The One Big Report

The count is a sum of twelve age cells, so its margin is the root of the sum of their squares, and the interval it describes runs from 1,670 to 2,288. The enrolment figure beside it is a DESE count of children rather than a sample estimate, which is the difference this whole page turns on: 1,568 means exactly that, and this does not.

This is a CEILING on homes with a child in the Lunenburg public schools rather than that figure: it counts children at Monty Tech, at private and charter schools, and children not yet of school age. The share carries a margin of 4.0% in its own right, so about a third is the honest reading and any exact fraction is not.

What a family actually pays →

Two medians of two different sets of households in the same five years. It is not one household’s income falling as it ages, and it says nothing about savings, equity or a tax bill — none of which this archive holds by age at all. The under-25 band is published as a sentinel in both releases and is not a figure.

The remaining 847 ± 189 homes are renter-occupied. A renting household pays property tax through its rent rather than on a bill, which is a different thing to experience and the same thing to fund; nothing here measures how much of a levy increase reaches a rent, or how fast.

What an override would cost →

Lunenburg’s median household income ranks 167 of 350 Massachusetts municipalities — and 205 of them have an income interval that overlaps this town’s, so the rank is arithmetic and the band is the finding. On spending for each pupil the town sits in the bottom quarter of Massachusetts districts in 17 of 17 measured years. The two are not the same kind of rank: one is municipalities on a sample estimate with a margin, the other is districts on a figure DESE computes from returns.

What other districts spend, for each pupil →

The windows are 2014–2018 and 2019–2023, which do not overlap — consecutive ACS releases share four years of sample and may not be differenced at all. What survives: Population; Households; Median income, householder 65 and over. Everything else, including the share of residents 65 or over and the share of households with a child under 18, moved by less than the combined margin of its own two estimates, which is not a change.

The argument in town assumes enrolment is falling. It fell — 17.5% from FY2003 to FY2015 — and then it stopped. The peak was FY2003 at 1,887. The low was FY2015 at 1,557. Every year since has been within 92 of that low, and FY2026 is 1,568. A budget built on a falling headcount is built on a decade-old trend.

What a smaller school does and does not save →

Residents keep asking which grades children leave in. It is one grade, it is the same grade every year, and the step it sits at is the move from the middle school to the high school. Averaged over the whole file the grade 8 rate is 3.2 times the next highest grade, and it is the highest grade in every single year measured — through a school closing, a new building opening and a pandemic. Applied to the town’s own eighth grades that is about 27 children a year and roughly 452 in total. Those counts are IMPLIED — DESE publishes the rate and the enrolment, and this page multiplies them.

Where the town’s children are → · What Monty Tech costs the town →

If 78 high school students transferred out under school choice — the scenario as it was put to this site — $401,700 leaves the town in the first year, and the town would have to stop spending 31.0% of what it appropriates per pupil just to break even. $390,000 of that is sending tuition and $11,700 is Chapter 70 aid at the margin the formula is currently paying. Both go in year one. The students come out of four grades, 21.3 of them from the largest, which has 118 residents in it — so the $1,296,209 of appropriation they carry with them, at $16,618 a pupil, only stops being spent where somebody decides to stop spending it. That decision is the whole of the difference between a town that loses money and a town that does not.

the children who actually leave, counted → · what comparable districts spend →

FY2008 to FY2026, grades 9–12 went from 619 to 433 children. Pre-K to grade 5 went from 791 to 745 (down 5.8%); grades 6–8 from 413 to 382 (down 7.5%). The step between grade 8 and grade 9 is where the town loses children every year, and this is what that looks like accumulated.

Which grades students leave in → · Where they go →

The count moved between 227 and 299 over the years in between, and ends where it began. The share is a ratio, and its denominator fell; that is the whole of the movement. Special education staffing and cost are measured on other pages against this count.

