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The January 15 meeting of the Sudbury Public Schools (SPS) School Committee was not a normal school committee meeting. The administration, represented by Superintendent Brad Crozier, Assistant Superintendent Annette Doyle, and Director of Student Services Stephanie Juriansz, spent much of the meeting fending off tough Fiscal Year 2027 (FY27) budget questions from a frustrated committee. That is, until Town Manager Andy Sheehan’s attempts to assist the school district revealed that the district wasn’t fighting nearly as hard as the Town Manager for Sudbury students.
What stood out most during the meeting was the moving target created by the administration. Crozier, Doyle and Juriansz responded interchangeably, often interjecting to cut off a line of questioning from committee members. At other times, the administration put the onus back on the committee to design educational summer program concepts on the spot.
When Chair Karyn Jones pressed the administration to explain the rationale behind their proposed budget cuts, to share alternatives they considered, all in the context of unilateral changes the administration made to the Extended School Year (ESY) program, Juriansz jumped into action. “I just want to be understanding of, what is that $120,000, what is the charge? Is that to provide an after school care for only students in ESY, is this for only students with disabilities? I have some questions about what would that be for? Is this open to all students in the community?”
The response was somewhat of a non-sequitur. The committee doesn’t design educational programs, it controls the budget and the policies of the district. The justification for the proposed budget cuts was the responsibility of the Superintendent who proposed them. The justification for the changes to the the ESY program was on the administration that had proposed them. But Juriansz’s response put the burden on the committee to design alternative programs that meet the needs of Sudbury’s students.
Chair Jones didn’t engage with Juriansz. She responded by pointing her question back to Crozier, who was indignant in his response. “It would be entirely inappropriate for me to say that it would x position or x person. So you know I’m saying that we would probably be looking at staff reductions, it would probably be 2.0 if we were looking at certified staff. But it’s completely inappropriate for me to publicly say what department or what position we would eliminate.” (48:00)
Jones added that she wasn’t asking Crozier to go to that level of specificity, but the context loomed large at this point. Crozier was proposing cuts that got the district to a balanced budget for FY27, without having explored the additional funding that Town Manager Andy Sheehan had alluded to in a December 2025 meeting. While the committee pressed for specifics, and the administration clutched its pearls, the reality was that the administration ignored the potential for additional funds from the Town while proposing staffing cuts to the very committee that has authority over the budget.
That reality became painfully obvious later in the meeting, when Town Manager Andy Sheehan announced that he was revising guidance for all cost centers, including an additional $200,000 for SPS — which received a larger budget increase than the Town departments or Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School. That was enough to either avoid the proposed staffing cuts, or take a different direction with the SPS summer programs. But more than anything, it raised questions as to why the SPS administration opted to pursue staff cuts without first pursuing additional funds that were explicitly and transparently floated in open session just a few weeks earlier.
Nearly 20 minutes after Juriansz challenged the committee about summer programming, she explained that “This topic of this program has always been something we valued, but we always knew it was going to need to sunset because it was a lot of financial resources and capacity resources that lead to this.”
Juriansz once again challenged the committee to design a summer program on the spot. (1:08:00) “If we’re providing essentially an [ESY] extended day program only for students with disabilities, I would want to understand, I have a lot of question about that. What does that look like? How does that work?”
Jones responded ‘I think that that’s where I’m frustrated. I feel this is way messier than it had to be. I think that if the plan was to sunset the program we should have been told last year. Families should have been told a year ago that last summer was the last year of doing this if this was a long-term plan.”
The conversation shifted to outsourcing summer programming soon thereafter. Outsourcing to either the Sudbury Park and Recreation department or a third-party vendor that would make summer programming budget-neutral. But the discussion was officially in the weeds… The committee members were offering concepts for programming, contemplating inclusion levels, and making ballpark guesses about budget impact, all while Juriansz repeatedly questioned if the committee wanted a program “only” for students with disabilities.
As the committee tried to unpack prior years’ financial data from the SMILE, Explore and ESY summer programs, it was abundantly clear that the administration had not provided clear accounting of the revenue and expenses of the three programs. Some programs were revenue generators, others were operational costs, and there was grant funding scattered throughout. Don Sawyer, director of business and human resources, responded to questions from Vice Chair Jessica McCready and Chair Karyn Jones (1:44:15) by explaining “And the expenses, I can’t tell you specifically what Explore’s expenses are because we have them together with SMILE’s.”
The committee was provided incomplete data and retroactive justifications for program cuts and changes, while being peppered with questions from a student services director who was putting the onus on the committee to do the job of a student services director. All while the superintendent merely played a supporting role in the discussion.
Soon thereafter, Town Manager Andy Sheehan was brought into the fold. He announced the increased budget guidance for the district, and told SPS that the budget mayhem couldn’t continue. But the budget discussion didn’t seem to matter much at that point. The lack of communication from the SPS administration was the focal point.
Sheehan told the virtual room “We cannot do this in the future. This has to change. I must insist on a better performance next year as the budget is built and as the budget is delivered to us. Again, it’s the largest cost center, it has the largest impact on the operating budget, and on the taxpayers.”
An ensuing exchange between Crozier and Sheehan highlighted the lack of information flow. Crozier argued that he had sent emails and made calls to the Town administration in the preceding weeks. Sheehan agreed that a couple conversations occurred, but added that no details on the operating budget were offered up by Crozier during those conversations. And the SPS administration never pursued the additional funds that were floated by Sheehan in December of 2025.
“I never, regardless of if I’m on the school committee or not, want to see a school committee in the position that I feel we’re in right now.”
Karyn Jones – Chair, SPS School Committee
While the committee has bottom line authority over the budget, district policies, and the superintendent, it was clear that the committee was kept in the dark on major budget considerations and conversations, even as the deadline to vote on a budget had passed. Chair Jones shared her gratitude to the Town Manager, and said “I never, regardless of if I’m on the school committee or not, want to see a school committee in the position that I feel we’re in right now.”
As the committee conducted a vote to send a budget to the Town Manager at the end of a two-week extension, an alarming reality set in. The Sudbury Public Schools administration will do what it wants. If the Town administration offers financial support for students, it might just be ignored. If the elected school committee doesn’t like it… they might simply be challenged to do the work of the administration during open session.
Some members of the committee spoke optimistically about improving the SPS administration’s communication abilities in the future. In doing so, it appeared to be nothing more than an abdication of their authority… as it takes little communication prowess to discern when a Town Manager is indicating they have more money for students in an open, public, and recorded meeting of a school committee.
