The money
In FY26 the town appropriated $26,287,474 to its schools and budgeted $9,229,410 of Chapter 70 aid to help pay for it. That figure is set in the Governor’s budget and the Legislature’s, on a formula written at the State House. So the school budget going up and the tax bill going up are two different events, and the spending side of the budget cannot tell them apart.
CH 70 AIDFive claims, each derived from the town’s, the state’s or the district’s own documents, and each checkable from the tables further down.
Roughly a third of the school budget is not Lunenburg’s decision, and the budget book never says so.
$9,229,410 of Chapter 70 against a $26,287,474 appropriation is 35.1%. Both figures are budget figures from the same FY26 ledger, which is what makes the ratio meaningful. A School Committee member put the same figure at 35.0% in public on 2026-06-24; recomputed here it is 35.1%.
Over five years the aid Lunenburg actually received differed from the aid its tax rate was set on by $245,751 in an average year.
The Division of Local Services publishes the difference on every town’s free cash proof. Lunenburg’s ran from −$390,814 in FY24 to +$327,281 in FY23 — a $718,095 span, the widest of the 9 towns this project holds proofs for. Aid came in above the estimate in 4 of 5 years and below it in 1.
The direction is far steadier than the size. In 4 of 5 years the surprise was in the town’s favour.
That is the answer to the question a board actually asks before it will look forward: is this stable enough to plan on? On the evidence here the aid estimate is usually beaten and occasionally missed badly, and the one bad year was large enough to matter — −$390,814, which is 17.2% of the free cash certified that year.
The state decides both halves of the minimum: what it pays, and what Lunenburg must.
DESE’s FY27 Chapter 70 summary sets Lunenburg’s required net school spending at $23,484,946 — $9,349,335 of Chapter 70 aid (39.8%) plus a required local contribution of $14,135,611 (60.2%). Neither number is decided in Lunenburg. The town’s own vote decides only what it adds on top.
Where it can be measured, Chapter 70 grew +4.47% a year — more than double what the projection assumes.
$5,516,107 received in FY14 against $7,823,618 in FY22: +41.8% over 8 years, actual against actual. This project’s own projection grows total state aid at +2.75% a year. Those are two different quantities over two different spans, so this is a flag and not a correction — but the +2.75% has no stated source, and this is the first thing the archive has that bears on it.
What this does not show
None of the five says what state aid bought. The town’s state aid accounts share no organisation code with any expense account — 0 of 222 — so no aid dollar can be followed to a teacher, a bus or a building. Aid arrives as general revenue and is appropriated like any other dollar.
Nor does a shortfall establish that the state cut anything. The gap between estimated and actual moves for two reasons at once: the state can revise what it sends, and the town can estimate differently. The same figure fits both, and the one line this archive holds cannot separate them — it reports every cherry sheet receipt together, so a miss cannot even be attributed to Chapter 70 rather than to one of the other 9 accounts.
And 35.1% is a ratio of two budget figures. It is not what share of what the schools cost the state pays: the appropriation is already net of grants, fees and revolving funds, and the state also pays into the schools through circuit breaker reimbursement and grants that appear in neither figure.
The FY26 school appropriation — departments 300 and 301 of the town’s own expense ledger — split by where the money to pay for it comes from. Both figures are budget figures, from the same ledger, at period 9.
Chapter 70 aid. Set in the Governor’s budget and the Legislature’s, on a formula written at the State House.
Everything else — overwhelmingly the property tax levy, which Town Meeting and the ballot decide.
The two sides, FY26 period 9
| Amount | Share | Who decides it | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chapter 70 aid | $9,229,410 | 35.1% | The Legislature |
| Raised by the town | $17,058,064 | 64.9% | Town Meeting and the ballot |
| School appropriation | $26,287,474 | 100% | — |
The appropriation is departments 300 school department and 301 school non-recurring expenses. It excludes Monty Tech, which is a separate assessment, and it excludes school costs the town appropriates elsewhere — retiree health insurance is its own page.
A possible explanation — nothing here tests it
It is tempting to read 35.1% as “the state pays a third of the schools”. It may be roughly right and this page does not establish it. Chapter 70 is not earmarked: it arrives as general fund revenue, is appropriated with everything else, and the ledger provides no route from an aid account to any spending account.
What would settle it: The Town’s year-end recap beside the Cherry Sheet for the same year, which states estimated and actual receipts on one page.
