By DAN TOMASELLO
LYNNFIELD — The School Department was able to navigate fiscal year 2025 despite dealing with a number of challenges, Superintendent Tom Geary said during a recent School Committee meeting.
Geary recalled that the School Department received a $30,806,245 operating budget for FY25 that ended on June 30. Fiscal year 2026, which is being funded in part by a $4.65 million Proposition 2 ½ override that voters approved in early June, began on July 1.
“Last year was a challenging financial year, but we did finish in the black,” said Geary. “From a special education and a technology standpoint, it was a difficult year but we were able to navigate it.”
While Geary said the School Department was able to pre-pay $150,000 in special education out-of-district tuition at the end of FY24, he said the district did not prepay any special education tuition at the end of FY25.
“We are not in as good of a starting point as we were in previous years,” said Geary.
Geary said the school system is carrying over $150,000 from the Circuit Breaker Account for FY26. The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s (DESE) Special Education Reimbursement Program, commonly known as the Circuit Breaker Program, provides financial assistance to public school districts to offset the cost of delivering high-cost special education services to students.
“We have carried forward $150,000 from our Circuit Breaker Account,” said Geary. “This, again, is much less than we have had in prior years to carry forward.”
Geary said the School Department had “a tough year” with special education out-of-district tuition, contracted services and transportation costs.
“We dug into reserves and other sources,” said Geary. “We were about $600,000 over budget. A lot of this was applied to special education and we had to cover other areas such as technology and certain long-term staffing leaves that could not be planned for.”
In response to a question from School Committee Chair Kristen Grieco Elworthy, Geary said the special education funds the School Department receives from the state and/or federal government can be used over a two-year period.
“Whether it’s federal special education grants or the Circuit Breaker Program, those can be used over two years,” said Geary. “Ideally, you are carrying over your Circuit Breaker funding a full year and using it in the second year. We had to use all of our funding from two years ago and a significant portion of FY25’s funding just to cover FY25. We don’t have as much to carry over to FY26.”
As part of the School Department’s current FY26 operating budget, Geary has budgeted $2.9 million for special education out-of-district tuition and $662,000 for special education transportation.
“We feel like we are perfectly okay as the year starts,” said Geary.
Elworthy asked Geary if there are “any trends we need to worry about” in FY26.
Geary recalled that Lynnfield Public Schools are members of the Northshore Education Consortium (NEC) and SEEM collaboratives.
“Our collaboratives do a great job, but I think families are looking more towards the private placement, which is more expensive than the collaborative placement,” said Geary. “Collaboratives are an extension of public schools and a private placement is a specialized program. It’s a negotiation and a discussion about what is more appropriate for the student and what is the least restrictive environment. If it trends toward a private placement, those are more expensive. In addition, transportation costs have just gone through the roof not only for special education, but our daily bus routes, our athletic routes and our METCO route. Everything is just going up in that regard.”
Geary said the School Department added a restroom to Summer Street School for special education students last year. He informed the Villager that the restroom was added after the elementary Differentiated Learning Program (DLP) relocated from Huckleberry Hill School to Summer Street School. The New England Center for Children (NECC) took over the DLP program for the 2024-2025 academic year for the elementary and middle schools. NECC is no longer running the Lynnfield Middle School DLP classroom, but is still running the elementary program.
“As part of the NECC special ed. program moving to Summer Street last year, we identified that those students really need their own bathroom area, so we worked with the DPW to install this,” stated Geary.
Geary also noted during the recent School Committee meeting that the district purchased a portable field hockey scoreboard for Lynnfield High School’s athletic fields.
“Field hockey doesn’t play on the main stadium field,” said Geary. “That was an equity issue the athletic director brought to my attention that I fully supported.”
Geary said the Summer Street restroom addition and the field hockey scoreboard were maintenance purchases that did not fall under the Department of Public Works (DPW) budget. The DPW is in charge of town and school building maintenance.
“Those were maintenance type things that don’t really fall under DPW, so we had to absorb these,” said Geary.
Geary said the School Department received $290,000 in activity fee revenue in FY25.
“That was $40,000 more than what was budgeted,” said Geary. “This will roll forward to be used this year or be applied to the following year’s budget depending on where athletics and other activities fall.”
Geary said the Food Service Department “broke even” in FY25. He informed the Villager that the program “generated $1.6 million in income and expended $1.6 million.”
“We have another upcoming year of the state sponsoring free meals,” said Geary during the recent School Committee meeting. “Currently, we are meeting the recommendation of the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education for having three months worth of expenses for the program in reserve. This is something we try to have.”
Geary said Lynnfield Community Schools ended FY25 with roughly $135,000.
“We will see how summer programming expenses and last minute payments come through towards the end of August before we have a final number,” said Geary. “That is where the estimates roughly put us.”
Geary said the School Department received $1.1 million in grant funds.
“When you take all of that, we returned $725 to the town at year’s end,” said Geary.
Geary said the School Department received a $225,000 capital budget for FY25. He said $125,000 was used for school technology replacements.
“This was about half of what we have received in previous years,” said Geary. “In addition, we received $100,000 to reupholster the high school auditorium seats. All of that work was completed.”
Geary said the School Department ended FY25 “in a good spot.”
“We spent down just about all of our funds,” said Geary. “We are ready to move into fiscal year 2026.”
Elworthy asked Geary how is he feeling about the FY26 operating budget.
Geary said he discussed the budget with new Student Services Director Jennifer O’Connell. He said he and O’Connell “feel good about where we are” in regards to the district’s special education out-of-district tuition and transportation budget.
“I am not saying it can’t change tomorrow, but we feel as though we have a handle on where we are at,” said Geary.
In the wake of voters approving the $4.65 million Proposition 2 ½ override in early June, the School Department received a $34,196,514 operating budget for FY26, which is an 11 percent increase over FY25’s $30,806,245 appropriation. The district also received a $600,000 capital budget included in the override for school technology upgrades.