The money
In FY26 the town appropriated $26,287,474 to its schools and, in a different department of the same budget, $1,521,536 for the health insurance of people who used to work in them. The second figure appears nowhere in the district’s budget book. Nothing is hidden — it is where municipal accounting puts it — but it means the schools cost the town 5.8% more than their own budget says, before anything else is counted.
SCHRETHLTHFour claims, each one derived from the town’s own documents and each one checkable from the table at the bottom of this page.
The school budget is not what the schools cost, and this is the clearest $1,521,536 of the difference.
The district’s FY26 appropriation is $26,287,474 across 300 and 301. Account 0100-19142-570018 — $1,521,536, printed SCHRETHLTH — is in department 914, insurance. Add it and the town’s school cost rises 5.8% without a single service changing.
Counting both, 29.1% of the schools’ health insurance money is for people who have already retired.
The district budgets $3,701,195 for active employees’ health insurance inside its own appropriation — account 0100-S5991992-570001, and the district’s budget book and the town’s ledger agree on it to the dollar. Together with the retiree account that is $5,222,731 of school health insurance in the FY26 budget, in two departments.
The school share is separable in 2 years out of 16, and only because the town changed how it prints one page.
Through FY22 the annual report shows a single undivided Health Insurance CH 32B line. In FY23 that line falls −58% to $917,584 while the department’s own subtotal rises +13% — because 2 new lines appear beside it, Town Retirees Health and School Retirees Health. No other edition names a school share.
Where it can be measured, school retiree health has grown +25% in 3 years.
$1,213,618 appropriated in FY23 against $1,521,536 in FY26 — +7.8% a year, appropriation against appropriation. Two observations from two different publishers is not a trend line; it is the longest run this archive can build, and the reason is on the gaps list below.
What this does not show
None of the four says anything about people. A budget line is dollars: the retiree account rising is consistent with more retirees, with the same retirees on costlier plans, with a change in the share of the premium the town pays, or with any mixture of the three. Nothing published here separates them.
Nor does the FY23 split establish that anything changed in the world. A line being printed in three parts instead of one is a change in the report, and the earlier years are not thereby known.
The same year, the same town, the same premiums — and two departments. The bar is drawn to scale: $5,222,731 of school health insurance in FY26, split by which department the money was appropriated to.
70.9% of it · inside the school appropriation, account 0100-S5991992-570001
29.1% of it · department 914, account 0100-19142-570018
The two accounts, as the ledger prints them
| Account | Printed | Department | Appropriated | Expended |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0100-S5991992-570001 | HEALTH INS | 300 SCHOOL DEPARTMENT | $3,701,195 | $3,622,882 |
| 0100-19142-570018 | SCHRETHLTH | 914 INSURANCE | $1,521,536 | $1,262,376 |
Department 914, FY26, period 12 — 7 accounts totalling $3,713,520, which is the department row the town’s other report prints for the same money. Each bar is coloured by whose side of the town the account names: one says school, one says town, and 5 say neither.
0100-19142-570018 · printed SCHRETHLTH
0100-19142-570001 · printed HEALTH INS
0100-19142-570009 · printed TNRETHLTHI
0100-19142-570003 · printed MEDI
0100-19142-570002 · printed LIFE INS
0100-19142-570004 · printed INS COST C
0100-19142-570016 · printed PEC EXPENS
Department 914, FY26 period 12
| Account | Printed | What it is | Whose side it names | Appropriated | Expended |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0100-19142-570001 | HEALTH INS | Active employees’ health insurance | Names neither side | $1,315,270 | $1,376,557 |
| 0100-19142-570002 | LIFE INS | Life insurance | Names neither side | $15,000 | $12,865 |
| 0100-19142-570003 | MEDI | Medicare — the employer’s payroll share | Names neither side | $400,000 | $345,849 |
| 0100-19142-570004 | INS COST C | Insurance cost control | Names neither side | $8,000 | $8,000 |
| 0100-19142-570009 | TNRETHLTHI | Town retirees’ health insurance | Named for the town | $453,215 | $593,089 |
| 0100-19142-570016 | PEC EXPENS | Public Employee Committee expenses | Names neither side | $500 | $50 |
| 0100-19142-570018 | SCHRETHLTH | School retirees’ health insurance | Named for the schools | $1,521,536 | $1,262,376 |
What this does not show
5 of the 7 accounts — $1,738,770, the larger part of the department — carry nothing in their names that says which side of the town they are for. It would be easy to read the unnamed active health insurance line as the town’s, since the district budgets its own separately, and that reading may well be right. It is a reading. The account does not say it, and no document in this archive does either.
