Harvard’s schools will have a struggle to deliver level services within the budget guidelines set for next fiscal year. The first draft of the fiscal 2019 school budget suggests that the schools will seek about $13.5 million as part of the town’s omnibus budget at Annual Town Meeting next spring, up from $13 million in fiscal 2018, about a 3.9 percent increase. The Finance Committee and the selectmen set a 2.5 percent increase as the target for a level-service budget, with any greater increases requiring further explanation.
The School Committee reviewed the first draft of the fiscal 2019 school budget earlier this week. The next step in the budget process is for the School Committee and administrators to present this draft to the Board of Selectmen and the Finance Committee, either jointly or separately.
Salaries are largest share
One of the conundrums for school administrators is trying to keep yearly budget increases close to 2.5 percent when the main cost is teachers’ salaries that rise 2.75 percent a year under the current contract. That yearly increase was approved several years ago when teachers simultaneously agreed to pay more of their own health insurance premiums, resulting in substantial savings to the town. Insurance costs appear in the town budget, not the school budget.
Besides the annual increase, teachers’ pay rises with years of experience and additional degrees or professional training. Taking those increases together with the annual raise, the draft budget for fiscal 2019 shows the salary line increasing by about 4 percent over the current year, fiscal 2018.
In the past several years, Harvard schools have sometimes seen salary costs fall below the budget estimates, when longtime teachers at the top salary levels have retired and been replaced by younger ones at lower salaries. Those savings in the salary line have allowed the schools to pay for other unexpected costs or small improvements that would otherwise have required warrant articles at town meetings.
This year, however, only one teacher has thus far announced plans to retire next June. (There’s a financial incentive for letting the school know about retirement plans well in advance, to allow time to find a replacement.) Superintendent Linda Dwight suggested that some teachers might be postponing retirement because of recent cutbacks in the town’s contribution to retirees’ health insurance.
Other costs also higher
Other costs are also rising, but more slowly, Dwight told the School Committee. In particular, the cost of bus transportation and the contract for snow removal are both up sharply. Overall, the draft budget showed nonsalary costs rising just under 3 percent.
To bring at least those costs down to the 2.5 percent target, the School Committee voted unanimously to use money from the Miriam Shaw Trust—a Harvard resident’s legacy to several educational, religious, and cultural institutions—to pay for some new cafeteria tables and furniture for the Bromfield School. Funds from grants, trusts, state aid, and other outside sources (called offsets) make up about $3 million of the total school budget, over and above what comes through the town. The largest single offset is the payment to Harvard schools from MassDevelopment for the education of Devens students.
