An analysis, written by this project
Two right numbers
Reconciling the district’s published cut list against its own budget columns.
lunenburgbudgetproject.org — written by the Lunenburg Budget Project, an independent tool for residents. Not affiliated with the Town of Lunenburg, the School Committee or the school district. The document this page renders: /docs/analyses/fy27-cut-reconciliation.md
How the FY27 school budget was cut by both $1,174,933 and $761,000.
Analysis, August 2026. Everything below is reproducible from two documents in this archive: the FY27 budget workbook (budget-workbooks/fy27-proposals.xlsx) and the Multi-Scenario Financial Analysis (district-budget/docs/budget-addendum-multi-scenario-financial-analysis.pdf).
The short version
Both figures are correct. They measure from different starting points, and one is gross where the other is net.
| The district's published reduction list | $1,174,933 — 9.2 positions |
| Level Service → Balanced, in the workbook | $761,000 |
| The difference | $413,933 |
The second is the figure presented to the Finance Committee. The first is what the district's own list of what it gave up adds to. Neither is wrong.
The bridge
Every step is a line in the 25 March 2026 workbook.
| $ | |
|---|---|
| Published reduction list | 1,174,933 |
| − Posts already gone before Level Service | −280,360 |
| − List values exceed what the lines actually move | −52,261 |
| − Two items that are not in the district's own subtotal | −24,149 |
| + Reductions the list leaves out | +97,718 |
| = Total reductions in the workbook | 915,881 |
| − Money added back into Balanced | −154,882 |
| = Level Service → Balanced | 761,000 |
Steps tie to $760,999; the $1 is rounding.
1. Posts already gone before Level Service — $280,360
Vacancies never backfilled, so they were never in the Level Service column to be removed from it. The workbook shows Level Service and Balanced identical on every Principal / Assistant Principal line, and Freshman & MS Coaches already at $0.
Assistant Principal $152,829 · COTA $74,147 · custodian $38,969 · coaches $14,415.
2. List values exceed what the lines actually move — $52,261
There is no separate interventionist line in the workbook. Interventionists sit inside the classroom teacher lines, so listing them as separate items counts the same money twice.
Turkey Hill is the clean demonstration: the list says 2.0 classroom ($171,811) plus 0.5 interventionist ($53,674) = $225,485, against a single E.S. Teachers/Regular reduction of $223,915.
3. Two items outside the addendum's own subtotal — $24,149
| Middle School custodial hours | $9,661 | Workbook, Level Service → Balanced |
| 0.2 Music Teacher, Turkey Hill | $14,488 | Our estimate |
The second matters when someone checks. The district listed that post in its own reduction list and left the dollar column blank — the PDF reads $ .2 Music teacher at Turkey Hill. The $14,488 is priced by us from the high school music position. So the total reconciles, but it is not wholly a published figure.
An earlier version of this analysis said this $24,149 matched nothing in the workbook. That was wrong, and this section is the correction.
4. Reductions the list leaves out — $97,718
Two real cuts that never appear in the published narrative: health insurance $49,095 and P.S. special education paraprofessionals $48,623.
5. Money added back into Balanced — $154,882
Grant funding ended, so 2.0 FTE moved onto the general fund. A list of cuts cannot show money moving in.
P.S. SPED Teachers +$72,441 · District-wide ELL +$72,441 · Business Office clerical +$10,000.
Before quoting any of it
The district's own documents disagree with each other. Three variances appear across two documents:
| source | Level Service | variance |
|---|---|---|
| Addendum §7, Comparative Summary | $27,410,701 | −$838,413 |
| Addendum §5, Scenario D header | — | −$868,918 |
| 3/23/26 & 3/25/26 workbooks | $27,333,288 | −$761,000 |
The $838,413 and the $761,000 differ by exactly $77,413 — Level Service being revised down between the addendum and the final workbook. The $868,918 reconciles to nothing in either document.
The headcounts conflict too, four pages apart in the same PDF: §7 puts Level Service at 256.5 and Balanced at 253, a difference of 3.5 FTE, while §5 enumerates 8.7 FTE of reductions.
The defensible wording
The FY27 budget is $761,000 below level service. The district's own published list of what that required names 9.2 positions and roughly $1.17 million of gross reductions — the difference being that about $280,000 of those posts were vacancies never backfilled before level service was drawn, and the Balanced budget added back about $155,000 for staff whose grant funding ended.
Sources
budget-workbooks/fy27-proposals.xlsx— FY27 budget workbook, 25 March 2026, 1,197 rowsdistrict-budget/docs/budget-addendum-multi-scenario-financial-analysis.pdf— Multi-Scenario Financial Analysis, §5 and §7budget-workbooks/fy27-budget-projection-3-25-26.xlsx— the same workbook as circulated to the Finance Committee; data-identical across every budget column
Every figure above uses budget columns only. No actual-spending column is used anywhere in this reconciliation.
Where this came from
Nothing on this page is an official document. It was written here, from documents the town and district published and from records obtained by request, and it has not been reviewed or endorsed by the Town of Lunenburg, the School Committee, the Finance Committee or Lunenburg Public Schools. The report index says the same thing at more length, and lists every analysis alongside the data underneath it.
This page renders the document itself, which is the source of truth: there is one copy of every sentence and every figure here, not a transcription of one.
Every other report
Every analysis this project has written, in one index, is at reports.