10 of the 29 accounts in the state revenue range carry a figure this year, totalling $11,103,368 budgeted and $8,085,954 received through period 9. Chapter 70 is most of it; the accounts whose printed name says schools come to $9,573,970.
object 450600 · printed CH 70 AID
object 451400 · printed UGGA
object 452900 · printed SCHCOSTREI
object 452600 · printed MEALS TAX
object 450200 · printed VET ABATE
object 450500 · printed ABATE ELDE
object 452000 · printed S6CH115VET
object 450100 · printed STATE LAND
object 451100 · printed CHARTER
General fund revenue objects 45xx, FY26 period 9
| Object | Printed | What it is | Budgeted | Received | % in |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 450100 | STATE LAND | State-owned land — payment in lieu of taxes on state property | $48,606 | $32,400 | 66.7% |
| 450200 | VET ABATE | Veterans’ abatement reimbursement | $56,897 | $0 | 0% |
| 450500 | ABATE ELDE | Abatement reimbursement — the elderly | $56,897 | $141,305 | 248.4% |
| 450600 | CH 70 AID | Chapter 70 school aid | $9,229,410 | $6,870,136 | 74.4% |
| 451100 | CHARTER | Charter school reimbursement | $26,136 | $19,602 | 75% |
| 451400 | UGGA | Unrestricted General Government Aid | $1,316,438 | $987,327 | 75% |
| 451800 | RM OCC EXC | Room occupancy excise — a local tax the state collects | $0 | $530 | — |
| 452000 | S6CH115VET | Veterans’ benefits — Chapter 115 §6 reimbursement | $50,560 | $35,184 | 69.6% |
| 452600 | MEALS TAX | Meals tax — a local tax the state collects | $100,000 | $111,841 | 111.8% |
| 452900 | SCHCOSTREI | School cost reimbursement | $318,424 | $0 | 0% |
Two of these accounts are not aid and are excluded from every state aid total on this page: MEALS TAX is a local tax the town votes and the state merely collects and remits — $100,000 budgeted. Counting them as aid would inflate every figure above. Period 9 is not the year-end close: received figures will move, budgeted figures will not.
What the town banked, from the Receipts page of the annual town report — an actual, never mixed with the budget figures above. Only 5 of the 12 years in the span have a figure this project has established, and the rest are drawn as gaps rather than left out.
Chapter 70 received, and the years that are not established
| Year | Received | State of the extract | Report page |
|---|---|---|---|
| FY11 | — | the receipts page states no total this extract can be reconciled to | 58 |
| FY12 | — | the receipts page states no total this extract can be reconciled to | 58 |
| FY13 | — | the receipts page states no total this extract can be reconciled to | 63 |
| FY14 | $5,516,107 | reconciled to the report’s own totals | 22 |
| FY15 | $5,605,872 | reconciled to the report’s own totals | 22 |
| FY16 | — | the receipts page states no total this extract can be reconciled to | 23 |
| FY17 | $6,351,257 | reconciled to the report’s own totals | 22 |
| FY18 | $7,272,505 | reconciled to the report’s own totals | 28 |
| FY19 | — | the receipts page states no total this extract can be reconciled to | 30 |
| FY20 | — | no Chapter 70 row was extracted from that edition | — |
| FY21 | — | the receipts page states no total this extract can be reconciled to | 25 |
| FY22 | $7,823,618 | reconciled to the report’s own totals | 26 |
Growth is measured inside one stage only: $5,516,107 in FY14 to $7,823,618 in FY22 is +41.8% over 8 years, +4.47% a year, an actual against an actual. No rate on this page runs from one of these to the FY26 budget figure: that difference would be partly growth and partly the step between an estimate and a receipt.
What this does not show
FY19 and FY21 are in the archive with figures of 7.53 and 7.77 — visibly not dollars, because the extractor lost the thousands separators on those editions. A year whose figure is not dollars is exactly the year that must not be plotted, which is why the chart above shows a gap there rather than a bar. The other unestablished years hold plausible figures and are still drawn as gaps, because a figure nothing reconciles is not a figure this project publishes.
This is the only place in the archive where an aid estimate and an aid receipt are subtracted, and it is the state that does the subtracting. Every year the Division of Local Services certifies a town’s free cash it publishes a proof, and one line of it is Excess/Shortfall Cherry Sheet Receipts (CL#8) — the difference between the cherry sheet receipts the town budgeted and the ones that arrived. Above the line the town got more than it planned for; below it, the town covered the difference.
