PEABODY — Peabody Public Schools’ Fiscal Year 2026 budget is right on track, according to Chief Financial Officer Samuel Rippin.
Based on his first quarter findings — which are as of Sept. 30 and were relayed to the School Committee at its meeting Tuesday night — PPS has expended $12,887,657 and encumbered $30,192,192 against its $99,050,552 appropriated district budget for FY26. The $12,887,657 that’s been expended represents 13.01% of the total appropriated budget through 25% of the fiscal year.
“To give you some context, I looked at where we were last year, and it was 13.05%, and we finished balanced, so that gives a first blush that we’re tracking as expected,” Rippin said.
Rippin shared two “areas of risk” that stood out to him in the first quarter, which he will monitor “so as to determine if we need to do additional actions to close that balance like I did last year.”
The first he mentioned was health insurance, which is budgeted at $13,028,907.
“We did address a lot of the structural deficit by increasing this budget, not all of it because we had a double digit increase. If we had a 0% increase, I think we would have been good. We didn’t, so I’m anticipating a deficit… around $600,000,” Rippin said. “Last year, (it) was a million and a half. (This is) much better.”
The other risk area Rippin mentioned was wage increases, which are budgeted at $1,787,546.
“As we balance the budget, we took some risk with how much to set aside for collective bargaining and non-union salary increases,” Rippin explained.
Three contracts have been settled thus far: Unit A (teachers), Unit B (instructional supervisors) and crossing guards. The contracts for AFSCME and Unit C (paraprofessionals) are not yet settled.
Rippin said, “This line item may show a budget deficit… It’s really an area of risk. How much, we don’t know.”
He concluded his report by noting, “It could be worse. We’re better than last year, but it’s tight.”
