Every dial that moves the FY28 gap is on this page. Raise money at the top, cut things at the bottom, and the bar above keeps the arithmetic. Nothing here touches the priorities page, and nothing is saved or sent anywhere.
A blank page is a hard place to start. Load the FY28 cuts a published ranking produces, then argue with it item by item — put things back, take other things instead. Loading replaces whatever is currently cut and leaves the priorities page untouched.
Every dial that moves the gap on its own: fees and savings that raise money, and the two ladders that cut it — administration one position at a time, athletics one team at a time. Each has a catch, and the catch is under the dial. The argument behind the bigger ones is in the panels below them. Why so little of this is possible →
$345,459 ÷ 582 participants. Today $390 covers 66%. Your setting covers 66% before waivers and drop-off — which push the real figure higher.
$0new money, above today’s fee
$0
$106,244 ÷ 375 participants. Your setting covers 0% before waivers and drop-off — which push the real figure higher.
$0
$1,053,360 ÷ 420 participants. Today $180 covers 7%. Your setting covers 7% before waivers and drop-off — which push the real figure higher.
$0new money, above today’s fee
Self-funding unreachable — revenue peaks near $715
The law stops this one. M.G.L. c.32B §7 fixes the town’s share at 50%, and §7A permits paying “more, but not less, than fifty per cent.” An employee share above 50% is not a choice the town declined to make; it is one no town may make. Read the section
Not available until after FY29. The Town’s health insurance agreement with the Public Employee Committee sets 75/25 on every active plan through 30 June 2029. The only reopener it names is federal changes under the Affordable Care Act. Read the agreement
$0saved, paid by employees
$00 lines cut
$0
$0
Of the $217,909 the adopted budget spends on athletics, $110,766 — 51% of it — is the athletic director, the trainer, the secretary, insurance and league dues, and it is paid whether the school fields twenty teams or one. Only $107,143 of coaching stipends and equipment moves when a team folds.
The cut board is built on that split. It spreads the $107,143 pool across the teams using the published per-sport figures as weights — relative size — and never as absolute savings. That is why one team is worth far less there than its cost in any of the three columns above, and why cost per surviving athlete rises as teams are cut.
The district divides shared costs itself, in the same workbook
Beside the per-sport totals sits a column headed Costs for all 3 Seasons. These are its 11 entries, exactly as the cells read — district-wide costs being split three ways and pushed into season totals, which is how they end up inside a per-sport figure.
What this does not show. Which shared costs would actually fall if a team went. A league assessment, a trainer’s hours and an insurance premium may each move with the number of teams, or not at all, and nothing here tests it. The split above is the district’s FY27 budget lines, not a study of what is avoidable.
It has been asked out loud. School Committee minutes of 26 February 2025 record, in the same item as the fee rise, that “Mr. Bigelow is asked to suggest a sport to cut.” Read the minutes. Sixteen months later, on 24 June 2026, the committee heard that questions about the cost of middle school athletics had received answers that were “inconsistent”, and that “the community still lacks a clear understanding of both the financial picture and the path forward.” Read the minutes. The three columns above are what a person answering that question has to work with.
The meeting archive searched for those quotes covers 2025 onward. Anything said about a sport’s cost in 2023 or 2024 is not in it yet.
Athletic Program Costs by Sport
$275,948
all 25 teams, FY24 · transcribed
The 5/1/2024 funding deck
$185,356
all 25 teams, FY24 · transcribed
The district’s by-sport workbook
$349,145
all 25 teams, FY24 · derived from the extract
The three totals span $163,790 — the highest is 88% above the lowest. Per sport it is far wider: Boys' Lacrosse is stated at $613 in one document and $14,189 in another, a difference of 2216%. No team carries the same figure in all three.
What this does not show. Which figure is right, or that any of them is wrong. A programmatic cost, an all-in cost and a season’s booked expenses would all differ legitimately, and no document we hold says which each column is. Nothing published reconciles them. What would settle it. A reconciliation from the district of its own three statements, sport by sport.
Free cash and the capital programme are the same money, and it is the one source in this whole tool that does not come back next year. Deferring a project releases what it cost — and the project is still there, still ranked, still needed, in a queue that is already $1,437,005 long.
The FY27 capital programme is $1,830,203, and free cash pays $991,627 of it — the largest single source. Stop a project and that money is available for something else. It is one-time money. It closes part of FY28 and the same hole returns in FY29, with the project still unbuilt. There is already $1,437,005 of ranked work below the funding line, so nothing here gains slack — this moves a queue, it does not shorten it.
Ranks and costs are the Capital Planning Committee’s own, from the FY27 capital plan voted at the 2026 Annual Town Meeting. That programme is already appropriated — this shows what a capital programme contains and what deferring one costs, not a list of live choices. The FY28 plan is not published.
One budget line at a time, for everything that is not athletics or administration. You can also go the other way — middle school sports, athletic transportation, the interventionists and the rest of the FY27 cut list can be put back, and each one adds to the gap rather than closing it. Amounts and staffing are the district’s own published figures except where a line says otherwise.
The things cut first in almost every district that loses an override.
Not required by law, and the largest discretionary money in the budget.
“Cut administration” is the most common suggestion at any budget meeting. These are the lines it actually means.
One-time state money puts these five back for FY27 only. Keeping any of them in FY28 is a new cost the district has to find — so not keeping them is a choice available to you here.
The teachers, interventionists and programs the FY27 balanced budget eliminated. Nothing stops a future budget funding them again — but each one adds to the gap rather than closing it. Athletics has its own put-back list on the board above.
Classroom teachers, special education, counsellors, nurses, custodians, networks. Most of the budget is here, and almost none of it is optional.