Lunenburg, 5 years — Sheet1!B9 of each year’s proof
| Year | Over or short | Free cash certified | Share of it |
|---|---|---|---|
| FY21 | +$240,260 | $2,666,962 | +9.01% |
| FY22 | +$120,947 | $2,923,290 | +4.14% |
| FY23 | +$327,281 | $1,870,612 | +17.5% |
| FY24 | −$390,814 | $2,270,060 | −17.2% |
| FY25 | +$149,455 | $3,354,370 | +4.46% |
The third column is there because it is the honest denominator: a cherry sheet surplus does not become spendable money, it becomes part of next year’s certified free cash. The one shortfall year had to be absorbed the other way.
The same line from the same document for every town this project holds a free cash proof for. Each bar runs from that town’s worst year to its best, and the tick is zero. Lunenburg is the widest of the 9.
Excess/Shortfall Cherry Sheet Receipts (CL#8), FY21–FY25
| Town | Worst year | Best year | Span | Average miss | Years over |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lunenburg | −$390,814 | +$327,281 | $718,095 | $245,751 | 4 of 5 |
| Westford | −$251,168 | +$412,383 | $663,551 | $156,218 | 2 of 5 |
| Uxbridge | −$167,410 | +$68,729 | $236,139 | $76,730 | 2 of 5 |
| Townsend | −$62,572 | +$84,533 | $147,105 | $45,964 | 2 of 5 |
| Littleton | −$159,815 | −$17,173 | $142,642 | $95,219 | 0 of 5 |
| Groton | −$8,472 | +$104,155 | $112,627 | $44,197 | 4 of 5 |
| Ayer | −$36,221 | +$29,052 | $65,273 | $25,481 | 3 of 5 |
| Shirley | −$45,083 | +$13,729 | $58,812 | $14,370 | 2 of 5 |
| Upton | −$11,727 | +$38,254 | $49,981 | $14,870 | 3 of 5 |
What this does not show
These towns are not the same size, and a bigger town can miss by more dollars without missing by more proportionally. The panel is drawn in dollars because that is the unit the town budgets in and the unit a shortfall is felt in — not because the towns are equivalent. Nothing here normalises for population, levy or aid received, because this archive does not hold the cherry sheet totals that would be the denominator.
And the line covers all cherry sheet receipts together. A year that came in short cannot be attributed to Chapter 70 rather than to Unrestricted General Government Aid or to any of the reimbursement accounts. That limit is registered below.
Chapter 70 is not a grant the town applies for. DESE calculates a foundation budget — what it judges an adequate education costs here — then decides how much of it Lunenburg must pay out of local taxes and pays the balance as aid. Row 168 of the alldistricts sheet, cells E168 to H168.
Chapter 70 aid — the state’s half of the minimum
Required local contribution — Lunenburg’s half, also set by the formula
sources/budget-workbooks/ch70-fy27-summary.xlsx, sheet alldistricts, row 168 — dated 2026-01-28
| As DESE prints it | Cell | Value |
|---|---|---|
| Foundation enrollment | D168 | 1,599 |
| Foundation budget | E168 | $23,089,580 |
| Required contribution | F168 | $14,135,611 |
| Chapter 70 aid | G168 | $9,349,335 |
| Required net school spending | H168 | $23,484,946 |
The last three are an identity the sheet states itself — F168 + G168 = H168, exactly — and the build refuses to write if it stops holding. That identity is what licenses saying the state decides both halves rather than one.
Aid covers 40.5% of Lunenburg’s foundation budget. The median operating district in the same table gets 35.2%, which puts Lunenburg above the middle — rank 138 of 319. That is worth saying plainly, because the assumption in the room is usually the other way.
Lunenburg against the statewide distribution
| Aid as a share of the foundation budget | |
|---|---|
| Lunenburg | 40.5% |
| Median of 319 operating districts | 35.2% |
| Lunenburg’s rank | 138 of 319 |
Aid per foundation pupil is $5,847 against a foundation budget of $14,440 per pupil. Read the next section before treating either as a per-child figure.
