LAKEVILLE — Making no new hires, freezing salary increases of non-union personnel and not replacing retirees are among options that the Freetown Lakeville Regional School Committee asked school officials to consider to offset most of the $791,295 shortfall in next year’s school budget. 

School Committee member Crystal Ng asked the district at the regional school board’s May 29 meeting to provide information about what these cuts would amount to and what other reductions could be made as a potential option to the current plan to reduce the shortfall. 

That plan presented by the district involves using school choice funds, additional Chapter 70 funding the district will receive and money from Excess and Deficiency funds as primary methods to offset the gap.

School officials have said those recommendations would allow next year’s fiscal budget to accommodate the shortfall. But concerns have been raised that using one-time funds would cause further issues with the Fiscal Year 2026 budget and beyond.

“I don’t think it hurts to get’’ this information for “digestible purposes,’’ committee member Will Sienkewicz said of exploring what potential cuts might look like. Robert Clark was the sole school committee member to oppose requesting the information.

Ng said she wants to take “preventative measures’’ now to avoid potential future issues, including a Proposition 2 ½ override, which Superintendent of Schools Alan Strauss acknowledged “no one wants.’’

Freetown’s Town Meeting is scheduled June 3. But Ng said it was possible to meet ahead of that to take potential action. Lakeville’s Town Meeting is scheduled June 10.

Strauss said the district takes responsibility for the error.

“There was a mistake made that we ended up not realizing,’’ he said. “We own that as a district.’’

He said he is not inclined to place blame or “throw someone under the bus’’ to explain the mistake. “I still don’t have an answer because the interim [finance director] is not here.’’

Deirdre Farrell-Welch had served as interim director of finance and operations before recently being replaced by Jack Higgins, former principal of the Freetown-Lakeville Middle School. 

Strauss noted that he will not be taking his scheduled 3 percent salary increase next year in light of the fiscal situation.

The committee also informally agreed to wait until the towns responded before taking any action on a potential forensic audit of the school district budget. The topic of the school budget is scheduled to be discussed at the May 3 Lakeville Select Board meeting. 

At a May 28 meeting, The Freetown-Lakeville Regional Finance Subcommittee supported a forensic audit to determine the true state of the budget. Input was then going to be sought from Lakeville and Freetown town officials.