The appropriation for the whole insurance department, as the town printed it in each annual report, and for FY26 from the ledger. Where nothing is drawn, nothing is established — not zero. Across the established years it moves from $1,970,826 in FY11 to $3,713,520 in FY26, +88% — +4.3% a year.
Appropriated, by year, with the document each figure came from
| Year | Appropriated | From |
|---|---|---|
| FY11 | $1,970,826 | annual town report, page 65 |
| FY12 | $2,119,334 | annual town report, page 65 |
| FY13 | $2,053,509 | annual town report, page 69 |
| FY15 | $1,804,659 | annual town report, page 28 |
| FY16 | $1,919,999 | annual town report, page 30 |
| FY17 | $2,105,919 | annual town report, page 28 |
| FY18 | $2,319,623 | annual town report, page 34 |
| FY19 | $2,604,860 | annual town report, page 36 |
| FY20 | $2,656,878 | annual town report, page 30 |
| FY21 | $2,633,155 | annual town report, page 31 |
| FY22 | $2,533,782 | annual town report, page 32 |
| FY23 | $2,852,642 | annual town report, page 32 |
| FY26 | $3,713,520 | the FY26 ledger, period 12 |
What this does not show
Two things break this series and both are on the chart rather than in a footnote. The years with no bar are FY14 (components sum to 1,902,595.27 against a printed 1,908,745.27), FY24 (no insurance classification printed in this edition) and FY25 (no insurance classification printed in this edition). And the composition of the bar is not constant: from FY23 onward the department contains lines it did not contain before, so a year-on-year step is partly the town changing what it prints under this heading.
A possible explanation — nothing here tests it
What would settle it: The town’s Chapter 32B enrolment schedule — who is insured, in which department, in each year. It is on the list below.
Inside the school budget, health insurance is a single line, and the district has published it every year since FY14. Two series are drawn: what was budgeted, and what was later reported as actual. They are two different documents about the same line and this page never subtracts one from the other — every growth figure here is one stage measured against itself.
Budget against budget: $2,633,912 settled in FY18 to $3,701,195 in FY26 — +41%, +4.3% a year. That is the line growing faster than the levy cap on its own, in a budget where it is 14.1% of the appropriation.
The district's Health Insurance line, by stage
| Year | Budgeted (settled) | Actual, as later reported |
|---|---|---|
| FY14 | — | $1,739,772 |
| FY15 | — | $1,766,882 |
| FY16 | — | $2,027,585 |
| FY17 | — | $2,376,697 |
| FY18 | $2,633,912 | $2,672,420 |
| FY19 | $2,850,678 | $2,854,285 |
| FY20 | $2,826,122 | $2,793,142 |
| FY21 | $2,706,450 | $2,706,450 |
| FY22 | $2,507,129 | $2,593,020 |
| FY23 | $2,843,344 | $3,041,341 |
| FY24 | — | $3,212,078 |
| FY25 | $3,140,838 | $3,248,744 |
| FY26 | $3,701,195 | — |
The FY27 workbook prices health insurance 4 different ways, one for each budget scenario. Every one of them is above FY26’s settled $3,701,195, which is the useful thing about the spread: the cheapest scenario the district drew is still an increase.
Every bar is FY27 proposed, measured against FY26 settled. Four proposals for one year, all from the same workbook.
What this does not show
Rule 11 applies to this line as much as any other: it is what the town has to raise, after everything else that pays for the thing has been subtracted. Staff paid from grants and revolving funds are insured too, and if a grant that was carrying part of the premium ends, this line rises with no change in headcount and no change in the plan. The budget book cannot tell the two apart.
The town’s classification of appropriations is scanned, and every row of it in the analysis database is marked check failed — the column numbers there are positions on a page, not named columns. So the figures above were read off the pages directly and each year was reconciled against the identity the table itself prints: the component rows must sum, to the cent, to the Total Insurance the same page shows. A year that does not tie is not used, and there are 3 of those.