What this does not show
Ayer, Groton, Shirley, Townsend, Upton appear in the comparison panel above with $0 of Chapter 70 in this table. That is not a town receiving no aid: they are members of regional school districts, so their Chapter 70 is paid to the region rather than to the town, and the town’s row on DESE’s district table is zero. The two panels count different things and must not be read across.
Chapter 70 is calculated per pupil, and “per pupil” has more than one published answer. DESE runs the formula on a foundation enrollment of 1,599 and separately publishes three other counts for the same district. In the latest year published they span 1,563 to 1,665.9 — a difference of 102.9 children, from one agency.
DESE, FY27 Chapter 70 summary — the count the aid is calculated on
DESE district profile — the latest year published
DESE district profile — the latest year published
DESE district profile — the latest year published
DESE district profile — the latest year published
Four published counts of the same district
| Count | Year | Value | Who publishes it, and why it differs |
|---|---|---|---|
| Foundation enrollment | FY27 | 1,599 | DESE, FY27 Chapter 70 summary — the count the aid is calculated on |
| Student Headcount | FY25 | 1,563 | DESE district profile — the latest year published |
| In-District FTE Pupils | FY25 | 1,568.9 | DESE district profile — the latest year published |
| Out-of-District FTE Pupils | FY25 | 97 | DESE district profile — the latest year published |
| Total FTE Pupils | FY25 | 1,665.9 | DESE district profile — the latest year published |
The aid-per-pupil figure in the previous section divides $9,349,335 by 1,599, the first of these. Divided by any of the others it is a different number, and no published document reconciles the foundation count to the children in the buildings.
17 years, FY09–FY25, as DESE publishes them.
DESE district profile, pupil counts by year
| Year | Student Headcount | In-District FTE Pupils | Total FTE Pupils |
|---|---|---|---|
| FY09 | 1,739 | 1,750 | 1,833.8 |
| FY10 | 1,702 | 1,719.2 | 1,808.9 |
| FY11 | 1,650 | 1,663.5 | 1,755.2 |
| FY12 | 1,637 | 1,639.5 | 1,763.9 |
| FY13 | 1,587 | 1,581 | 1,719.2 |
| FY14 | 1,564 | 1,565.6 | 1,705.1 |
| FY15 | 1,557 | 1,563.3 | 1,724.1 |
| FY16 | 1,567 | 1,567.3 | 1,709.8 |
| FY17 | 1,613 | 1,619.3 | 1,781.1 |
| FY18 | 1,641 | 1,620.5 | 1,763.9 |
| FY19 | 1,649 | 1,654 | 1,784.4 |
| FY20 | 1,641 | 1,651.3 | 1,772.8 |
| FY21 | 1,593 | 1,575.5 | 1,699.7 |
| FY22 | 1,597 | 1,599.8 | 1,724.9 |
| FY23 | 1,562 | 1,566.1 | 1,671.5 |
| FY24 | 1,580 | 1,580.5 | 1,680.4 |
| FY25 | 1,563 | 1,568.9 | 1,665.9 |
What this does not show
A pupil count is not a measure of what the schools do or of how much they cost. Two districts with the same count can have entirely different needs, and the foundation budget formula exists precisely because DESE does not treat them as equivalent — it weights for low income, English learners and students with disabilities. None of that weighting is on this page.
Every quote below was found by searching the meeting archive and is checked, on every build, to still be present in the document it is attributed to. They are here because they are the same subject from the other direction: what the people making these decisions say the constraint is.
School Committee · 2025-10-01
“the school budget is based on an estimate of chapter 70 number, this year there is an additional $202,185, in order for the school to get this money it needs to be on the warrant for the Town meeting in November”
The town budgets against an ESTIMATE of Chapter 70, and when the real number comes in higher the difference does not simply become school spending. It takes a warrant article at Town Meeting.
School Committee · 2026-06-24
“35% of the entire school budget in Luneburg is covered by chapter 70 funds”
A figure stated at a public meeting. It is recomputed from the town’s own revenue and expense ledgers below rather than repeated.
School Committee · 2026-04-01
“I am hoping we will get the override and limp through a few years and that the Chapter 70 formula changes”
The formula is the thing the town is waiting on, and it is decided at the State House.
Finance Committee · 2026-01-27
“school choice enrollment revenue, which has declined from approximately $500,000 to $112,000 on the cherry sheet”
School choice tuition is a cherry sheet line, and a Finance Committee member named its decline as one of two things the boards must address before asking voters for an override. This archive holds no Cherry Sheet, so it can report that this was SAID and cannot check the figure — which is the gap registered below, stated by somebody in the room before we found it.
