The East Longmeadow School Committee hears the fiscal year 2027 budget presentation from Superintendent Gordon Smith.
Photo credit: ELCAT01028
EAST LONGMEADOW — The East Longmeadow School Committee is working to bridge a $1.1 million deficit from the town’s requested level services budget of 3%.
Superintendent Gordon Smith said the district is attempting to “reorganize funding before we hit the actual people who are doing the work with our students.”
A number of different challenges has increased the School Department’s fiscal year 2027 level service budget by 6.24%, with discussion of the impact the challenges have and methods to bridge the budget gap occurring at the meeting on April 27.
Smith said a driving factor for the increase is the current year’s inflation rate of 3.3%, stating that the rate is still rising because of “circumstances that are going on globally and domestically.”
Transportation is also a significant cost to the budget, with a projected 11.6% increase in spending during FY26. FY24 saw a 9% increase and FY25 saw a 3.3% increase. Smith said Chapter 70 aid also isn’t keeping up with other costs in the budget, with only a 1.2% increase for FY27, the same increase as FY26.
Smith also looked at the per pupil spending from a 2022-2024 report by the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. East Longmeadow came in below state average each year, with the largest difference being in 2023 with $2,447 below state average.
The only school district in the Lower Pioneer Valley Educational Collaborative to have a higher per pupil spending than state average across those three years was Agawam in 2022, coming in $226 above average.
“The last two school years we have reduced positions and dealt with budget challenges,” Smith said. “My guess is when you look at FY25, when [DESE] calculates it and ultimately down the road when they calculate per pupil expenditure for FY26, you’re going to see that number drop.”
Smith also shared data showing the budget increases granted by the town in the past 11 years. He said positions used to be at risk of elimination when the town could only grant an increase under 2%, such as in FY15 and FY21 when five were eliminated and FY22 when six were eliminated.
That percentage has now changed, with 20 positions eliminated in FY26 on a 2.5% increase and a projected number of six positions being eliminated in FY27 on the town’s request for a 3% increase.
“We’re looking at getting 3% from the town, an increase of 3%,” Smith said. “As you look at FY27, to meet that, because we know level services was 6.24%, we’re going to need to eliminate up to six positions, and depending on where the town’s budget finally lands, because the town budget process does not finish until May, if that were to reduce then we would need to come back to the drawing board and look at where else we can make changes.”
Smith said “the heart and soul of what the school does is human interaction with students” and that the committee has been working since January to find methods of bridging the gap, such as reorganizing funds and raising revenue.
Initial budgeting strategies include freezing the curriculum renewal cycle for $80,000, a memorandum of understanding with the East Longmeadow Education Association on contractual individual professional development money for $130,000, reducing personalized learning software for $51,000, using School Choice rollover for $150,000, expanding School Choice slots by 25 for $125,000 and prepaying the vocational tuition at the LPVEC for $225,000.
These strategies came out to $761,000 toward reducing the expected increase from the town, but the district was notified in March that the Title I grant, funded to schools with low-income students, would be cut by at least $23,000. This cut required additional staff positions to be reduced through attrition, the gradual reduction of a workforce that occurs when staff leaves and aren’t immediately replaced. Smith told Reminder Publishing that the $23,000 cut isn’t the definitive number yet and could be more.
The positions eliminated for FY27 include a Meadow Brook kindergarten retirement, a high school business retirement and clerical position, a Birchland Park paraprofessional retirement, a Meadow View classroom teacher resignation and Maple Shade classroom teacher position.
Smith told Reminder Publishing that the retirement and resignation positions will already be vacant by the end of the school year and won’t be reposted to fill. The person filling the clerical position would also have the option to transfer to another school in the district.
Each strategy and position elimination brought the total reduction to $1.2 million, with the total FY27 budget request coming out to $38 million.