The IEP count, in detail → · Special education →

Small numbers, and the growth is real: the count has risen in most years since FY2008. An English learner carries a higher weight in the Chapter 70 foundation budget, so this count moves aid as well as staffing.

How the formula weights students →

Three series, never one. Through FY2014 DESE counted “low income” by free or reduced lunch (243 children in FY2014). FY2015–FY2021 it counted “economically disadvantaged” by matching state records, a narrower net (187 to 329). From FY2022 “low income” returns under a broader definition (395 in FY2026). Within each series the count rises. The page draws them as three lines.

Who lives here, from the Census →

The table below gives each district’s count at both ends. The neighbour that fell most lost 37.0%; the one that fell least lost 9.6%. Ayer Shirley regionalised in FY2012 and has no FY2008 row, so it is not in this comparison.

The same districts, on spending →

The rate has risen for the last stretch of the series, which is what a reader will notice first. Set against seventeen years it is inside a range the town has been in the whole time. The series runs from 13.2% in SY2016 to 28.7% in SY2013 and the five eras — built from DESE’s own grade spans, so a school closing and a new building are boundaries rather than noise — average within 4.9 points of each other. The current run of rises is 3 years long and the longest earlier one was 3, so a run of this length is not new either. A single Lunenburg grade is around a hundred and twenty children, so one family is close to a point.

The question a resident arrives with is whether children leaving is why the schools are emptying. On these two files it is not: the leaving is an order of magnitude larger than the change, and almost all of it is replaced. About 90 children a year leave, every year, and district enrolment went from 1,739 in FY2009 to 1,568 in FY2026. A town losing 10 children a year net and a town losing 90 and gaining most of them back are the same line on an enrolment chart and are not the same town. It is the same shape this project found on the other side of the ledger, where inbound school choice collapsed while outbound stayed flat and the net barely moved.

The other direction, priced →

A group that leaves more everywhere is a different fact from one that leaves more at a single step. This is the second: across the other eleven grades the two series are close together. Published in all 17 years, and it swings from 19.0% to 54.5% between them — because the group inside one Lunenburg grade is on the order of twenty children, so one family is several points. That is the reason the year-by-year sits under this card rather than a headline off any single year. The same shape appears for High Needs and for Low Income, which OVERLAP this group and each other and are never added.

The route out of district → · How many children are on an IEP →

This is the question every reader of the card above will ask next, and it is the one the record refuses. Two DESE files each hold half of the answer and neither holds the join. 177 Lunenburg children were educated somewhere other than a Lunenburg school in FY2026. Monty Tech holds 97 of them across four grade years, about 24.2 a year, which is the same order of magnitude as the 27 eighth graders a year this page implies are leaving — and being the same size is not being the same children. Lunenburg is a MEMBER town of Monty Tech, so a child going there is not choosing out of the town’s system in the way the phrase usually means. The district files the submission that produces this rate every 1 October, so the grade breakdown exists inside the district before the state publishes anything.

What Monty Tech costs the town → · The gap this leaves →

Lunenburg receives $9,349,335 in Chapter 70 aid, about $5,847 for every pupil the formula counts. That is not what a departing pupil takes with them. Because the town sits on the minimum-aid floor, the aid total moves by about $150 per pupil — so a scenario can price a leaver anywhere between $150 and the $14,440 the state’s own costing says a pupil is worth, a factor of 96.3, and the answer changes the arithmetic completely. DESE’s own aid-component columns make each year’s aid the previous year’s plus named increments, an identity that holds to the dollar in all 7 of the last seven years. In FY2026 the whole of Lunenburg’s $240,450 increase is the minimum aid increment and the foundation aid increment is $0; $240,450 spread over 1,603 foundation pupils is $150 each. Across the 33 years DESE publishes, foundation enrolment fell in 17 of them and aid fell in 3.

why the aid lands where it does → · the whole state aid line, not Chapter 70 alone →

