Framingham schools start solving next year's budget with less state aid than expected

FRAMINGHAM — A much smaller expected increase in Chapter 70 state aid is complicating Framingham Public Schools' budget plans for fiscal 2025.

The state has said Framingham will receive about $85.9 million in Chapter 70 funding for fiscal 2025, which starts July 1. Framingham school officials say that's about a $900,000 increase — 1% — over the current year, which is far less than the approximately $16 million boost the city received last year.

Chapter 70 is the common name used for state aid given to local school districts. Each year, Chapter 70 funding is distributed to districts based on a set formula, with community amounts being dependent on overall state revenue totals.

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Last year, the Healy administration announced that statewide Chapter 70 aid for fiscal 2024 would be $6.59 billion, up 10% from the previous year. Individual school districts received an average of $60 in additional aid per student.

Framingham Public Schools Director of Finance and Operations Lincoln Lynch attended Wednesday's School Committee meeting. He noted during the meeting that Chapter 70 funding from the state for fiscal 2025 would be $85.9 million, up from $84.9 million in the curent year and $68.8 million in fiscal 2023.

Last year's big boost in state aid meant that the city contributed up to $10 million less to its school budget than it needed to into the past. But in addition to state revenues being lower than forecast so far this year, Framingham's Chapter 70 funding for fiscal 2025 was also negatively affected by a decline in enrollment.

"For the first time in over a decade, we saw a decrease in enrollment from the previous year, after seeing a large increase in enrollment last year, so that is also factored into the Chapter 70 formula," said School Committee member Adam Freudberg.

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On Wednesday, the School Committee started with a proposed fiscal 2025 school budget of nearly $179.6 million, which according to Lynch is up 9% from the current year.

"The increase can been seen throughout our major budget categories," Lynch told committee members. "We are looking at a pretty big increase in expenses — I've budgeted in year two of the NRT (bus) contract, which is just over $2.5 million, and for special education we are looking at over $3.25 million in increase, so the majority of increase is in those required expenditures."

The School Committee then voted on several motions to whittle more than $3.4 million from the original budget proposal. This included so-called "turnover savings" — vacant positions that are no longer expected to be filled, and planned reductions to budget increase requests for different departments.

"Every year we go big, we have this all-in number, what is the wish list, and then we reduce it during the month of March, so what we are doing now is typical," Freudberg told the Daily News.

The School Committee's finance subcommittee meets with the City Council's finance subcommittee next week, where revenues will be further discussed. Lynch told the School Committee that he's hopeful to have a better understanding of next year's budget following that meeting.

Lynch also said that with state revenues down, it's likely that local revenues will follow a similar trend. If that proves to be the case, the district will look to scale back projected budget increases for fiscal 2025

"We are unclear on what next year is going to look like," Lynch said. "I'm hoping that after the meeting next week we will have a better picture what that is going to look like. State aid is way down, and if local revenues follow that same track, than we are going to be looking to significantly reduce that $14.78 million (budget) increase going into next year."

Collective bargaining contracts to be decided next fiscal year

Further complicating next year's budget plans is six collective bargaining negotiations scheduled for the upcoming year. A vast majority of the fiscal 2025 projected budget — $135 million — is pegged to personnel expenses.

"We are in full-blown negotiations with all units, a couple that we are only one or two meetings in, but we are making good progress there," Lynch said.

Collective bargaining negotiations are with teachers, administrators, paraprofessionals, food service, custodians and administrative assistants. Freudberg told the Daily News that it's common to negotiate with all unionized groups in a single year.

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"We are able to spend one year doing the negotiations, instead of having a new negotiation with a different group each year," he said. "It can complicate things — this year you expect an increase in expenses once the contract negotiations are finalized. Just the cost-of-living adjustments alone will mean the district is paying more than we are right now."

An additional expense currently hanging in the balance is the cost of transporting homeless students. Currently, asylum-seeking immigrants who live in Framingham hotels are having their busing costs covered by the state, to the tune of $104 per day, per student. But Lynch said whether that state funding will continue is unknown.

"I've raised the projected budget for transporting homeless students from $1 million to $1.5 million," he said. "If the state does cover that, we can reduce this back to $1 million, and that should help our bottom line."

This article originally appeared on MetroWest Daily News: Framingham fiscal 25 school budget to get modest bump in state aid