The Everett School Committee’s budget meeting Thursday night was mostly what a budget meeting should be: numbers, tradeoffs, and a few plain admissions about what the district can and cannot keep paying for.
That alone makes it more useful than a lot of public meetings around here.
Chair Samantha Hurley opened at 6:40 p.m. with a reminder fitted for the occasion: keep comments through the chair, stay on the topic at hand, and “refrain from remarks of personal nature.” Jeanne Cristiano joined remotely, which meant roll-call votes all night. Michael LaMonica was absent with regrets.
Superintendent William Hart presented the proposed FY2027 school budget and did what superintendents do at the start of these things: thanked everybody in sight, praised the leadership team, and pointed out the student artwork on the budget book. Fine. The softer framing matters less than the hard number he put on the table.
The proposed budget is up 2.28% over FY2026.
Hart called that “a comparatively modest number,” and on this point he is plainly correct. Salaries go up. Benefits go up. Special education costs go up. A 2.28% increase is not some wild spending spree. It is the district trying to hold together a large system while revenue growth slows down.
And that slowdown is the real story here.
Hart said Chapter 70 aid, which jumped by $8.8 million last year, is increasing by only about $1.4 million this year. That is a very different world. When state aid comes in like a fire hose, a district can cover a lot of sins. When it slows to a trickle, every line starts getting a second look.
So the administration cut where it thought it could cut.
Assistant Superintendent of Finance Kim Barrett laid out the mechanics. The district tried to “minimize the impact of budget constraints on students and on staff within our schools” by level-funding non-salary lines and trimming administrative and systemwide expenses.
Some of those reductions were routine housekeeping. School administration dues and expenses were cut 37% because the district does not expect to need as much next year. Curriculum and instruction spending drops 58% because current materials are still usable. K-8 STEM drops 83% for the same reason. Library spending drops 45% because shelving and furniture were already purchased. Physical education is down 23%. SEL is down because the Wayfinder curriculum bought this year will still be used next year.
That is not glamorous. It is what a real budget looks like when people are trying not to blow holes in classrooms.
There were also personnel reductions, though the administration presented them in that familiar budget-book way where you have to keep your finger on three different slides to get the full count. Barrett described a net systemwide decrease of three positions. Assistant superintendent salaries drop 32% because the vacant deputy superintendent position is not funded. Central administration professional salaries drop 19% because multiple positions are eliminated and, as Barrett put it, “other staff will take the burden.”
That phrase did not get much follow-up, but it should. “Other staff will take the burden” is budget language for fewer people doing the same work.
Not every line moved downward. The district is adding one music teacher, one level-one tech support position, and one special education team leader at Devens to help with compliance. That tells you what Hart’s team thinks it cannot afford to let slip: arts programming, day-to-day classroom tech support, and special education paperwork that can turn into legal trouble if it gets sloppy.
One cut got more attention than most: translation and interpretation services.
Barrett said the district’s current setup cost about $64,000 and was “only used once this year.” On that basis, the current form of the service is being phased out. That will make some people twitch, because “language access” is one of those phrases that can end a discussion before it begins. But if a system costs $64,000 and gets used once, somebody has to ask whether there is a cheaper way to do it. That is not cruelty. That is math.
Hart said there are cheaper alternatives. One is a technology platform that can translate “70 languages” through a QR code and provide real-time translation on demand. The other is using current staff to cover the three languages already available, “at no cost to us,” apart from scheduling.
Committee member Joanna Garren, who said she had “helped fight for” interpretation in her first term, pushed the inclusivity point without turning it into theater. Fair enough. Hart’s answer was also fair enough: remote viewers can already use closed captions “in the language that they prefer,” and the district is trying to replace an expensive low-use service with something people might actually use.
That is a reasonable argument unless someone wants to explain why paying $64,000 for one use is the smarter option.
Another useful discussion involved the BRYT program, a therapeutic re-entry support for students with school avoidance and social-emotional issues. Barrett said the district was “happy we’re able to save it.” That matters. He called having a “point person in those buildings” crucial and credited the program at the Whittier with “tremendous success,” adding that the school is “leading the attendance charge right now.”
If the district is serious about pushing attendance from the current 92%-plus closer to where Hart wants it, preserving programs like that makes more sense than pretending attendance problems can be solved with slogans and robocalls.
Cardello asked how students get into BRYT and got an actual answer for once: principals, guidance staff, social workers, and support teams review attendance data and other indicators, then work “in partnership with the families” on placement and reintegration. That is more useful than the usual educational fog.
Cardello also asked how teacher pay works, which is the kind of basic public question more officials should be willing to answer plainly. Barrett did. Teachers generally start at “bachelor step 1,” move through steps over time, can move further with credits, need a master’s degree to maintain licensure, and also received a 3% increase on the steps themselves. He noted that a teacher moving up a step can get more than 3% in a year because the step increase and the across-the-board increase stack.
That is not scandalous. That is how salary schedules work.
Cristiano used her turn to praise Hart’s “calm and careful” leadership and thank Mayor Robert Van Campen “for answering the call and making accommodations without chargebacks.” She added, “This is what happens when we have a functioning and productive relationship between City Hall and the school department.”
A little political stage-setting? Sure. But also true enough. If City Hall and the schools are not fighting each other, fewer costs get dumped onto taxpayers through bureaucratic games.
Hart’s sharpest warning came later. He said budget planning really started back in October because of declining enrollment reported to the state. He also said the current pressure comes from factors “outside of our control, outside of the City of Everett,” and warned, “We may not be in this place next year. This may not be the same story next year.”
That is the line worth remembering.
The budget passed through Thursday’s committee-of-the-whole process with the usual compliments and thanks. But beneath the pleasant tone was a blunt message: the easy money year is over, enrollment is softening, and the district is now trying to build a budget it can actually sustain.
That is not a panic story. It is a grown-up one. Everett could use more of those.