Children already leave. DESE counts 58 Lunenburg residents choicing out in SY2026 against 11 arriving, so the question the scenario puts is not whether school choice happens here but how fast it moves. The outward count has run between 56 and 106 in every year since SY2014, and a further 22 residents attend charter schools. The scenario adds 78 in a single year, which would take the outward flow to 136 — 2.34 times what DESE currently counts. Nothing in the published record has moved that far that fast, and that is the honest way to read the scenario: as a rate, against a flow somebody already measures.

where they go, measured → · the largest destination outside Lunenburg — families choose it, and the bill follows a different rule →

Lunenburg has not had a year of net gain in the thirteen school years DESE publishes — 177 children left in SY2026 against 15 arriving. The net barely moves, and that is what hides it: leaving is flat and arriving has fallen 70.6%. Leaving has run between 176 and 237 and ends at 177, nine fewer than the 186 it began at. Arriving has gone from 51 to 15. The net has been a loss of between 135 and 192 children in every single year, which is why the page draws all three lines: the net on its own is nearly flat across the whole of the movement.

the outward half, decomposed → · what a family pays to stay →

258 Lunenburg children had a special education plan in FY2026, against 227 in FY2022 — and because the number of children in the schools fell over those years, the SHARE with a plan rose further than the number did. 31 more children, on an enrollment that went from 1,608 to 1,581. The share therefore moved from 14.1% to 16.3% — 2.2 points. Both halves of that matter to anyone reading a rising percentage as a rising caseload: the caseload did rise, and had enrollment held where it was the share would read 16.0% rather than 16.3%. These are DESE’s own published counts, not a percentage multiplied back out.

what it costs →

The town’s own count of children placed out of district for special education ran from 30 in FY2015 down to 7 in FY2023, and stood at 10 in FY2025. Lunenburg has printed this figure in the Special Services report of every annual town report since FY2011, sourced to SIMS Report 7 and measured on 1 March, split into collaborative, day and residential placements. It is the closest thing the town publishes to the quantity everybody argues about, and over 15 years it has moved in both directions rather than only upward. In FY2025 it was 6 collaborative, 3 day and 1 residential.

what it costs →

The number of children whose placements cost enough to reach the state threshold has fallen by two-thirds; the dollars fell by a third. Eligible expenses were $1,946,230 for 29 children in FY2013 and $1,257,225 for 9 in FY2026. The average eligible cost per child claimed roughly doubled over those years. A district with nine such placements is exposed to each one: one child arriving or leaving moves this line by more than a tenth.

What out-of-district placements cost → · Who ends up out of district →

In FY2010 the claim was $498,853 and the payment $211,224. The shortfall in a pro-rated year lands on the town’s budget with no warning the district can act on, because the rate is not known until the state’s books close. That is the sense in which this line is unforecastable from Lunenburg.

The rest of what the state sends →

Of $1,257,225 in eligible expenses the state paid $579,142 — 46.1% of the total, because the threshold comes off first and the share applies to what is left. The threshold is four times the state’s average foundation budget per pupil and rises with it, so the district’s own share rises even when nothing about a placement changes.

Before FY2022 the transport column is empty for every district; the reimbursement did not exist. It is a separate line from tuition and is included in the payment totals above.

The table below gives each district’s children claimed, cost per child and share paid. Statewide, the same file counts 10,759 children and $1,443,824,902 in eligible expenses.

The same districts, on spending →

Where a child is taught to begin with tracks strongly with whether they end up at a school outside Lunenburg: 18.2% of the children who started in a separate special education classroom did, against 1.2% of those who started in an ordinary one. Added up over 9 groups the state follows, that is 36 children of 198 against 15 of 1,232. The counts are the figure and not the rate: a rate off a base of 28 moves by 3.6 points when one child does. This is the closest the published record comes to the question residents ask about early intervention, and it is worth having in front of anyone discussing in-district capacity — but see what it does not show, which is most of it.

