Even as the School Committee and district administrators struggle to lower their budget requests for the next fiscal year, school expenses for the current year are running ahead of budget. And more than $180,000 the schools received as rental income or applied for as reimbursement from the federal government sits in the town’s general fund, inaccessible to either the town or the schools.
At a meeting of the School Committee’s Budget Subcommittee early this month, Superintendent Linda Dwight told the group, “We’re in deficit.” Expenses, she said, were running about $49,000 higher than had been expected by this point in the fiscal year. Most of the higher expenses, she said, resulted from unexpected special education tuition and transportation costs over which the schools have no control.
Responding to the developing deficit, in December 2024 Dwight put in place a hiring and spending freeze. No purchases could be made unless they were deemed critical and received preapproval, she wrote in a memo to faculty and staff. As for hiring, Dwight told the Budget Subcommittee a learning assistant who had left midyear would not be replaced.
Rental income was locked in unusable account
Among the factors Dwight cited in her memo as contributing to the deficit was “decreased revenue from building use.” About $70,000 the schools received in rental money over more than a year has become inaccessible to the schools.
The rental money comes from groups that use school rooms or gyms. One such group is the business AlphaBEST, which charges parents a fee for before- and after-school care in the school building. Other groups have included the sports programs that use the gym on nights or weekends.
For about a decade, the schools deposited the rental money into a revolving account and used it to pay overtime for custodians who stay beyond regular hours for those activities. But about a year ago, Finance Director Jared Mullane found the account where the rental money was being deposited had been set up incorrectly. So, despite having about $70,000 in the account, the schools could not draw upon it, but they still had to pay the overtime costs.
The first step in correcting the matter took place at last fall’s Town Meeting. Voters approved setting up a new revolving account to receive the rental money; but that account does not exist yet. It will not be created until July 1, when the new fiscal year begins. At Monday’s School Committee meeting, members voted unanimously to support a warrant article at this spring’s Town Meeting to ask that $70,000 from free cash be deposited into that new revolving account when it is established.
At present, Mullane has said neither the schools nor the town can spend the money from its current account, so that sum is effectively in limbo. And, if the money cannot be transferred into the new account until free cash is certified for fiscal 2025 sometime late next fall, the money might not become available until spring of 2026. Mullane wrote in an email to the Press, “If the money was received during FY25, it needs to wait until FY26 to be voted from free cash.”
Federal emergency fund paid $113,000 to town, not schools
An even larger sum is also in limbo. During COVID-19 the schools incurred extra technology costs related to the pandemic. That money paid for additional software licenses and MacBooks that were purchased in the 2020-2021 school year for remote teaching and learning.
Chris Boyle, the schools’ director of technology, learned the federal government was reimbursing such costs, so he applied to the Federal Emergency Connectivity Fund and succeeded in getting $113,000 in reimbursement. But, because Harvard is an independent school district, the money was paid to the town instead of the schools. The $113,000 remains in the town’s general fund.
The School Committee considered presenting a warrant article at last fall’s Town Meeting, asking for that $113,000. But Mullane told the committee such an article would not be valid, because the money could not be allocated until the state certified the town’s 2024 free cash later in the year.
Now that the 2024 free cash has been certified, the School Committee voted Monday to put a warrant article before the May 3 Town Meeting, asking that the money be repaid to the schools. Committee members Suzie Allen and Katy Covino described the article as “a housekeeping issue,” saying it simply moves money back to the schools that came from school funds originally.
But several School Committee members noted that the Select Board might be unwilling to approve such an article for the warrant. And, in an email to the Press, Select Board Chair Don Ludwig wrote, “Keep in mind, we will likely need an override, and the school budget drives a big part of that. Asking for over $200K in Free Cash on top of that to be transferred will leave less for Capital Project Funding.” Ludwig explained that he meant the total of both the federal reimbursement and the rental money—approximately $183,000.
At the time of this writing, the balance in free cash stood at $1,465,579, according to the finance director. The major portion of free cash usually goes to the Capital Planning and Investment Committee to be allocated to various capital projects. (See story on page 2).
