PEABODY — Peabody Public Schools has finalized its proposed FY27 budget, which will be presented to the City Council next month.
The budget equates to $101,967,320: a $2,916,768 (2.94%) increase from FY26, which comes from an increase in state Chapter 70 funds and municipal contributions.
The proposed FY27 budget is driven primarily by the following costs: $1,228,185 for health insurance increases; $1,315,423 in salary increases; $326,704 for out-of-district, special education tuition; $292,526 for the transportation contract that provides busing for students; and $67,671 for other non-salary lines.
Ultimately, salaries account for $66,928,802 and non-salary line items account for $35,038,515 of the FY27 budget.
To create a balanced budget, $313,741 was cut from the budget line items for supplies, utilities, and technology. There will also be some personnel losses.
“Because overall our health insurance went up, that means we had to reduce the salary line, which resulted in 11.7 less FTEs (full-time equivalents) in this budget than last budget,” Superintendent Dr. Josh Vadala explained.
The 11.7 FTEs refer to a speech and language assistant position that was reduced to 0.2 over the 2025-26 school year, as they were only needed once a week, and that has carried over. Further, beloved Director of Performing Arts Jon Simmons will be retiring halfway through the 2026-27 school year, which takes the 0.2 up to 0.7. Upon Simmons’ retirement, the Performing Arts Department will hire three people in his place: one department head, one K-12 teacher, and a director.
The remaining 11 does account for positions that are being reduced “due to declining enrollment or ways we can find efficiencies,” Vadala said.
“We try to make those reductions through attrition, which would be retirements, resignations, or just the normal course of doing business,” he added.