Finance Committee · 2026-02-19
“Cherry Sheet Assessments: $1,069,349”
The Cherry Sheet has a charges side as well as a receipts side. The town’s FY27 revenue plan subtracts this before anything is available to appropriate.
A figure stated in public, recomputed
The School Committee was told on 2026-06-24 that Chapter 70 covers 35.0% of the school budget. Recomputed from the town’s own ledgers — $9,229,410 against $26,287,474 — it is 35.1%. The statement holds.
Chapter 70 budgeted in the FY2026 revenue ledger against the FY2026 appropriation to departments 300 and 301. Both are BUDGET figures from the same ledger, which is what makes the ratio meaningful (rule 1).
This project’s own FY28 projection grows total state aid at +2.75% a year from a FY27 base of $11,876,038. That rate is recorded in the method document as having no stated source and no derivation. Here is everything the archive holds that bears on it.
The assumption against the record
| Figure | What it is | |
|---|---|---|
| The projection’s rate | +2.75% | Forward, applied to total state aid, not Chapter 70 alone. No stated source. |
| Chapter 70 received, FY14–FY22 | +4.47% | Measured, actual against actual, from the annual town reports |
| The difference | +1.72 points | Not a correction — two different quantities over two different spans |
| Chapter 70 as a share of the FY27 aid base | 78.7% | Which is why the two are not interchangeable |
| The FY27 enacted budget against the Governor’s proposal | +$471,121 · +4.13% | One year’s move between the number a budget was drafted on and the one enacted |
The last row is the one a resident can use directly: in the single year the town documented it, the enacted state budget landed +4.13% above the Governor’s proposal that the town’s own revenue plan had been built on.
What this does not show
The measured rate is Chapter 70 alone, over FY14–FY22, from five established observations in a twelve-year span. The projection’s rate is for total state aid, forward from FY27. Applying one to the other would be exactly the error this project keeps finding in its own work, so no rate is changed here and none is recommended. What is established is that the assumption has no stated basis and that the only measurement the archive holds runs well above it.
Both are carried here rather than reconciled away, because a figure quietly corrected is a figure nobody can check.
Chapter 70’s size in the school budget
This project’s own working notes describe Chapter 70 as "roughly $11.4M of a $26.6M school budget"
Recomputed: Chapter 70 alone is 9,229,410 in the FY2026 revenue ledger — 35% of the 26,287,474 school appropriation
$11,404,917 is the Governor’s FY27 figure for ALL state aid to Lunenburg, not Chapter 70 — it is the line the Town Manager’s 17 April 2026 press release calls "State aid", and it includes Unrestricted General Government Aid and every other cherry sheet receipt. The two figures were folded together. The School Committee’s own "35%" is the Chapter 70 share, and it is the one that recomputes.
What the projection assumes state aid will do
show-your-work.md records the state aid growth rate as BARE — "Nothing. No stated source and no derivation"
Recomputed: The model grows total state aid at 2.8% a year. Chapter 70 RECEIPTS grew 4.47% a year across the 8 checked years FY2014 to FY2022
These are not the same quantity over the same span, so this is not a correction and no rate is changed here. It is the flag rule 6 asks for: an assumption with no stated source, and a measured series that runs 1.7 points above it.
These limits are registered in the project’s gap register rather than only written here, so 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
Grants received in earlier years
spent now, booked then · nine funds, no FY26 revenue
A document we do not hold
`glytdbud-expense` for the special revenue funds
The identical report the town already runs for the general fund and for each of the four enterprise funds, pointed at funds 13xx/22xx/26xx–29xx instead.
Closes it: Turns **every restricted edge** above from presumption into traced fact — athletics, lunch, circuit breaker, extended day, and every grant.
A document we do not hold
DESE End of Year Financial Report
Published by the state.
Closes it: Separates district spending by FUND, which is the one thing the town’s budget documents never show.
A limit on counting people
Which fund pays which post
This is the load-bearing one. The rosters name people and the budget names dollars, and **nothing published joins them to a funding source**. So a paraprofessional line rising cannot be distinguished from a grant that was paying for those posts ending — which is exactly what the special education escalator rests on.
Closes it: DESE's End of Year Financial Report, which separates spending by fund.