Every edition, and whether its insurance block reconciles
| Year | Page | Rows | Components sum to | Page prints | Difference | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FY11 | 65 | 5 | $1,970,826 | $1,970,826 | $0 | reconciles |
| FY12 | 65 | 5 | $2,119,334 | $2,119,334 | $0 | reconciles |
| FY13 | 69 | 5 | $2,053,509 | $2,053,509 | $0 | reconciles |
| FY14 | 28 | 5 | $1,902,595 | $1,908,745 | -$6,150 | not established |
| FY15 | 28 | 5 | $1,804,659 | $1,804,659 | $0 | reconciles |
| FY16 | 30 | 5 | $1,919,999 | $1,919,999 | $0 | reconciles |
| FY17 | 28 | 5 | $2,105,919 | $2,105,919 | $0 | reconciles |
| FY18 | 34 | 5 | $2,319,623 | $2,319,623 | $0 | reconciles |
| FY19 | 36 | 5 | $2,604,860 | $2,604,860 | $0 | reconciles |
| FY20 | 30 | 5 | $2,656,878 | $2,656,878 | $0 | reconciles |
| FY21 | 31 | 5 | $2,633,155 | $2,633,155 | $0 | reconciles |
| FY22 | 32 | 5 | $2,533,782 | $2,533,782 | $0 | reconciles |
| FY23 | 32 | 7 | $2,852,642 | $2,852,642 | $0 | reconciles |
| FY24 | — | — | — | — | — | not established |
| FY25 | — | — | — | — | — | not established |
FY23 annual town report, page 32, under GENERAL FUND APPROPRIATIONS — SUMMARY & CLASSIFICATION OF ACCOUNTS. The block as printed:
FY23 annual report, page 32
| As printed | Whose side it names | Appropriated | Expended |
|---|---|---|---|
| Health Insurance CH 32B | Names neither side | $917,584 | $917,584 |
| Life Insurance | Names neither side | $15,000 | $13,710 |
| Medicare | Names neither side | $331,093 | $331,093 |
| Town Retirees Health | Named for the town | $366,847 | $366,198 |
| Insurance Cost Control | Names neither side | $8,000 | $8,000 |
| Public Employee Committee Expenses | Names neither side | $500 | $0 |
| School Retirees Health | Named for the schools | $1,213,618 | $1,213,618 |
| Total Insurance (as printed) | $2,852,642 |
Only the appropriated column is published from these pages. It is the one the reconciliation establishes; the expended column is printed in two places on some editions and four on others, and a column this project has not established is not one it quotes.
Three limits on this page are registered in the project’s gap register rather than only written here, so that the next person to hit them finds them already named. They appear on what we cannot answer and at /api/money_gaps.json.
A conclusion we cannot draw
School share of the town’s health insurance before FY2026
The town’s insurance department prints one undivided `Health Insurance CH 32B` line in fifteen of the sixteen annual reports · a school share is named only in the FY2023 report and in the FY2026 ledger, so no year between them can be split.
Closes it: The town’s Chapter 32B enrolment schedule, which counts insured employees and retirees by department and would split every year rather than the two that happened to be printed.
A conclusion we cannot draw
School share of Medicare, active health insurance and the insurance reserves
Five of the seven FY2026 insurance accounts — active health insurance, Medicare, life insurance, insurance cost control and Public Employee Committee expenses — carry nothing in their names that says which side of the town they are for, so the school portion of them is not separable in any year.
Closes it: The town’s Chapter 32B enrolment schedule, which counts insured employees and retirees by department.
A document we do not hold
The town’s Chapter 32B enrolment schedule
Not published anywhere in this archive; the town must hold one to administer the plan and set premium shares.
Closes it: Splits every insurance account between the town and the schools, in every year, instead of in the two years the split happens to be printed.
budget_figure, line health insurance, 8 settled and 12 actual years out of the district’s own budget books.scripts/build_insurance_charts.py into /data/health-insurance.json, from sources/data/lunenburg.db. No figure is typed into the page, and scripts/check_generated.py fails if the file stops reproducing.The FY26 ledger is period 12, not the year-end close. Expended figures here are through that period and will move; appropriations will not.