The state publishes both counts and they are not the same count: 123 people teaching in Lunenburg in FY2023, holding 112.8 full-time equivalent posts between them — 10.2 FTE fewer than there are bodies. The average teacher on that return holds 0.92 of a post, down from 0.95 in FY2021. Paraprofessionals are the other way about: 59 people and 59.0 FTE in FY2023, so almost every one of them is counted whole. The gap matters because it decides which instrument answers which question — the town’s own printed rosters are a headcount and cannot be set beside an FTE series, and this is the size of the error that would be. On headcount for each hundred pupils Lunenburg is 5 of the 6 districts in this file for teachers and 2 of 6 for paraprofessionals, which is a smaller group than the comparison sheet the rest of this page uses and is not the same ranking.

what other districts spend → · what we cannot answer →

Paraprofessionals are the biggest change in who Lunenburg’s schools employ: the state’s count went from 0.94 per hundred pupils in FY2013, the lowest of the 13 districts on the state’s own sheet, to 4.27 in FY2025, the highest. 14.8 full-time equivalents in FY2013 and 67.0 in FY2025 — a rise of 352.7% over years in which in-district enrolment fell 0.8%. Nothing else in this archive could have told a resident that: the town prints staff rosters every year and they carry names without hours, so the state’s file is the only place the size of the shift is visible.

what special education costs → · what other districts spend →

Two of the state’s files count Lunenburg’s paraprofessionals and they move in opposite directions. All programmes: 57.0 full-time equivalents to 67.0. Special education: 44.0 to 20.0. The difference between them goes from 13.0 to 47.0 — a rise of 34.0. That is a 54.5% fall in the special education count against a 17.5% rise in the all-programmes one, over years in which the number of children with a special education plan went from 244 to 238. It is not one noisy year: the special education line falls at every one of the 5 steps and the difference rises at every one. WHAT IT IS NOT is a measurement of anybody moving jobs — these are two DESE files with two definitions, and subtracting one from the other assumes the second sits inside the first, which nothing published says. A district reassigning paraprofessionals, a district recoding them, and DESE changing what its special education table counts all produce this shape.

how many children are on a plan → · what special education costs →

Inside special education the money went to paraprofessionals: those 5 budget lines rose 108.4% over FY2017 to FY2025, while the 5 special education teacher lines rose 20.1%. $597,464 to $1,244,894 against $1,537,583 to $1,846,499, both panels read at the restated stage over the 9 years both of them cover. These are NET general fund lines — what the town has to raise after grants, circuit breaker reimbursement and revolving funds have paid their share — so the same rise appears whether the district added paraprofessionals or a grant that had been paying for them ended and the cost landed on the town. Which of the two it is matters: this is the line this project’s own in-district special education escalator is built on.

what special education costs → · what happens when a grant stops →

Chapter 70 is not recalculated from your students each year. It is last year’s aid plus an increase, and in FY2026 the only increase available was the Legislature’s flat floor — $150.00 a pupil. So one pupil more or fewer moves the aid by that, and by nothing else. DESE’s own rule is a floor test rather than a recalculation: “If foundation aid is greater than prior year Chapter 70 aid, the district receives a foundation aid increase.” Only greater. Lunenburg already receives more than the formula says it needs, so that term paid $0 in FY2026 and the whole increase was the flat rate. A pupil changes the foundation budget, which is an input to a term producing nothing — and it changes the town’s required contribution not at all, because that is worked out from property values and income. Measured one pupil at a time, holding everything else at its FY2026 value.

why Lunenburg is on the floor in the first place → · what a departing pupil costs, tuition included →

When the grant money ran out in FY2025 the town replaced under half of it: of $2,670,158 of grant funding that fell, across 16 areas of school spending, $1,127,647 fell where the town’s own money rose to meet it and $1,542,511 fell where nothing did. In the 8 functions where the two moved opposite ways the general fund rose $1,136,013. In the other 8, grants fell and the general fund fell a further $606,553 on top of them. So the year is a handover and a reduction happening at once, and “the town picked up the bill for the grants” describes 42.2% of the money. A function where the general fund rose is also not a function that was made whole: the rise is what the town raised, not what the work cost.

