The Holyoke School Committee discusses and approves the FY26 budget during its May 27 meeting.
Photo credit: Holyoke Media
HOLYOKE — During its May 27 meeting, the Holyoke School Committee approved the fiscal year 2026 budget of $135.3 million, which represents a spending increase of $6.4 million, or 5% from FY25.
Superintendent/Receiver Anthony Soto released a message and budget breakdown. He said Holyoke Public Schools has invested in systems and structures to support the success of each student.
“Our schools are equipped with the resources necessary to support the academic, social-emotional and behavioral needs of their students. Each year, I am seeing more and more areas with positive gains, and I anticipate this positive trajectory will continue on into the future. This budget places students first and invests in strategies that support all children. It positions the district to weather uncertain fiscal realities anticipated in the coming years,” Soto stated.
The annual budget packet for FY26 is over 100 pages and includes an executive summary, organization, a financial overview of each school, information and the capital improvement program.
Almost two thirds of the budget is for staffing while the other third is for expenditures like transportation, tuition, utilities.
School Committee member John Whelihan acknowledged that only 12% of the budget comes from local funding. The state makes up the difference of 88%.
“I think it’s a fair budget. It kind of meets our goals that we established last year in terms of what our funding priorities should be,” Whelihan stated, “I want to commend our finance director for having a balanced budget. A lot of towns are having overrides or having budget issues, budget deficits.”
Soto stated that the budget does not propose any class size increases since that was an item that was expressed through feedback from stakeholders during the budget development process.
Most of the new funds will be going to the schools and there are no major layoffs or programmatic reductions.
Soto said the FY26 budget maintains all the programming that has been added in recent years and ensures all schools have the resources they need to be successful.
Major budget drivers forcing the district’s budget increase each year are the areas of employee compensation, employee benefits, such as health insurance, retirement, accrued sick and vacation time, and retiree health benefits, charter tuition/school choice and special education out-of-district tuition.
Although the initial calculations of level services showed a budgetary gap due to rising wages, tuition costs and unknown levels of available carryforward support, the gap was manageable as envisioned in the “accelerating SOA” strategy.
The gap was closed through an update of the staffing allocation model, budget reductions at the cabinet level and through use of carry forward funding.
Strategic plan priorities drove the budget process to reflect the values and key priorities of community stakeholders.
Notable investments, organized by the priorities in the strategic plan, include every school is assigned an English language arts and math instructional coach/expert teacher, and every school is allocated at least one ELA and one math academic intervention teacher.
The budget also includes additional targeted intervention services that will be provided for students who need more support as well as high quality preschool programs are offered at all elementary schools.
Dual language programming is provided at four schools for students in grades pre-K through 10, and the schedules were designed to promote deeper learning.
The School Committee approved adopting a general fund operating budget of $123.8 million.
Mayor Joshua Garcia shared something with the School Committee that Soto told him after the vote was approved.
“Soto just whispered over to me a very important moment, you just voted on your first budget in nine, 10 years so congratulations,” Garcia said, since the district has been in state receivership for the past 10 years and is set to exit it on July 1.
