An analysis, written by this project
How Lunenburg compares, and what matching would cost
Lunenburg beside the districts people name at meetings — including the regional ones, because "regionalize and we get more money" is a top-five talking point about this deficit. Per-pupil spending, what the state pays, what the district itself funds, and what the tax bill is in each town.
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/spending-compared.md
Where Lunenburg sits among all 318 Massachusetts school districts on spending for each pupil — and what it would cost, in dollars, to move.
Analysis, September 2026. Every figure is DESE’s, for FY2025, and the only arithmetic here is a multiplication.
The short version
Lunenburg spent $18,027 for each pupil in FY2025, against a statewide median of $23,520 — 310 of 318 districts.
To reach the median, Lunenburg would have to spend $39,182,050. It spends $30,031,242. The difference is $9,150,808 — 30% more than it spends now.
To reach merely the first quartile — the line below which a quarter of districts sit — would take $35,282,503, or $5,251,261 more.
What the target is a target FOR
DESE’s per-pupil figure is all funds, and that is not the number Town Meeting votes on. Of Lunenburg’s $30,031,242:
| FY2025 | share | |
|---|---|---|
| General fund — what the town appropriates | $26,986,344 | 89.9% |
| Grants and revolving funds | $3,044,898 | 10.1% |
| All funds | $30,031,242 | 100% |
So $39,182,050 is a target for total spending, not for the appropriation. A district can close part of such a gap with grants nobody in town votes on, and 10.1% of what Lunenburg already spends arrives that way. What share of the distance to the median a town could close without raising its own levy is not established here, and this project holds no document that settles it.
Read the rest of the analysisThe full version5 min
To match each district, one at a time
These are the districts this project holds comparable figures for, and the set is not arbitrary: most children educated outside Lunenburg Public Schools attend districts that spend more for each pupil than Lunenburg does — the detail is in per-pupil-spending.md. They are districts and not towns. Montachusett is a regional vocational district drawing from many towns; Sizer and Francis W. Parker are charters. Each row is what matching that district would cost at Lunenburg’s own 1,665.9 pupils.
| to match | spends per pupil | Lunenburg would have to spend | more than now |
|---|---|---|---|
| Montachusett Regional Vocational Technical | $25,827 | $43,025,289 | +$12,994,047 |
| Harvard | $25,565 | $42,588,822 | +$12,557,580 |
| Fitchburg | $22,714 | $37,839,332 | +$7,808,090 |
| Groton-Dunstable | $22,664 | $37,756,036 | +$7,724,794 |
| North Middlesex | $21,528 | $35,863,570 | +$5,832,328 |
| Ayer Shirley School District | $20,428 | $34,031,076 | +$3,999,834 |
| Leominster | $20,182 | $33,621,264 | +$3,590,022 |
| Sizer School: A North Central Charter Essentia | $19,927 | $33,196,459 | +$3,165,217 |
| Francis W. Parker Charter Essential (District) | $18,747 | $31,230,693 | +$1,199,451 |
| Ashburnham-Westminster | $18,142 | $30,222,821 | +$191,579 |
| Lunenburg now | $18,027 | $30,031,242 | — |
“Regionalise and we would get more money”
It is one of the most common things said about this deficit, so it is worth setting out what these figures do and do not settle.
Regional districts do not systematically spend more. Five of the districts above are regional, and they span nearly the whole range — from the one that spends almost exactly what Lunenburg does to the one that spends most:
| district | structure | per pupil | against Lunenburg |
|---|---|---|---|
| Montachusett Regional Vocational Technical | regional vocational, many towns | $25,827 | +$7,800 |
| Groton-Dunstable | regional, two towns | $22,664 | +$4,637 |
| North Middlesex | regional, three towns | $21,528 | +$3,501 |
| Ayer Shirley School District | regional, two towns — regionalised FY2012 | $20,428 | +$2,401 |
| Ashburnham-Westminster | regional, two towns | $18,142 | +$115 |
| Lunenburg | single town, K–12 | $18,027 | — |
Ashburnham-Westminster is regional and spends $115 more for each pupil than Lunenburg. Being regional plainly does not decide the number.
