Significant $3.7 million increase in proposed FreeLake school budget

LAKEVILLE — The FreeLake superintendent’s recommended budget proposal shows a significant increase as district leaders aim to maintain current services for students.

The superintendent’s early budget recommendation for the next fiscal year was presented to the Freetown-Lakeville Regional School Committee on Wednesday, Jan. 14. The initial proposal is a $3.7 million  — or 7.49% — increase compared to the current budget.

Interim Superintendent Barbara Starkie said the proposal aims to maintain current experiences and services for students.

“It ensures that the daily academic, social, civic and athletic programming that our students deserve remains intact,” Starkie said.

As presented during the Wednesday meeting, the recommended budget totals $53.6 million, including federal grants. With grants, the current fiscal year’s budget totals $49.8 million.

Director of Finance and Operations John Higgins said the estimated budget increases come from a $716,000 for health insurance costs; contractual costs for teachers and staff totaling $1.2 million; $545,000 in technology replacements across multiple schools and an estimated $198,000 cost to complete fire suppression upgrades at the high school. 

About $1 million of the budget increase comes from adjustments to excess and deficiencies, School Choice funds and the Circuit Breaker Program — a state reimbursement for special education services. 

The excess and deficiencies fund needs to cover $660,000. The cost comes from previously approved contract obligations with teachers, paraprofessionals and secretaries. The excess and deficiencies fund is made up of surplus funds from previous years, and can be used to cover deficits.

Higgins said the committee voted last year to use the excess and deficiencies fund to pay for the contracts, and the bill is coming out of the general fund in the 2027 fiscal year.

The smallest slice of the budget increase lies in roughly $75,000 in inflation increases for services and supplies.

The budget items are all early estimates, as district leaders aim to provide the proposal a month ahead of time. 

The proposed financial needs of the district are, “to maintain the experience that our students have from the current year,” Higgins said.

The district’s general fund budget — a district’s main spending account funded by taxes and state aid — will see an overall 8.15% increase. Looking back to previous years, the largest increases of the general fund budget since the 2016 fiscal year occurred in 2020, a 4.09% increase, and 4% in the current fiscal year.

That makes the proposed general fund budget increase almost double the increase the current general fund saw this year.

To explain the significant increase, Higgins said this year’s 4% increase should have been closer to 6%, but the committee had to make adjustments and funds were delayed.

“Items were moved off of the budget and delayed for future years,” he said. “Essentially, that's part of the reason why there's such a large increase.”

Select Board Member Christopher Plonka attended the Wednesday meeting, and said afterwards that he has concerns of the sustainability of the proposed budget.

“I am looking forward to working with the committee and administrators over the coming weeks to hopefully come up with a budget that is sustainable for Lakeville,” Plonka said. “That also doesn’t impact the services for the students.”

Plonka said the amount of state-aid will be known as well as how much the town will have to pay for the budget, also known as the town’s assessment, in February.

The committee will have another meeting next week, where they will go into more detail with all of the budget items.