PEABODY — Tuesday night’s School Committee meeting focused heavily on finances.
Chief Financial Officer Samuel Rippin first led a recap of the Fiscal Year 2025 closures. He read his FY25 District Budget Report to the Committee. This report showcases the results as of June 30.
“As you can see from the attached report, the Peabody Public Schools (PPS) has fully expended its $94,577,541 Local Expenditure Appropriation (LEA) for Fiscal Year 2025,” the report begins. “Included in the final expenditures were encumbrances of $41,835.82 which represents items ordered and received but not yet billed for by the vendor and paid by Peabody.”
Rippin’s report continued, “It is my expectation that these encumbrances that are carried forward to Fiscal Year 2026 will be fully liquidated by Oct. 31.”
“I will say… for a district this size, to only have $41,000 of open encumbrances is pretty remarkable,” Rippin said.
He added, “That speaks to how… on top of paying bills” Peabody was for the current fiscal year.
Rippin’s report additionally noted “that we receive an additional $2,575 in a local appropriation, and, of that, $2,555 was left to close out to free cash as part of the Fiscal Year 2025 recap.”
He then told the Committee about “three items that stood out,” adding that “none of these should really come as a surprise, but it’s worth noting because here we are at the end of the year.”
He first brought up the special education out-of-district tuition, which ultimately showed it was in a balanced position for FY25. Rippin called that “misleading” because “we have relied on upwards of $5 million of this expense category to be funded by the Special Education Circuit Breaker account.”
“We are carrying over a modest amount of $1 million to FY26 and have already built into FY26 100% of the FY25 allocation by the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary (DESE) to pay for the tuition and transportation not funded as part of the FY26 LEA,” Rippin’s report added.
Secondly, Rippin said, “Transportation was ultimately overspent by $1,522,279 for ‘25 due to out-of-district, 7D van transportation.” He called this “misleading” as well because “this was offset by special education out-of-district tuition due to the aforementioned relief by the Special Education Circuit Breaker account.”
Lastly, Rippin noted that “health insurance expenses have been historically under-budgeted in Peabody, and we were overspent by approximately $1.5 million that was projected to happen at the beginning of the year.
“This deficit was closed by three sources: $614,528 in supplemental Special Education Circuit Breaker funding that I lobbed the legislature for, $600,000 from the Emergency Assistance Shelter funding provided by the State, and lastly $306,193 from the School Choice account managed by the City.”
Superintendent Dr. Josh Vadala then brought up the FY26 fair share earmarks once again, as this was a point of conversation during the Sept. 30 meeting. Vadala shared on Tuesday night that, just after discussing this last time, Peabody was awarded $100,000 from the State Senate to purchase a 42-passenger, 3-wheelchair accessible school bus.
“This is a bus now that we own, so when we do local field trips or even some of our runs during the day, if there’s a student in a wheelchair, they can go with the entire class. They don’t need special transportation; they can ride the regular school bus, up to three wheelchairs, with their class,” Vadala said.
He added, “It’s really a very inclusive and joyful piece for our students to be able to ride with their classmates and do that… I’m very happy about this purchase as well as very grateful for the generosity and the advocacy from Sen. (Joan) Lovely and our other elected officials.”
And at the very end of the meeting, School Committee member Beverley Griffin Dunne proposed that the Committee speed up its budget process this year and start sooner rather than later in order to be prepared come next spring. The Committee, as Mayor Ted Bettencourt and Committee member Joe Amico were not in attendance, decided to slate this conversation for the Committee’s next meeting on Oct. 28.