the money that never reaches the vote → · the lines the book took to zero →

The largest rise in the town’s own school spending in FY2025 on paper was Insurance for Active Employees, up $3,026,556 — more than the whole year’s net fall in grant funding of $2,023,188. It is not a rise. The general fund column for that function reads $3,286,872 in FY2023, $485,010 in FY2024 and $3,511,566 in FY2025. The middle year is the anomaly — a seventh of its neighbours — and the change from FY2023 to FY2025 is $224,694. What the FY2024 figure is — a mis-filed year, or a year the town appropriated the schools’ insurance outside the school department and reported it there — is not established, and is a registered gap. Grant funding against the function did not fall in FY2025; it rose $179,646.

what health insurance costs the town → · the insurance appropriated outside the school budget →

Three numbers get used interchangeably in this town and two of them are the same figure for different reasons. Chapter 70 pays $5,757.59 for each of the 1,603 pupils the formula counts. This year’s increase is $150.00 a pupil. And one more pupil moves the aid by $150.00. The last two coincide in FY2026, and only because minimum aid is the sole component operating — the formula’s own aid term paid nothing, so the flat per-pupil increase is the only part of the build-up a pupil can move. They are not the same quantity and in a year when the formula pays they will not be the same number. The first is a different kind of figure again: it is the aid divided by the pupils, and quoting it beside the other two is how a town comes to believe that a pupil is worth $5,757.59 of state money.

what a pupil costs, against every district →

DESE’s glossary names 2 things that reduce Chapter 70 aid, and neither of them is enrolment for a district that runs its own schools. The first decreases aid by a fixed percentage, legislated and applied to everybody — the workbook’s reduction column is populated for Lunenburg in FY2009 (-$485,942), FY2010 (-$92,416) and FY2011 (-$279,101), the recession years, and in no year since. The second reduces aid to the level of the foundation budget for NON-OPERATING districts, which run no schools of their own and tuition their pupils elsewhere. Lunenburg runs schools. There is no provision that cuts an operating district’s aid because it has fewer children: what falling enrolment reaches is the increase, not the base.

the aid components, term by term, for twenty years →

Everything on this page about one more or one fewer pupil was measured AT THE MARGIN. It is not a rate that can be multiplied out: below about 968 foundation pupils the town’s foundation budget falls under its required contribution and step 3 of the formula turns negative. The required contribution is a wealth calculation and does not move with pupils; the foundation budget does. In FY2026 the required contribution is 60.4% of the foundation budget, so the two would meet at roughly 60.4% of today’s 1,603 pupils. Nothing in this archive models what the formula does from there, and it has not happened in any of the 20 years DESE publishes here — the highest the required share has been is 72.3%, in FY2007. What this page establishes is the behaviour of the formula near where Lunenburg actually sits.

the limits, as the registry records them →

Money from outside the town’s budget — grants and the like — used to pay nearly one dollar in five of what Lunenburg schools spend, and now pays about one in ten. The town’s own share went from 81.5% in FY2009 to 89.9% in FY2025. That is 8.4 points, and at FY2025 spending it is worth $2,520,227 a year: had the split stayed where it was in FY2009 the general fund would have carried $24,466,117 rather than $26,986,344. That last figure is arithmetic of ours and a counterfactual, not a forecast — but it is the size of the shift a household is paying for, and it is why the town’s bill can rise in a year when the schools spend less. In FY2025 the general fund rose $1,999,627 while spending across both funds fell $23,561.

