By MICHAEL CONNELLY
Assistant Superintendent of Finance and Operations
The Administration presented its FY25 Preliminary School Budget to the North Reading School Committee at this week’s School Committee meeting on Monday March 11.
The Fiscal Year 2025 school-recommended budget is like prior years’ budgets in that it represents a modified level services budget. That means that spending has essentially been the same as the previous year apart from modifications due to shifts in enrollment, contractual salary obligations, operational fixed cost increases, and modest enhancements driven by the District’s strategic plan to make continuous improvements to the school department.
The FY25 recommended budget for the School Department is currently $40,679,524. This represents a 9% or $3,359,929 increase over Fiscal Year 2024 and is currently significantly greater than what the town has available to fund both school and town budgets for Fiscal Year 2025. The budget gap to achieve the Superintendent’s proposed recommended budget as presented on March 11 is $1,907,396. The budget gap to achieve a level services school budget is currently $1,200,507.
The Administration and School Committee, over the next several weeks, hope to continue to work in close collaboration with town officials to identify options to close these funding gaps to help avoid major budget reductions and support both School and Town needs. Among those options that will be discussed is the possibility of an operating budget override. Such an option has not been done in North Reading since 2005. Many of the decisions to bring the Fiscal Year 2025 budget into balance will be very difficult ones on the part of the Administration and the School Committee in the coming weeks as we work to find a solution to the large budget gap that exists.
Many cost drivers and challenges drove the Fiscal Year 2025 budget, which led to the need to make staffing and expense adjustments all netting to a $3,359,929 increase over the Fiscal Year 24 appropriation.
These factors can be summarized by the following bulleted points:
- “NRPS 2025: A Strategy for the Future” (Year Five);
- Maintains and adds staff to: (1) maintain educationally sound student/teacher ratios especially at the elementary level; (2) enhance academic support systems to address any areas of learning loss and support early intervention strategies for students struggling in math and literacy; (3) maintain adequate health and safety services for all students, staff and the school community; (4) address the social, emotional and mental health needs of all students; (5) enhance the curriculum leadership model within the District to support all educators in curriculum, instruction and assessment strategies;
- Offering of free universal full day kindergarten for all families;
- Contractual obligations with employees and employee unions;
- Continuation of the District 1:1 student device program in grades K through 12;
- Associated operational costs to properly maintain all five schools and surrounding campuses.
FY25 RECOMMENDED PRELIMINARY BUDGET
The FY25 recommended Preliminary Budget includes funding needed to add positions at the elementary schools to account for the increase in enrollment at the kindergarten and grade one levels to ensure class sizes will remain within recommended guidelines of 18 to 22 students. The below chart includes a cost of $199,986 to add 2.4 FTE (full time equivalent) classroom teacher positions to maintain the same class size ratios and support services at each elementary school.
The FY25 recommended Preliminary Budget includes funding needed to implement a portion of Year Five of the School District’s developing strategic plan, “NRPS 2025: A Strategy for the Future.” The three major strategy areas of “NRPS 2025” are Student Services; Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging; and Teaching and Learning. The budget priorities identified below are directly connected to all three of the major strategy areas and are supported by the work of the Leadership Team on the strategic plan.
The “Modified Level Services” budget includes an increase of 5.6 FTE (full time equivalent) positions, which are listed as priorities in the strategic vision of the School District. These new positions reflected in the recommended Preliminary Budget include:
The positions previously added and funded by Covid-19 federal relief grants to address needs associated with the Covid-19 pandemic that have been identified as essential services to continue in Fiscal Year 2025 and are now reflected in the recommended Preliminary Budget include:
The recommended Preliminary Budget supports the highest of priorities of the strategic plan and results in an expenditure of $476,889 (in table 2 above), representing an overall increase of 1.3% to the FY25 budget request. In addition, the recommended Preliminary Budget maintains recommended class sizes and student teacher ratios across the District and continues to address needs heightened by the Covid-19 pandemic. The preliminary budget proposal also includes moving to free universal full day kindergarten for all families next school year.
As we move forward with the budget process both town and school officials will continue to work in close collaboration to address some of these budgetary challenges. You may review key budget documents on the district website at https://www.north-reading.k12.ma.us/budget. You may also follow me on twitter for key budget updates at @nrpsfinance.