School Committee gets encouraging budget update

Brian Lynch, the Canton Public Schools’ new assistant superintendent of finance and operations, said he now has a clearer picture of the budget outlook for Fiscal Year 2025 and he is currently projecting a small surplus of roughly $52,000 once all offsets have been applied.

Without those offsets, Lynch said the Canton schools would be facing an FY25 deficit of approximately $7.37 million. Fortunately, he said, a “big chunk” of that shortfall — around $4.37 million — will be covered by state Circuit Breaker (special education) reimbursements, with a combination of grants and revolving funds covering another $1.5 million.

Lynch said the final piece of the puzzle — barring any unforeseen spikes in special education tuition and transportation costs — is a projected $1.6 million appropriation to the town’s Special Education Reserve Account, which had to be depleted recently to address an outstanding deficit at the close of FY24. Lynch said school officials will make the transfer request at the November Special Town Meeting, where voters will also be asked to approve the funding needed to construct the new Galvin Middle School.

Based on informal discussions with Finance Director Randy Scollins, Lynch seemed cautiously optimistic that the funding would come through, but he stressed that it would be “up to the will of town meeting.”

School Committee Chair Kendall O’Halloran said she too is hopeful that the funding would be approved and said the town deserves a big “shout-out” for consistently stepping up to support the school system. “It just always blows my mind the share of the town finances — two-thirds of it — that go specifically to the schools,” she said. “It’s very generous, especially compared with a lot of other towns around here. So we’re very appreciative of the continued support on every level there.”

Now that he’s settled into his new role, Lynch said he plans to meet monthly with the School Committee, town officials, and members of the Finance Committee to assess the health of the school budget. School Superintendent Derek Folan added that as a result of the most recent budget review, he will not be seeking to add a new assistant superintendent; however, if any additional money comes in from the state, he would still like to add a special education teacher at the Luce School.

In other financial news, Lynch told School Committee members that he would like to request a demo from Open Architects, a Boston-based firm that offers a range of financial and data tools for school districts. Open Architects is one of a handful of firms that Lynch had identified as a potential candidate to perform a comprehensive review of CPS finances, and the demo, he said, would hopefully give him a better understanding of the services they can provide.

School Committee member Maureen Moran said she too has been looking into potential firms and suggested they have another budget finance meeting to help move the process along. Lynch agreed, noting that the next step will be to “put pen to paper” and clearly define a scope of services for the project …

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Posted by Mike Berger on Aug 9 2024. Filed under News, Schools. Both comments and pings are currently closed.