Chicopee Schools’ finance director discusses preliminary FY27 losses

Chicopee School’s Budget and Finance Director John Miarecki shares a FY27 presentation with the Chicopee School Committee at its March 18 meeting.
Photo credit: ChicopeeTV

CHICOPEE — Chicopee Public Schools’ Budget and Finance Director John Miarecki met with the School Committee during its March 18 meeting to give a preliminary presentation about the fiscal year 2027 school budget.

Miarecki gave a Chapter 70 funding summary illustrating that CPS saw a decline in its foundation enrollment from FY26 to FY27 from 7,198 students to 7,057.

He explained, “When you see 7,057 [students] … it is not our enrollment. It’s our foundation enrollment and so, what that is made up of, yes, our students that are here. The 6,700, the 6,800 students, but it also captures students that might be at charter schools.”

When a student chooses to go to a charter school, the district loses the funding and goes to the charter school. Due to the decline in the foundation enrollment, Chicopee is set to lose out on $2 million, according to Miarecki.

Chapter 70 funding increased by 0.53%, or $529,275, from FY26 to FY27. The total Chapter 70 funding Chicopee will receive from the state is approximately $100.7 million.

The foundation budget increased by only $169,648. Miarecki also discussed a situation that Chicopee and “270 other districts across the state” are facing.

“We are what the state calls a minimum aid district now,” Miarecki stated. “I have been here for 13 years and we’ve always been at a required new school spending number of foundation at 100%. I have not seen it otherwise. This year, we are inverse so now it’s at 101.63 [%].”

This means that what CPS received from the state is less than it was last year based on calculations from enrollment, multilingual learner students and the amount of low income students.

“We’ve lost that funding,” Miarecki stated. “So, when the state aid is below your number last year, you were a minimally aid funded district. We are only getting $75 per student.”

For FY27, the number of low-income students decreased by 217 students. This caused the low-income percentage to drop to 69.34%, which is below the group 11 minimum threshold of 70%. This moved Chicopee into low-income group 10, and the difference is about $1,071 per student.

According to Miarecki’s presentation, $5 million will not be coming to Chicopee because they went under the 70% threshold when the low-income classification was reevaluated.

Mayor John Vieau, who serves as the chair of the School Committee, shared his thoughts on the funding loss, stating, “It’s very frustrating to as a district, expecting that you’re going to be receiving $5 million more in funding that we will not be getting, so there’s some real challenges ahead.”

Vieau continued to say that the city has reached out to the Department of Education and the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education through the governor’s office and had a meeting recently to talk about the “fiscal cliff.”

Miarecki said, “It is a cliff that was not expected this year, but it has happened. We are trying to address it, and we’ve talked about it for the last year to make sure you’re well-informed [and] our viewers out there are well informed to what is actually going on and try to prepare.”