Plain arithmetic
$930,273 has to come from somewhere next year. Here is every place it could come from, what each one costs, and how many of them cannot do it at all.
Every other page here asks what happens over six years, which means trusting a projection. This one does not have a projection in it. One year, one division per answer, printed underneath so you can check it on the back of an envelope.
Figures come from the town’s published FY27 budget and tax records. The only forecast on this page is the size of the hole itself — and you can ignore even that, and simply pick a number.
The price list
$500,000 is roughly where this lands in FY28. Of the 12 levers anyone has proposed, 6 can produce it on their own. The other 6 cannot, at any price, in any year.
No program ends and no job goes — but see what is actually in it
Cut administration and school office staff
6 people's jobs
Largest salaries first — 6 FTE, every one of them somebody doing a job today
Ceiling $736k. The rest of administration is roles the Commonwealth requires a district to have.
Check it: 6 lines totaling $509,360, largest first
Cut software, licenses and student devices
Not possible — 60% of it is $383k
Cutting technology to the bone leaves you $117k short
Gets you 77% of the way. Past 60% the state testing, IEP and payroll systems stop running.
Check it: 60% of $638,675 of technology spend is $383,205
User fees. The only lever the district can pull without the Town, a union or a ballot
Raise athletics fees
Not possible — the most it can ever raise is $158k
Even at the highest fee that raises anything, you are $342k short
Gets you 32% of the way. A fee may not lawfully raise more than the program costs.
Check it: $158,007 is everything above today's $390
Charge for band, music and clubs
Not possible — the most it can ever raise is $106k
Even at the highest fee that raises anything, you are $394k short
Gets you 21% of the way. A fee may not lawfully raise more than the program costs.
Check it: $106,244 is everything above today's $0
Raise bus fares
Not possible — the most it can ever raise is $82k
Even at the highest fee that raises anything, you are $418k short
Gets you 16% of the way. Past this fee, enough riders quit that the money goes down, not up.
Check it: $81,746 is everything above today's $180
Something students have today stops existing
Cut athletics — every remaining sport
Not possible — everything still funded is $218k
691 student-seasons across 25 sports, every coach, and the 1.5 jobs that run them — all of it gone, and you are still $282k short
Gets you 44% of the way. Transportation, half the trainer and middle school sports are already gone — the same money cannot be cut twice.
This is the same money as the first line inside “cut programs” beside it — the two cards overlap, so do not add them together. Athletics also collects about $187,451 in fees today, which stops being collected the moment the sports stop; how that revenue is accounted against this line is not published.
Check it: $451,830 of athletics, less the $233,922 the adopted FY27 budget already cut = $217,908 still being paid for
Cut programs, in the order the district already cuts them
7 programs and 2.9 jobs
Taken lowest-priority first, in the order the School Committee's own budgets have been cutting things:
Ceiling $3.56M. What remains is special education and other services required by law.
The first line is athletics, which also has a card of its own. Same money counted once, shown twice — do not add the two cards together.
Check it: 7 lines totaling $641,523 — the nearest you can land without cutting a fraction of a teacher
Bargained, every one of them, and a pay cut in everything but name
Move health premium onto employees
Employees pay 37.5% instead of 25%
About $5,496 a year out of a school employee's pay
Ceiling $600k. Beyond about 40% the plan stops being competitive and the town cannot hire.
Check it: $500,000 ÷ $39,985 kept per point = 12.5 points
Cut everyone’s pay
3.7% off every salary in the district
$2,714 a year from a teacher at the middle of the scale, and a bargaining fight for each of roughly 250 employees
Check it: $500,000 ÷ $13,348,216 of payroll = 3.7%
Nothing is cut; the bill goes up instead
Vote to raise taxes
$104 a year on the average home
$9 a month, on a bill of $7,444 — and it needs a townwide majority, which the last two asks did not get
Check it: $500,000 spread over $2.49 billion of property = $0.20 per $1,000 of value
Nobody pays and nothing is cut — the place becomes something else
Build commercial development
$65.33M of new commercial value, built every year
About 22 developments a year — one every 17 days, forever, against 24 recent years averaging $356k of new growth
Check it: $500,000 ÷ 53¢ the schools keep per dollar = $940,152 of new growth ÷ $14.39 per $1,000
Build housing
No number of homes raises it
The average home pays $3,959 a year toward schools and brings $3,961 of school cost with it, at 2.75 homes per pupil. Housing grows the town; it does not close this.
Check it: $517,296 × $14.39/$1,000 × 53% to schools = $3,959 vs $10,894 ÷ 2.75
Each lever is priced on its own, as if it were the only thing being done. Several can be done at once and the ceilings add up — which is the point of the paragraph below. Every ceiling here is the same one used elsewhere on this site.
That ceiling never moves. Administration, technology and all three fees at their limits come to $1,465,670 in any year — a fee cannot exceed what the program costs, and there are only so many office lines to cut. Next year’s hole is $930k, so there is room. By FY30 the hole is $2.20M and there is not — $732k past the ceiling before anyone has argued about which program to cut.
That last comparison is the one place this page uses the projection. Everything else on it is arithmetic on today’s figures.
Being straight about it
Every answer here is a one-year answer. Take any of them and the question comes back the following spring, bigger — the hole reaches $4.66M by FY33. That is the part you cannot get to without a projection.
See why it repeats →$500,000 of program cuts is 7 programs and 2.9 jobs — but which programs, in what order, is a choice somebody has to make, and the cost of it is not a dollar figure.
Read the answers in full →Nobody will close this with a single lever, because most of them cannot reach. The real answer is a combination, and the only honest way to see a combination is to build one.
Build your own budget →One thing the page deliberately does not do is rank these. Which lever is cheapest and which is right are different questions, and only the first one is arithmetic. Every card above is priced; not one of them is recommended.