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Act One: All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players
In December of 2022, the SPS School Committee was gearing up to pursue an override for FY24. Come January of 2023, the SPS School Committee was in a joint meeting with the Sudbury Select Board insisting that they had asked for enough money, and that they were confident the override amount they were requesting of taxpayers would get them to a sustainable position for future years. (0:33:20)
The catch?
Their budget forecast for FY25 would require an increase of 3.17% in the budget guidance the Town Manager provides to SPS.
On Monday night, the SPS School Committee announced that they had received revised budget growth guidance from the Town Manager of 3.22% for FY25. It appeared, for a moment, that the risks they took with the FY24 budget, such as funding the operating budget with Circuit Breaker special education funds, may have paid off. Guidance came in north of the 3.17% they said they would need for FY25 back in January, just as they had hoped. The forecast in the packet this week showed a need for a 3.1% increase, so the Town Manager’s guidance exceeded that mark as well. But committee members quickly began to voice grievances about the guidance. (Earlier forecast on Page 57, new forecast on page 6 here.)
The School Committee had two primary complaints about the guidance. First was that it was not the same for all cost centers. Second was that the SPS guidance wasn’t enough for the district to maintain level services in FY25. They went to great lengths to create the impression that SPS was the victim of inequitable treatment.
Loosely comparable guidance across cost centers has generally been the norm in prior years in Sudbury, though guidance regularly varies. You can review the budget presentations on this page to see what the guidance was for the major “cost centers” in prior years. Importantly, guidance percentages don’t capture the whole story. Local receipts can influence the guidance provided to the Town, for example. Either way, the committee was informed that level guidance is not a norm in every community. A cursory review of surrounding Towns reveals that varied guidance across cost centers is quite easy to find. (Concord Page 5, Weston Page 4) Had the Town Manager given the exact same guidance to Sudbury’s two school districts, it could be perceived as inequitable to Lincoln-Sudbury, because Lincoln-Sudbury did not accelerate Chapter 70 funds into their current fiscal year. SPS is starting the FY25 process with a larger base budget because they did just that at Special Town Meeting in October.
Member Troiano nonetheless argued that varied guidance across the cost centers would pit the cost centers against each other and baselessly claimed that she felt SPS was subsidizing the higher guidance for other cost centers:
“It just inherently pits groups against each other. I was talking to someone earlier and I don’t have children in SPS anymore. I actually have children at L-S. And so they’re getting a fantastic increase. Which is great, but my job here is to advocate for the students of SPS, and I feel like SPS is essentially subsidizing in some way this significantly different increase to the Town and to L-S.” (0:46:00)
Don Sawyer, SPS Director of Business and Human Resources, clarified that, at least in his time in Sudbury, L-S always received half a point more than the other two costs centers because they have their own health insurance and benefits. But he went on to argue that the Town has an obligation to provide more precise breakdowns of the budgets in various departments so that SPS could apparently compare its own guidance to everyone else, such as the benefits costs in public safety, for example. (0:48:00)
SPS committee members claimed that L-S received 3.92% guidance during the meeting. If you reduce it by the “half point” Sawyer referenced, L-S is receiving 3.42% on their budget, which is only .2% delta in the guidance that SPS received.
Yet committee members continued to insist this was a huge delta, did not factor in that SPS increased the SPS budget mid-fiscal year whereas L-S did not, and were adamant that there was an equity problem.
Act Two: “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves…”
Misleading statements about equity aside, the notion that the guidance was insufficient to maintain level service was the real surprise. Member Troiano stated:
“So we’re essentially not really able to even maintain level. With the guidance in-hand now, we can’t even maintain the level service.” (1:31:18)
Chair Nerssessian confirmed that claim: “Correct.”
The 3.22% guidance exceeded what SPS said they would need in order for the override to be a sustainable solution to their budget in future years. In addition to the override and the higher guidance, SPS accelerated over $200,000 of funding, based on Chapter 70 State aid, into their FY24 budget by way of Article 12 at Special Town Meeting in October. That added to their base budget, upon which the Town Manager guidance is applied for FY25. (Page 29)
Notably, the Select Board’s SPS liaison, Dan Carty, suggested in October that Town Manager Andy Sheehan is not required to provide the exact same guidance to all cost centers when discussing SPS articles for Special Town Meeting. He went so far as to suggest that if guidance was reduced a bit for SPS, the Town Manager could ensure that the Article 12 funds did not functionally add to the base budget for SPS in future fiscal years, and could be seen as a one-time increase. (35:25)
With guidance of 3.22%, much of that discussion seemed to be moot. FY25 guidance exceeded what SPS said it would need for a sustainable post-override budget. What truly stood out on Monday was the claim that SPS couldn’t even achieve level service year-over-year when they ultimately are getting more money than they said they would need.
In January of 2023, the School Committee insisted that they were asking for enough in the override, despite multiple Select Board members voicing concern that they may not be asking for enough if dipped into Circuit Breaker to reduce the override request. (0:35:20)
The administration has repeatedly pointed out that changes in student needs and budget adjustments are constant. It’s possible that needs have increased beyond their expectations. But it has only been a little more than a month since SPS got the money from Article 12 at the October Special Town Meeting. There was no introspection amongst the School Committee members, nor was there an attempt to understand why their budget planning for the override didn’t result in sufficient capacity to meet the district’s needs in the ensuing fiscal year.