A conclusion we cannot draw
What the $87,293.86 is that the FY2023 annual report states twice and differently
Two tables printed in the same FY2023 annual town report state the money held in special revenue and enterprise funds, and they disagree. The combined balance sheet on printed page 24 gives TOTAL FUND EQUITY of $6,131,303.68 for SPECIAL REVENUE and $3,812,502.24 for ENTERPRISE, $9,943,805.92 together. The special revenue schedule in the same report prints a GRAND TOTAL carried forward of $10,031,099.78. The difference is $87,293.86, where FY2011, FY2013, FY2019 and FY2022 agree to the cent. It is not a misreading: the FY2023 page was transcribed and every column foots to its own printed TOTAL ASSETS, TOTAL LIABILITIES and TOTAL FUND EQUITY, the accounting identity holds in all six columns, and the long-term debt mirror agrees. So FY2023 is transcribed and deliberately NOT written into the dataset, which is why the combined balance sheet here stops at FY2022 while the special revenue schedule runs to FY2023. One explanation has been tested and RULED OUT: the fund 'Sale of Cemetery Lots' carried $87,308.09 in FY2023, within $14.23 of the gap, which suggested a fund counted in one statement and classified elsewhere in the other. It is not that — the same fund appears in the schedule in all thirteen years including the four where the two documents agree to the cent, so it is counted consistently and the near-match is a coincidence. What the difference IS remains unestablished; nothing here says which document is right, nor whether it is connected to the $17,861.24 of grant funds the town restated between the FY2022 and FY2023 reports. Those are two different amounts and nothing joins them.
Closes it: the Town's FY2023 trial balance or general ledger fund balances as of 30 June 2023, which would say which of its own two published tables the accounting system agrees with.
A document we do not hold
The Cherry Sheet itself — what the state told Lunenburg to expect, receipt by receipt
This archive holds no Cherry Sheet for any year. The Cherry Sheet is the state’s own statement of estimated aid and assessments to a Massachusetts town, and it is what a tax rate is set on. Without it the only measurement of aid estimate error this project can make is one net line on the Division of Local Services free cash proof — `Excess/Shortfall Cherry Sheet Receipts (CL#8)` — which lumps Chapter 70, Unrestricted General Government Aid, the abatement reimbursements and every other receipt into a single figure. So a year that came in $390,814 short can be reported as short and cannot be reported as short in anything.
Closes it: DLS Cherry Sheet CS 1-ER (estimated receipts) and CS 1-EB (estimated charges) for Lunenburg, FY2021 to FY2027.
A conclusion we cannot draw
Whether a shortfall in state aid falls on the schools or on the rest of the town
Chapter 70 is 35% of the school appropriation and the town has no vote on it, so which side of the budget absorbs a miss is the question a resident actually has. Nothing published answers it. The free cash proof states one net cherry sheet figure for the whole town; the general ledger’s state aid accounts share no organisation code with any expense account, 0 of 222, so no aid dollar can be followed to anything it paid for; and the appropriation is voted before the final aid number is known. A year where aid rose and the appropriation rose with it and a year where aid was flat and the town covered the difference are different facts about the world and identical facts on the page.
Closes it: the Town’s FY-end recap (Form A-1) beside the Cherry Sheet for the same year, which states estimated and actual receipts on one page.
A limit on counting people
How many children Chapter 70 is actually paid for
The aid is calculated on a `Foundation enrollment` of 1,599 in DESE’s FY27 Chapter 70 summary. DESE publishes three other counts for the same district — Student Headcount, In-District FTE Pupils and Total FTE Pupils — and in the latest year published they are 1,563, 1,568.9 and 1,665.9. Four numbers, one agency, none of them equal, measured on different dates and counting different things. So every per-pupil figure on this project, including aid per pupil, is a division by a count whose definition has to be stated with it, and no published document reconciles the foundation count to the children in the buildings.
Closes it: DESE’s FY27 foundation enrollment worksheet for Lunenburg, which states the October 1 count by grade and category the formula was run on.
