as we move through this process,” Geary said. “We want to maintain excellence, but not necessarily expand greatly. It’s not some wild spending spree; it’s a path to keep us moving forward as we are now.”
The presentation then laid out some consequences of not having an override, which would be a $2.5-3 million reduction from the current proposed budget, leading to “massive layoffs that would greatly damage our efforts to provide a high quality educational experience for our students.”
“Let’s be frank, massive layoffs would make it nearly impossible to provide high quality educational experiences for our students,” Geary said. “We’d try our best, but the results would be near impossible to duplicate. All of this would move us back.”
In addition, athletics and extracurriculars would be negatively impacted, as well as professional development opportunities for staff, losses he explained would have many downstream effects like less student participation.
Districtwide, 23 classroom teachers, 15 paraprofessionals, and all interventionists would be lost.
For capital needs, the School Committee is requesting $650,000 to upgrade the district’s technology infrastructure, something Geary says is “desperately needed.”
“What was laid out here was two different paths. One path is an override. Essentially, with a level services budget, we would maintain the services, the class sizes, and the other values we have at the schools. The other path is what would happen if an override does not pass… Ultimately, every single voter in town decides what our funding would be.” Elworthy said. “Quite frankly if the override does not pass… I don’t feel, necessarily, that we would not be able to maintain the same level of educational excellence that we have at this point.”
Lynnfield residents will get to have their voices heard on the budget on dates that are coming up soon, with a public hearing for the school budget on March 25, the town meeting to vote on the budget and to send an override vote to ballot in late April, and finally, the potential override ballot vote in Early June.