the aid the town does not set → · the funds outside the appropriation →

145 of the 177 Lunenburg children educated outside Lunenburg Public Schools go to districts that spend more for each pupil than Lunenburg does — 12.0% more at Leominster, and 43.3% more at Montachusett Regional Vocational Technical. In FY2025 the widest is $25,827 a pupil against Lunenburg’s $18,027 — $7,800 more, which is 43.3% — and 54.8% of the leavers go there. The size of it depends enormously on which district: $720 more at Francis W. Parker Charter Essential (District), $1,900 at Sizer School: A North Central Charter Essential (District), $2,155 at Leominster, $4,687 at Fitchburg, $7,800 at Montachusett Regional Vocational Technical. Leominster is the nearest like-for-like comparison, an ordinary K-12 municipal district, at $20,182 a pupil, $2,155 more. The exception is the two Commonwealth virtual districts, 16 children between them, which spend less. The children are counted in FY2026 and the spending measured in FY2025: two collections, and nothing here is differenced across them.

the district that takes most of them, and how the town is billed for it → · where students go, year by year →

Lunenburg spends $18,027 a pupil, $5,493 below the statewide median, and it has been in the bottom quarter of Massachusetts districts in 17 of the 17 years the state publishes here. In FY2025 it ranks 310 of 318 districts, with 8 spending less, against a median of $23,520 and a middle half running $21,179 to $26,961. This is not the school budget and not what a household pays: DESE counts every fund — grants, revolving funds, school choice, gifts — and counts town-paid insurance and retirement attributed to the schools, so it is a larger figure than the appropriation Town Meeting votes. The distance between the two is two definitions, not hidden money.

what the state requires the town to spend → · the insurance DESE counts here and the school budget does not →

Most of the per-pupil gap between Lunenburg and its neighbours is the denominator. Spending grew within a narrow band across all six districts; enrollment did not. From FY2012 to FY2025 every one of the six raised spending by between 43.8% and 59.0%, and Lunenburg’s 48.7% sits inside that band. Pupil counts are what separate them: -5.6% here against -23.5% at North Middlesex. Give FY2025’s money to each district’s FY2012 pupil count and Lunenburg is $17,025 a pupil, 5 of 6 rather than last, and North Middlesex is last. A neighbour’s higher per-pupil figure is in large part fewer children rather than more money.

what happens when students leave →

Lunenburg pays near the top of this group for a teacher and employs the fewest of them for each pupil: $97,233 on average, and 6.7 teachers for every hundred in-district pupils. Harvard’s average is the highest at $99,136 and Ashburnham-Westminster’s the lowest at $84,724; Lunenburg ranks 2 of 6 on pay and 6 of 6 on teachers for each pupil, where the next lowest is 7.4 and the highest is 8.5. Teaching salaries reach $6,513 a pupil here against $8,475 at Harvard — close to the same money for each teacher, spread across more children.

the people the budget buys →

Two Lunenburg high schoolers, one sport each, riding the bus and joining a club, cost their family $1,110 in FY2027: $700 in athletic fees, $270 for the bus and $140 in student activity fees. The athletic fee is charged per child per season — $400 for the first child and $300 for the second, the 25% sibling discount the School Committee voted, compounding. The bus is one charge for the whole family however many children ride. The activity fee is $70 a child and was last set in public for an earlier year. And $1,110 is a FLOOR: 9 further charges a Lunenburg family can meet — preschool, extended day, field trips, device repair among them — are sold by the district with no published amount anywhere in this archive, so no family and no committee can total a school year exactly.

both sides of the athletics money → · every rate, with the document that set it →

Athletics took $602,285 out of the town’s two pots in FY2024 — $250,642 more than the district’s own workbook says the whole programme cost. $317,004 of it is traced to individual payments in the fee-funded fund’s cashbook — the only transaction-level record of athletics in this archive — and $285,281 is the appropriation in the district’s budget book. Part of the difference is scope: $160,980 of the appropriation sits on lines like the athletic director and the trainer that the workbook does not carry at all. That leaves $89,662 neither document accounts for. Every per-sport figure anybody quotes comes from that one workbook, so the spread is published rather than reconciled — averaging figures different people assembled to answer different questions would be adding a claim the documents do not make.