A conclusion we cannot draw
Where the PEG Access balance went between FY2019 and FY2021
The fund's carried balance is continuous in the report from FY2015 to FY2019 -- each edition's Starting Balance is the previous edition's Ending Balance to the cent -- and then stops being a series. FY2019 prints a Total of $573,837.37 (starting balance, plus revenue, less expenses, plus the Comcast Tech Fund of $124,796.01); FY2020 opens at $447,813.36, $126,024.01 lower; FY2021 opens at $272,000.00, which the same page's prose states is the budget rather than a balance. One document explains part of it: Article 16 of the FY2019 Annual Town Meeting established a PEG Access Enterprise Fund under MGL c.44 s53F1/2 and transferred into it the balances of the PEG Access and Cable Related Receipts Reserved For Appropriation Fund and the Comcast Tech Capital Grant Fund as of 30 June 2019. So the fund changed legal form at exactly this point, which is why the statement changes shape. WHAT IS NOT ESTABLISHED: the amounts transferred, and therefore whether the $126,024.01 step is the transfer, a closing entry, a restatement, or something else. There is also a smaller unexplained step earlier, FY2017's Ending Balance $303,909.77 against FY2018's Starting Balance $303,551.54, $358.23 apart, with no fund change to account for it. -- closes: the Town Accountant's opening and closing trial balances for the PEG Access and Cable Related funds for FY2018, FY2019 and FY2020, showing the transfers in and out.
A conclusion we cannot draw
What quantity the Town’s own published state-aid growth rates of 5.3% and 1.4% measure
The FY2027 Town Meeting booklet states that "From FY13-FY23 state aid increased at an annual rate of 5.3%, but in the last four years, it has slowed to approximately 1.4%" (3765-town-meeting-booklet-including-warrant, line 338), and does not say which figure it grew. Rebuilding the Town’s own `Subtotal State Aid` line from its own revenue/expenditure worksheets — 23 consecutive budget years, FY2005 to FY2027, notes/findings/state-aid-budget-series.csv — gives 4.5660% for FY2013→FY2023 and 1.9144% for FY2023→FY2027. Neither published rate is reproducible from the Town’s own published series, so a rate quoted to Town Meeting cannot be checked against anything.
Closes it: the Cherry Sheets themselves (DLS form CS 1-ER for Lunenburg, one per year), or the Town Manager’s working file behind the FY2027 booklet’s revenue narrative.
A conclusion we cannot draw
How much of the FY2027 enacted state-aid increase is receipts and how much is offsetting assessments
model/finance.py grows a FY2027 base of $11,404,917 + $471,121. The first is the Governor’s GROSS cherry sheet Total Receipts, printed by the FY2027 Town Meeting booklet. The second is recorded in fy27-and-the-override.md as NET — "+$471,121 net (Ch.70, charter/choice receiving tuition, Smart Growth, UGGA, vets/elderly exemptions; offset by higher charter assessments)". A gross figure and a net figure are being added, so the gross FY2027 receipt estimate the projection actually grows is not established, and neither is how much of the increase the Town keeps. This archive holds no Cherry Sheet for any year, which is the only document that prints receipts and assessments side by side.
Closes it: the FY2027 Cherry Sheet for Lunenburg on the enacted budget (DLS form CS 1-ER), which states each receipt and each assessment separately.
sources/budget-workbooks/ch70-fy27-summary.xlsx, sheet alldistricts, row 168. The build asserts the sheet’s column headings before reading a figure from them, and checks the whole row against the copy typed into model/taxbase.py: two independent routes to the same five numbers.scripts/build_state_aid.py into /data/state-aid.json. No figure is typed into the page, and scripts/check_generated.py fails if the file stops reproducing.Lunenburg FY28 — What the source data says (research notes, Aug 2026)
Where the FY27 state aid figures come from — the Town Manager’s own revenue arithmetic, including the enacted budget landing above the Governor’s proposal
1,413 words · updated 2026-08-28 · PDF
Connecting the school budget to the Town's books
Why state aid cannot be traced to anything it paid for: the aid accounts share no organisation code with any expense account
938 words · updated 2026-09-03 · PDF
Every rate the projection uses and what each one rests on — including the state aid growth rate, which is recorded there as having no stated source
16,209 words · updated 2026-09-05 · PDF
Free cash: is Lunenburg hoarding, or rebuilding?
The free cash proof these cherry sheet variances are one line of
2,924 words · updated 2026-09-04 · PDF
The FY26 ledger is period 9, not the year-end close. Received figures here are through that period and will move; budgeted figures will not. The DESE Chapter 70 summary is the FY27 calculation as published on 2026-01-28, and Chapter 70 is recalculated every year.