The Finance Committee and the School Committee sat down together last week to thrash out the school budget, which last year constituted about 55% of the town’s operating budget. FinCom Chair Don Ludwig saved the toughest question for the end of the joint meeting. “How do we manage with the schools being such a big part of the budget and going up every year?” he asked, admitting, “I don’t have an answer.”
The fiscal 2021 budget that the School Committee presented at the Jan. 29 meeting was $14,370,920, an increase of 4.23% over last year’s budget.
FinCom member Jennifer Finch, who was one of only four FinCom members in attendance, asked the school representatives, “How can we help you stay at 2.5% or lower?” That 2.5% is the increase FinCom usually considers a level-service budget and was also the amount the Select Board set last October by which departmental budgets could grow without the need for item-by-item justification. And most importantly, 2.5% plus “new growth”—new buildings in town—is how much the town’s annual tax levy can rise without asking voters to approve an override.
Salaries drive school budgets
Responding to Finch’s question, School Superintendent Linda Dwight said salaries make up almost 80% of the school budget, and raises push them up gradually, year by year. “It’s a bit of an unsustainable long-term situation, unless we have significant retirements or unless we lay off staff,” Dwight said.
Besides cost-of-living increases, teachers’ salaries go up based on years of service and additional education and professional training. When longtime teachers retire, the district replaces them with younger teachers at lower salaries, resulting in some savings in the personnel budget. But last year there were no retirements, and few are expected this year.
School Committee Chair John Ruark said current negotiations on a new three-year teachers’ contract include a tentative 1.4% pay raise for next year. But this increase would actually work out to just over a 2% increase in salary expenses for the district, because a .6% increase remains to be put into effect from the previous contract.
In negotiating contracts with its employees, the town generally agrees to a series of smaller increases that take place over time, rather than granting a single big pay hike all at once. Staggering the raises this way saves the town money, but it results in a complicated layering of old and new increases when a new contract takes effect.
Lower enrollment but not lower costs
The School Committee had already submitted written answers to the 40-plus questions FinCom had raised about the new budget. Several of those questions concerned possible savings from declining enrollments. School enrollments have declined since 2006, but not nearly as sharply as had been predicted in a 2012 study.
Enrollment this school year is 1,031 students, down from last year’s 1,055. But, as Dwight pointed out, a drop of 24 students spread from kindergarten through high school is only about two students per grade—not enough to allow the school to decrease the number of class sections in any given grade. So the decrease does not lead to a need for fewer teachers. And expenses such as heating, electricity, and buses are unchanged, even with fewer students in the schools.
FinCom member John Seeley asked about a study last fall that showed enrollments beginning to rise again in the next couple of years. Dwight said those expectations are based on somewhat higher birth rates in Harvard since 2014, as well as additional housing under construction both in Devens and in some Harvard neighborhoods. Dwight also said experience in other towns indicates families are attracted by new school buildings, so the new elementary school will probably draw some parents to town.
Offsets have prevented overrides
Big as it seems, the $14 million the schools are asking as part of the town budget does not cover the whole cost of educating students here. The schools also rely on some $4 million from other sources, including state and federal aid, busing fees, and trusts. Money from those outside sources, called offsets, is over and above what Harvard residents pay through their property taxes.
By far the largest source of outside funds is the tuition that MassDevelopment pays to the Harvard schools to educate students who live in Devens. This year, money from the Devens fund covers about $2.1 million of school spending.
In the coming fiscal year, offsets will contribute $1 million toward school salaries and $300,000 toward the new elementary school construction. Offsets also contribute to the costs of the technology leases for students’ iPads and laptops, the salary of the school business manager, some special education expenses, athletics, and some capital costs.
When Ludwig asked his basic question about the steady, year-by-year increase in the school budget, longtime School Committee member SusanMary Redinger recalled that FinCom had been predicting the need for an override since soon after 2008, which is the last year an override passed in Harvard.
“We’ve been able to negate [the need for an override] only by the use of the Devens fund,” Redinger said, “and if we can continue to do so, that’s great. … But there will be times when an override really is necessary.”
“But, you know, our charter is to avoid an override,” Ludwig replied, “so we’ll always push against it.”
“Nobody wants it,” Redinger agreed, “but we all live here, and it’s hard to handle the property taxes. But the thing that keeps our properties pretty valuable is the quality of the schools, which is what the School Committee is charged with protecting.”
