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A recent report issued by the Town of Sudbury presented school spending in a manner that many residents don’t typically think of school spending. While “per pupil cost” is a common method of analyzing school spending, and the report included that (page 83), the report also laid out Sudbury’s “net school spending.”
The Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) explains “The Commonwealth’s school finance statute, Chapter 70 of the General Laws, establishes an annual net school spending requirement for each Massachusetts school district. Failure to comply with this requirement may result in non-approval of a municipality’s tax rate, enforcement action by the Attorney General, or loss of state aid.”
The formula to determine the spending requirement is a bit complicated, but the basic point is that there’s a formula used to determine the minimum each Massachusetts municipality needs to spend on their schools in a combination of State aid and local contributions.
Sudbury is obviously exceeding the required spending. But the comparison to similar communities provides context. The most recent data from DESE is from Fiscal Year 2025. It shows Sudbury Public Schools at 179% of the net school spending requirement. Nearby Concord Public Schools, which is a PreK-8 district, is at 210%.
But what are the actuals? Sudbury’s net school spending is $53,271,512 in Fiscal Year 2025 to achieve 179% of net school spending, according to DESE. Concord Public Schools is spending $49,963,981 to achieve 210% net school spending. (Concord’s enrollment is smaller than Sudbury’s – by about 600 students according to DESE district profiles.)
If Sudbury were to match Concord at 210% of net school spending, that would be based on a Fiscal Year 2025 required spending amount of $29,786,643. Net school spending percentage-parity with Concord would require $62.5 million to be spent in Sudbury Public Schools. That’s nearly $10 million more than is currently being spent according to the DESE data. Nearby Lincoln was one of the four districts spending a higher percentage of net school spending than Sudbury. To match Lincoln, at 192%, Sudbury would need to spend an additional $4M this fiscal year.
As for academic performance, being one of the better funded districts hasn’t entirely insulated students from challenges since the Covid-19 pandemic. Concord and Sudbury have seen similar trends in recent Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) tests. However, both districts significantly outperform the state as a whole, and the MCAS tests are just one means of assessing academic performance.