Act Three: “Have more than thou showest, Speak less than thou knowest…”
On Tuesday, the SPS administration joined the Finance Committee for the annual “Budget Pressures” meeting. In the exhibit presented, SPS reported no specific or new student needs, and did not directly answer if student needs were expected to continue increasing in FY25.
Following the conversation, members of the Finance Committee voiced optimism that the override did the trick, and that it looked like SPS would be able to sustain itself in FY25 with the guidance they’ve been provided by the Town Manager. It’s unclear if members were aware the SPS School Committee had voiced concerns about achieving level service the night prior. But the optimism of Finance Committee members stood in stark contrast to the narrative that the SPS School Committee began advancing on Monday. Finance Committee Co-Chair Mike Joachim summed up his reaction to the SPS discussion:
“But what I also hear them saying is that they are budgeting several years into the future and incorporating expenses. No one said anything about an override. And in fact, again, what they said last year was an override plus 3.17 each year and they’re going to be good going forward. And fingers crossed, that’ll happen. I don’t think we should anticipate, in any way, an override.” (1:23:00)
We checked, and Joachim was correct. SPS Superintendent Brad Crozier and SPS School Committee Vice-Chair Meredith Gerson told the Finance Committee that they need the override and guidance of 3.17% in FY25 to continue funding the added staff positions in their budget. Later in the meeting SPS School Committee Chair Silvia Nerssessian insisted that the Superintendent had presented a budget “that would take us forward” and said it did not feel responsible to ask for more money to put any cushion in the budget. (0:21:40, 1:33:13, 1:37:00)
On Tuesday, Finance Committee Member Ryan Lynch added:
“I guess I actually feel somewhat optimistic that potentially the budget for next fiscal year seems like it should be able to meet those demands and those objectives without necessarily going into override. So I actually view it pretty favorably that the work that’s been done this year has supported that.” (1:28:10)
The SPS administration was careful not to get too far into conversations about FY25 with the Finance Committee. That’s fairly typical for a budget pressures meeting, particularly this early in the school year. However, the administration also did not raise the same concerns, in style or substance, that were voiced by SPS School Committee members on Monday.
Act Four: Much Ado About Nothing
The SPS budget conversations continued on Thursday when the School Committee held their annual budget workshop meeting.
In a stunning reversal from Monday, the administration was able to get everything into the budget, including summer programs that were previously funded by grants, and even add expanded Pre-K on top of that. Once again, all seemed well. (Packet here)
But members of the SPS School Committee continued to voice concern about the guidance from the Town Manager. They felt the Tier 1 initiatives were more than “nice to haves.” They wanted them in the budget. (Page 10)
Tiered initiatives are added after achieving level service according to the SPS presentation:
During the meeting Chair Nerssessian asked Superintendent Crozier to use his upcoming meeting with the Town Manager to ask for higher guidance to cover Tier 1 initiatives, and indicated that grant funding should be pursued if the Town doesn’t provide additional budget to cover them.
“I don’t see anything on your Tier 1 budget initiatives that feel like ‘nice to haves’ or things that we can build to in the future. They just, they feel like things we should be seeing in our classrooms every day.”
Curriculum updates were on the list of Tier 1 initiatives for FY25. Last year ( for FY24) the SPS School Committee opted to fund their ELA curriculum update, which was also a Tier 1 initiative, with an article that pulled from free cash. (Page 27) In doing so, they risked not creating room in the override budget to fund ongoing curriculum updates via the operating budget. They were asked about this choice by the Finance Committee back in February, and Chair Nerssessian was adamant that one-time funding made sense for the curriculum update.
“For the ELA curriculum review, those are very specific pieces that are one-time funds. If we were mapping this out over several years and really looking at a holistic plan then maybe we would be thinking about it a little bit differently.” (1:30:00)
Notably, Nerssessian herself sounded the alarm that curriculum updates should be in the operating budget at the start of last year’s budget cycle, just a couple months prior to Nerssessian’s comments justifying using one-time funds to the Finance Committee:
“At this point, we are just talking about not being able to fulfill basic needs for students. Not being able to put an ELA curriculum review in our operating budget, which in Sudbury should be standard. We should be able to review our curriculum and make sure that we are, you know, providing our students and our staff all of the tools that they need to learn and to teach. So that’s just a basic need that, you know, we need to do that, and we just can’t even address that within our operating budget.” (01:02:57)
They expect to get estimated costs for the Tier 1 initiatives during their meeting on Monday. That will give residents a more detailed view into where the district wants to go in the year ahead. As the budget process stands today, it’s hard to summarize. On the bright side, the budget guidance ended up funding all existing needs and even some new needs. But the school committee is acting aggrieved, even with regard to budget pressures that were of their own making. It remains unclear if the SPS budget process will head down a path that creates confusion and acrimony, or if it will be smooth sailing, as the Finance Committee had hoped after the budget pressures meeting.
*Story updated to include further research on budget guidance across Town departments.