The Swellesley Report

The Wellesley Public Schools administration and School Committee last week presented their proposed fiscal year 2027 operating budget to the Advisory Committee, the appointed body that’s vetting articles ahead of this spring’s Annual Town Meeting.

Advisory members took turns commenting on the presentation and asking questions, most of which seemed to be answered to the questioner’s satisfaction. Given that the administration came forward with a roughly $98m budget that meets the town’s guideline of no more than a 3% increase from the current one no doubt made the school reps’ jobs easier as they head into a Town Meeting during which the school and town budgets will be split for the first time in decades. That 3% guideline is lower than those put forth by the town in each of the past two years.

The school reps on Feb. 11 presented for about 45 minutes, followed by more than an hour of questions and discussion (see full meeting recording on Wellesley Media). Advisory was not voting on anything during this meeting, but gathered information that will inform its vote and the report that it distributes to Town Meeting members later on.

School Trend Analyses available

Thanks to a School Trend Analysis produced by Advisory Chair Madison Riley with support from previous Advisory members Patti Quigley and Gail Sullivan, the Committee has had plenty of additional background to consider in digesting the proposed school operating budget. The analysis identified factors contributing to Wellesley’s significant and rising education expenses despite declining enrollment, including increasing teacher salaries, more student support staff, higher in-district special education spending, and higher in-district transportation costs.

Wellesley Public Schools included longitudinal trend analyses starting on page 444 of their voted FY27 budget.

Supt. Dr. David Lussier led the presentation before Advisory, supported by Assistant Superintendent for Finance and Operations Cynthia Mahr and others. The proposed budget was approved the previous week by the School Committee.

Lussier began his comments by noting that producing a budget is “an exceptionally difficult thing” months before a new school year begins, with many unanswered questions about everything from grant funding to staff contracts (staffing costs account for about 87% of the overall operating budget). “This budget reflects our absolute best projections, which really will change once the 26-27 school year actually begins…,” he said, referring to the budget as a “level service” one that supports the school system’s 5-year strategic plan. Though Mahr did also explain that the proposed budget builds on a recast version developed after the original budget was approved at Annual Town Meeting last year.

Providing services equal to those currently offered costs more as various expenses rise, though Wellesley Public Schools has offset that in part through cutting staff both in response to falling enrollment and through strategic reallocation of resources to better meet student needs. New expenses for strategic priorities come in at just over $26,000, though as Lussier emphasized late in the meeting, not all new initiatives mean spending more money.

Lussier rolled out the always dramatic enrollment chart, a roller coaster visual that shows declining enrollment, including a precipitous drop at the start of the pandemic, followed by somewhat of a leveling at the elementary school stage, and now a slight increase at that level. Though earlier big enrollment drops among younger learners are now making their presence felt strongly at the middle and high school levels, which show projected declines.

The dropping enrollment inevitably raises questions about how the schools are making cuts in sync with this despite explanations over the years about how enrollment and expense drops aren’t linear based on the distribution of students across schools and grades, among other factors (a new external study of enrollment outlook is now underway). Per data reported through the state, Wellesley’s FY24 (most recent) spending per in-district student is about $28,400.

Indeed, such questions were raised by Advisory members, who were shown some of the planned cuts, including 12 full-time equivalents with student facing jobs across grade levels whose salaries and other costs add up to nearly $1m (overall, a reduction of nearly 20 full-time equivalents was presented). Advisory’s Penny Rossano pressed school representatives on why more of the staff cuts haven’t come on the administrative side, and among the explanations were that just because staff isn’t student-facing, they affect learning in some cases by training teachers in math and other subjects. Also, schools are faced with more state compliance reporting mandates that administrative personnel is required to handle, Lussier said. “We’re always looking for ways to create more efficiencies, I think our technology restructuring is an example of that,” he said.

Wellesley Public Schools personnel also went over efforts to contain out-of-district special education costs by handling more of these services in-district; one effort has been to train more teachers on a reading program designed to reach students when they are very young in hopes of heading off the need to send them out of district as they age.

Lussier addressed community concerns about cuts to the Evolutions program, described by some as a school within the high school that focuses on project-based learning. A citizen speaker at the start of the Advisory meeting spoke to the importance of this program for her family. Lussier said participation in the program has been declining steadily (about two dozen students are now in it), so that teaching resources have been reallocated, including to courses that Evolutions students might take outside the non-traditional program.

Another hot topic addressed by Lussier and team was the status of federal and other grants. The word: So far, so good. The school system anticipates receiving about $1.9m in federal funds, Mahr said.

Among observations shared by Advisory members was that of Jay Bock, a glutton for punishment who has been watching other districts’ School Committee meetings to get a sense of what they are dealing with. He’s seen districts wrestling with a mix of painful cuts, going over guideline, falling enrollment, and more than 3% budget increases. He suggested the school administration might consider sharing more data about Wellesley vs. peer districts in making its budget case at Town Meeting.

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