Superintendent's Message
Marc J. Smith - Dennis-Yarmouth Regional Schools
Beginning the Building of a Budget
Hello Dolphin Community,
On Monday of this week at our School Committee meeting, David Flynn - Assistant Superintendent for Business and Finance - and I gave an initial presentation about the budget for the 2024-2025 school year to the committee. In this presentation, we discussed the major factors that are affecting next year’s budget and provided a preliminary estimate of what it would cost to run the district next year the same way we are running it this year. A link to that presentation can be found here along with a link to the recording of the meeting.
As we discussed on Monday, three major factors are creating a “perfect storm” of forces that are putting upward pressure on the school district’s budget as we head into the 2024-2025 school year. First, D-Y has been working for several years on expanding the school day for grades PK-7 as a research proven strategy for supporting student achievement. Next year marks the full implementation of this process and the contractual financial obligations that accompany this increased time. Second, this school year marks the end of the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds. ESSER funds were federal funds provided directly to schools during and immediately following COVID to support school districts to mitigate the effects of the pandemic on learning. Over the past 2+ years, these funds have supplemented many operational needs in the district, and for those things to continue, the revenue from ESSER would need to be replaced in the general operating budget. The third factor affecting next year’s budget is one that we all have been feeling in our day-to-day lives. The upward pressure of inflation has placed significant pressure on many of our contractual obligations including, but not limited to, transportation, utilities, salaries, special programs, and insurance. Initial assessment of these three factors has next year’s D-Y operating budget at a 9.35% increase over this year’s budget.
As we head into next year, there is still a lot that is unknown to us. For example, while a large portion of the funding of our school district comes from the assessment of each town (Dennis and Yarmouth) paid by residents through their taxes, a significant portion of our budget is funded directly from the state through Chapter 70 funds. We will learn more about how much state funding we will receive at the end of January. Additionally, we will learn other revenue information (funding from the state) related to regional transportation reimbursement, circuit breaker reimbursement, charter school reimbursement, and school choice assessments at the same time. This revenue information helps us to determine how much of our operating budget increase can be funded directly by state revenue and how much would need to be supported by local taxes. Additionally, there are many assumptions built into our projections (i.e., the cost of employee health insurance) that will all become more clear in coming months for us as we receive additional information from others.
In the coming days, weeks, and months, we will be looking closely at our school district with a goal of delivering a budget that allows us to provide a strong educational program for our students and community, while also looking closely for efficiencies within. As part of my entry work, I have noticed some inconsistencies regarding class size, service provider caseload size, the way we are organized to meet the needs of students with learning differences, as well as looked closely at where we have historically invested district funds to ensure they are providing us the results that support student learning. The budgeting process will provide us an opportunity to establish regionally comparable and competitive class sizes and caseload sizes as well as examine the investments we have made with both COVID relief funds and district funds to ensure we are investing in programs that move us toward our district mission: Empowering Students to Achieve Excellence.
I look forward to an ongoing conversation with you all as we move forward in this process.
Best,
Marc J. Smith, Ed. D.
Superintendent
Community News
The Cape Cod Children's Place is hosting family lunch and supper groups at the Family Table Collaborative. The Lunch group is for preschoolers, the Dinner group is an afterschool group for 4-8 year olds. These are great groups for introducing kids to cooking and eating new healthy foods while also introducing families to the wonderful work of the Family Table Collaborative (providing free dinners twice a month to any family that could use a healthy meal. ) Please see the attached flyers below in English, Portuguese and Spanish for more details.
The Family Resource Center of Cape Cod has a bunch of events going on this month, please see the attached calendar for more details.