And the one local case cannot be measured here, which is worth saying plainly. Ayer and Shirley regionalised for FY2012, next door and in living memory. This archive holds Ayer for FY2009–FY2011 and Ayer Shirley School District from FY2012 — and nothing for Shirley on its own beforehand. So the figure before regionalisation is one town and the figure after is two, which is a different denominator rather than a change. Comparing them would produce a confident number about the wrong thing.
What the town itself has to raise
Spending per pupil is what a district SPENDS, whoever paid for it. The argument is about what the TOWN pays, and Chapter 70 states that directly: the required local contribution, which is the minimum a town must put in, beside the aid the state sends. Per foundation pupil, FY2026:
| district | structure | the town must raise | state sends |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ashburnham Westminster | regional | $7,040 | $7,309 |
| North Middlesex | regional | $7,800 | $7,225 |
| Lunenburg | single town | $8,319 | $5,758 |
| Ayer Shirley | regional | $9,639 | $5,113 |
| Groton Dunstable | regional | $10,459 | $5,291 |
| Harvard | single town | $10,464 | $2,787 |
| Every district in the state | $9,253 | $8,132 |
The regional districts hold both ends of that table — the lowest local burden for each pupil and the highest. Being regional does not decide it.
What decides it is in the formula’s own inputs, which this archive holds: equalized_valuation, property_local_effort and income_local_effort. The required contribution is computed from a town’s property wealth and its residents’ income. Regionalising changes neither; it averages them with whichever town you join. Join a poorer one and the share for each pupil can fall, and the aid rise. Join a wealthier one and it goes the other way.
Two things that table is not. It is the required minimum, not what Lunenburg actually raises, which is higher. And its denominator is foundation enrolment, the formula’s own count — not the FTE pupils the spending tables above divide by. The two are not interchangeable.
Chapter 70 is not the only mechanism
It is the largest, and it is the one these figures cover. There is at least one more, and the town’s own record names it. School Committee minutes of 16 April 2025, reporting on a state bill:
“Key provisions to the bill were a full 100% reimbursement for FY25 regional transportation up from 82%, a 75% reimbursement increased from 44% for FY out of district special education transportation cost through circuit breaker”
Regional districts are reimbursed for transportation under c.71 §16C and single-town districts are not. At 82% rising to 100% that is not a rounding error, and it is money Lunenburg cannot receive in its present form.
This archive holds no dollar figure for it, for any district. So the honest position is: the largest term in the comparison — the required local contribution — is set by a town’s wealth and not by its structure, and at least one further term exists that favours regional districts and cannot be sized from anything held here. Anyone claiming to know the net is claiming more than the record supports, in either direction. Registered in money-gaps.csv.
The decision itself is on the record too. A School Committee member, 24 January 2024: “Lunenburg decided to not regionalize and to stay a small school, so scheduling in our middle high school is so hard and there isn’t really a clear path to fix that.” That is evidence about what was decided and why it still matters to people — not evidence about what it cost.
What this does not show
- That spending more would buy more. This is a price, not a promise. Nothing here measures what any district gets for its money, and the two districts that spend least on this list are virtual schools, which are not comparable.
- That the median is a target anybody has set. No document says Lunenburg should spend the median. It is a position in a distribution, and it is used here because a rank of 310 of 318 is not a quantity a resident can act on.
- That this is the appropriation. See above, and rule 11. The general fund is 89.9% of it.
- Why Lunenburg spends less. A figure is a fact; a reason is a hypothesis. This page measures the distance and does not explain it.
Sources
| Per-pupil expenditure, by district and function | sources/state-dese/district-expenditures-by-function.xlsx, via dese_function_expenditure — reconciles: yes |
| Statewide distribution, quartiles and rank | dese_function_statewide, func_code TTPP |
| The comparison districts | dese_radar, from sources/state-dese/radar-district-comparison.xlsx |
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.