Interim Superintendent/Receiver Anthony Soto shares a fiscal year 2026 budget projection at the Holyoke School Committee meeting.
Reminder Publishing screen capture by Tyler Garnet
HOLYOKE — During the Feb. 24 School Committee meeting, interim Superintendent/Receiver Anthony Soto shared a fiscal year 2026 budget projection as well as an update to the future plans of Joesph Metcalf School.
Some key points included a preliminary budget gap of $2 million by anticipated increases in salaries, tuitions, health insurance and utilities.
There is also a high level of uncertainty around grant funding, unsettled contracts and availability of carryover funding.
Soto explained that right now, the school budget is looking at an increase of $6.3 million or 5.5% in the net school spending requirement which is “primarily driven by the implementation of the Student Opportunity Act.”
This is currently year five of a six year implementation and Soto said, “We’ll have one more year in 2027 of another year of implementation of the Student Opportunity Act and then what we’ll see is revenue start to flatten out a little bit and it will be more dependent on what the inflation rate is and more dependent on what your enrollment is.”
According to the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education website, the Student Opportunity Act is a law in Massachusetts that aims to ensure that every student in the state experiences high-quality learning opportunities that lead to success in school and postsecondary success.
Soto also said there is a “significant increase” in the city admin net school spending line item to approximately $696,000 and explained, “What that represents is, we made a commitment three years ago that if we were able to get the middle school built that we would provide a $500,000 contribution to the city to help support that and that’s why you see it go from $148,000 to $697,000.”
The contribution this year will be $547,000 toward the bond payment.
A big topic that Soto anticipates will be discussed within the School Committee and City Council will be transportation.
Soto explained that there has not been an increase in riders, but the Mckinney-Vento transportation ends up being cost-shared with the district that Holyoke is sending a student to or picking up a kid from.
“A major part of this increase is the fact that Springfield’s rate for this transportation doubled,” Soto said, “We have a significant amount of kids that either live in Holyoke and go to Springfield or live in Springfield and come to Holyoke and they have Mckinney-Vento status.”
Most of the Mckinney-Vento transportation is reimbursed currently, and the city is getting close to 100% reimbursement, so although the number is increasing, the revenue the city is getting for the Mckinney-Vento transportation is also increasing.
Transportation other than charter is projected to increase by 10.3% and charter tuition transportation is projected to increase by 9.9%.
Salaries are potentially going to increase by 4.9% and utilities are projected to increase by 10.3%. Out of district tuition is projected to increase by 42.8%
Holyoke Public Schools Finance Executive Director Sean Mangano explained that the utilities increase is not actually 42.8% because right now, the projections do not include carryover funds which may be used and discussed during the budget process.
Once the governor’s budget was released, Soto said it was “better than anticipated.” It was first anticipated that Holyoke Public Schools was looking at a $4 million deficit but based on the new projection, it is looking more like a $2 million deficit.
Soto stated he plans on solving the deficit throughout the budget development process and projections will be refined throughout.
Holyoke keeps a close eye on the state budget according to Soto. From when the governor’s budget is usually released in January, it goes through multiple committees and is adopted as the final budget in late June/early July. Soto said he pays close attention to it.
He explained, “Many communities are already done with their budget because they don’t care about the state budget and they have enough local revenue to say this is what they want in the schools and then they either get it or don’t get it but we’re so closely tied to the state budget, as mentioned 88% of our budget, so we closely follow what’s going on at the state level and what impact it has on our local budget.”
Based on the local budget timeline, Soto is currently meeting with department heads to review level service budgets and asking them to see the impact of 10% cuts and what they need to keep the same service.
The same process will take place with each school principal in March and April with their spending plans. A budget projection update is set to be presented to the School Committee in March and budget proposal will be presented in May.
The School Committee is projected to host a public hearing and vote on the recommended FY26 budget in June before the City Council approves the final budget.