what produced each document’s figures → · what the record cannot answer →

The town’s accounting system codes 12 accounts to function 3510, Athletics, in FY2026 — $518,334 appropriated, and the district’s budget book states the same total to the cent. Inside it are the athletic director at $74,406, the trainer at $66,200, the secretary, the police details and the insurance — and the district’s own sport-by-sport workbook carries none of the first four. In FY2024, the one year the two can be set side by side, that was $160,980 of appropriation the per-sport figures never saw, which is a large part of why the published totals disagree. Outside it are the buildings: custodians, heating, utilities, grounds and building maintenance are their own functions in the same printout, $2,035,523 across the whole school department, and not one of those accounts carries the athletics programme code. The pitch is still mown and the gym is still lit, so what athletics costs is that $518,334 plus a share of the $2,035,523 that nobody publishes.

the grounds share nobody publishes → · how a budget line reaches the ledger →

Lunenburg’s athletic transportation line rose from $40,000 to $87,822 in a year when the bus bill itself fell from $117,555 to $91,066: the cost went down and the town’s share went up. In FY2024 the fee-funded fund paid $77,555 of that bill, 66.0% of it; in FY2025 it paid $3,244, 3.6%. Nothing about the buses had to change for the town’s line to more than double — what changed is which pot paid. The two sides sum to the district’s own transportation total exactly in both years, which is what lets them be read as two parts of one bill, and the FY2026 line is $127,550. It is the clearest measurement on this site of why a budget line rising is not a cost rising.

the funds outside the budget → · where the money is →

The same 3 children playing one sport each cost one Lunenburg family $812.50 a year and another $150 — a factor of 5.42 between two households at the same school. FY2026 is the most recent year in which both rates are published. A family that qualifies pays a flat $50 a child a season with no sibling ladder at all, and a family whose fee is waived pays $0. So the argument that “parents should pay more” is really an argument about which parents: the same children in the same uniforms are a completely different bill depending on the household they belong to, and the argument is usually made without any of these figures in it.

what the fees bring in against what the town appropriates → · the rates nobody publishes →

A second child costs a Lunenburg family $460 more and a third $295 more — not another $650 each — because the bus is one charge for the whole family and every athlete after the first pays 25% less than the one before. One high school child playing a sport, riding the bus and joining a club is $650 in FY2027. Two are $1,110 and three are $1,405. The bus is $180 for one child and $270 for any number, so the second child adds $90 there and the third adds nothing; athletics falls $400, $300, $225 down the ladder; only the activity fee, at $70 a child, is flat. Which charges are per family and which are per child is what decides what a larger household pays, and it is the part of the schedule nobody argues about.

what a fourth child pays, and the rest of the register → · every rate, with the document that set it →

The argument in this town has been about whether the cuts narrowed what children can take, and at the high school the count of classes that ran went the other way. 435 students in SY2017 and 438 in SY2025 — within a handful of each other — across the 9 years the high school held only grades 9-12 in one building configuration. A section is what RAN, so this is not a catalogue and not a plan. What it cannot say is whether the same COURSES ran: DESE files sections by subject area and never by course.

The staffing behind it → · What the district said it was cutting →

A smaller high school sends a larger share of its upperclassmen into AP exams than it did. 89 students took 154 exams in SY2025, against 227 in the 11th and 12th grades. In SY2007 it was 58 students against 322. The ratio is an approximation: a tenth grader can sit an exam, and the two DESE files count on different days.

What courses actually ran → · Who is in the schools →

Three instruments point the same way for one subject and only one, which is what makes it worth separating from everything else here. 305 students took a language in SY2017 and 253 in SY2025, in 21 sections rather than 28. District teacher FTE for the subject moved with them. A language schedule is set by people in this town, in a document the School Committee sees, so this is a decision somebody can look at rather than a condition.

Teacher FTE by subject →

This is the subject residents actually came to a meeting about: a parent told the School Committee that her seventh grader had practised French for three years and had just heard she might not be able to take it. 236 children took a language at the middle school in SY2023 and 115 in SY2025. READ THE SERIES BEFORE CONCLUDING, because it has been here before: the school fell to the same 5 sections in SY2020 and was back above it the next year, so one low year is not a subject ending. What is different now is that it has stayed for 2 years, and that grade 8 world language was still being discussed alongside the override two years after a parent raised it.

Three instruments measure this page’s question — what was staffed, how much room ran, and how many children got in — and this is the only subject at the high school where all three moved down together. Averaged over SY2017 to SY2020 the school staffed 3.17 posts of history and 341 student places ran; over SY2023 to SY2025 it is 2.4 posts and 271 places, and the share of the school taking a history course went from 75.8% to 60.4%. The averages are over eras rather than single years on purpose: the same subject read end to end across the whole file appears to fall by a third more than this, and most of that is a reorganisation rather than a change in provision.

Teacher FTE by subject →

The years the high school DID run computer science — 5 to 8 sections a year — are the years grade 8 was housed in the building, and the students in those sections numbered close to the grade-8 cohort each year. This is the clearest thing on the page a body in this town could decide to change, and establishing it costs nothing: the subject already runs at the middle school every year, so the question is a schedule rather than a programme. What the count cannot say is whether high school students take computing under another heading — DESE’s subject areas are broad, and this district files a fifth of its high school sections under Miscellaneous.

It is also the single largest mover in the high school’s section count, up from 35 sections in SY2017. A student described one of these to the School Committee in public comment — a new elective, four students on the register, eight on the first day. That is what a section this size looks like from the inside, and it is the only account of one anybody has given in public. Whether the rest are electives, academic support, directed study or something else is not published anywhere.

Two independent state files, one counting people and one counting classes, over the years both cover — SY2017 to SY2025, district-wide. THE 2 THAT DIFFER ARE WHY BOTH FILES ARE PUBLISHED HERE, and the larger of them is Mathematics — the largest line in the comparison. Its teacher FTE fell by 1.5 while its sections ROSE by 3 and its average class went from 19.7 students to 18.4. Both readings are true and they answer different questions — fewer teachers, more classes, smaller ones — and a page carrying only the FTE would have reported a subject contracting. That is the whole case for counting sections: the staffing series was pointing the right way in eight subjects and could not, on its own, tell four sections of a subject from two.

The FTE series in full →

A resident asked whether children are being offered thinner work and taking it — a filler bucket swelling while the subjects around it shrink. This is the bucket, and the count of children in it did not move. 250 student places ran in Miscellaneous at Lunenburg High in SY2025 among 129 different children, so a child in one is in about 1.9 of them; the groups averaged 5.8 students at the start of the window. Groups of under five are the shape of small-group support, not of a room somebody is parked in — and that is a reading, not a finding, because DESE files no course name against any of them. One year stands off its neighbours by more than thirty points, SY2022, and the page marks it rather than averaging it in.

The gap this leaves →

This page already published the district figure for mathematics and called it the one subject where the two instruments disagree. Split by building, it is not one subject disagreeing with itself — it is two schools going opposite ways. Between SY2017 and SY2025 the middle school ran 4 fewer mathematics sections and its classes went from 17.9 students to 22.0. The high school ran 7 more and its classes fell to 14.5. Both are inside one district figure, and the four schools’ FTE adds up to it exactly. Which building a post sits in is a thing this town decides, so this is a dial rather than a condition — and nothing here says what it should be set to.

The FTE series in full →

Of 154 tests in SY2025, 28 scored a five and 2 scored a one; the full distribution is charted below. It is a share of TESTS, not of students: a student who sat three exams counts three times.

76% of sittings in SY2025 were in English or history. The table below gives every subject family at both ends. This is the exam-room view of what /what-courses-actually-ran measures in the schedule: a language programme narrowing, and a STEM one that sits few exams.

Foreign language, narrowing on every instrument →