Massachusetts Association of School Committees Field Directors Tracy Novick and Alicia Mallon outlined school districts’ financial and student protection obligations as well as the expenses around Nahant students, during a joint meeting of the Select Board, School Committee, and Finance Committee on Wednesday.

The presentation was intended to provide the “ins and outs of our budget, the legal responsibilities that we as a school committee have, the legal responsibilities that you on the Finance Committee and Select Board have, and more importantly where the guardrails are,” School Committee Vice Chair Glenn Paster shared at the beginning of the meeting. The three boards are currently developing budgets ahead of the May Town Meeting.

“It is up to the School Committee to determine, upon the recommendation of the superintendent and the administration, in line with the goals established by the School Committee, what those appropriations are going to be,” Novick said.

Massachusetts General Law chapter 71, section 27 regulates that the School Committee in each city and town has the “power to…review and approve budgets for public education in the district.” Novick said the budget must align with the School Committee’s goals for the district, as well as its oversight of the superintendent and district policies.

“When it comes to the municipal appropriation…it’s important to note that the municipal appropriating authority only appropriates the bottom line of the general fund budget for schools,” Novick said. “There is not an appropriation that happens beyond that, and there is not specific authority within that. By state law, the municipal authority may not direct specific appropriations.”

Massachusetts General Law chapter 71, section 34 states that the legislative body – or Town Meeting in Swampscott – can “vote on the total amount of the appropriations requested and shall not allocate appropriations among accounts or place any restriction on such appropriations.”

“That of course is because it is under the purview of the School Committee,” Novick said, adding that the Town Meeting Members are allowed to make “nonbinding monetary recommendations to increase or decrease certain items allocating such appropriations.”

School Committee members go through a training on finances, particularly on the spending and relationships with its Town Meeting Members. The budget the School Committee reviews comes from a recommendation from the superintendent. Novick said that every school district in Massachusetts spends at least 70% of its budget on people, or the staff within the district.

Revolving funds, which are regulated by state law and the Department of Revenue, allow school committees to spend certain revenues without appropriation for specific purposes tied to the programs or services that generated the funds.

Within Swampscott, there is a revolving fund from students who are coming into the district from Nahant, for example.

“It’s very strictly regulated on how they can be spent, and they have to be spent without appropriation,” Novick said. “These are highly volatile, and these are annual funds so when we’re talking about school choice or when you’re talking about the students coming to your high school, you have no control from one year to the next of how many students are coming, and that is entirely where that revenue comes from. If all of the students who are coming out of middle school in Nahant choose to go to private school, you will have no revenue. There will be no tuition coming in. The same thing with school choice…It’s really crucial for School Committees as the authority that oversees all of the budgeting to really think of these as being funds that are one time.”

Superintendent Jason Calichman said negotiations with Nahant’s school district starts in two weeks and “we’re certainly looking to expand on the rates that come to Swampscott as of right now.” Paster added that the district has always looked to go into a contract with a fixed amount, to allow “for cost certainly to so we would know where it was.”

“Today, it’s a fixed number that goes up by some percentage, so it doesn’t matter what number of kids they send if they go up or down,” said Finance Chair Eric Hartmann.

While the exact numbers come out a bit less, Calichman said the goal is to be “within the ballpark” over the contract covering the costs for the students.

Paster cited sharply rising transportation costs, emphasizing that Swampscott taxpayers “are not subsidizing Nahant students.” 

“We make very sure that Nahant is bringing a positive or flat cash flow,” Paster said.

School Committee Member Suzanne Wright added that there may be years where there are less students from Nahant so Swampscott makes more money, and there can be other years where there are more students when Swampscott might lose a bit, but “in the end we’re treating it as if it’s a level playing field.”

“It speaks to the benefit of the contract we negotiated because before this contract was negotiated it was per pupil and citizens of Swampscott were paying more for their students than Nahant was, and mostly it was because of that volatility too,” Wright said. “We rectified that with this contract, and now we have to do that again and it’s a little more challenging because Nahant knows what we’re doing. It’s something we need to just work on to have that balance.”

At the same time, the district is reimbursed for services already fronted, such as special education expenditures per student.

“The best practice…is that you use the funds in the subsequent year. You don’t use the funds in the year the reimbursement is occurring,” Novick said. “Levels of reimbursements do vary.”

The Select Board asked about special education costs for Nahant students. Calichman shared that prior to seventh grade, if a student from Nahant attends the Swampscott Public School District as an “out of district student,” it is not a part of the district’s budget. Once the student is a part of the district, which for Nahant starts in seventh grade, Calichman said it is less clear at the moment but he believes Nahant helps with the costs still.

“The cost of contract is great to have stability and to understand the base line and what we’re going to get every year,” Select Board Chair Katie Phelan said, “but the volatility of special education and that if they come over without IEPs and we determine that they need to be on IEPs, and that’s not covered in the cost of contract, unless there is some clause that does that.”

Calichman, as principal of the middle school for 13 years, said often the case is that a student just had to be assigned to a class rather than a new staff member needed to be hired. There were a few times a one-to-one tutor was needed, which Nahant would pay for. 

“We communicate with Nahant. It’s not a surprise when they come in in seventh grade,” Wright said. “We don’t charge special ed kids more. The per pupil expenditure, if we’re using $20,000 for it, that pays for the services that kids need, period, end of discussion. Kids that need more services, we don’t count as more expensive, or we don’t differentiate them. We take all of the money, and we average it and we meet the needs of all of the kids.”

Paster noted that the issue “gets really gray really quickly.”

“The state’s very clear. We have one number,” Paster said. “We are appropriated X dollars, and every student represents Y dollars. Whether that student is on an IEP, whether that student is the star of the football team and doesn’t need anything, as far as student services go, that doesn’t matter.”

The three boards met on November 13, with the first joint convening focusing on the town’s mounting infrastructure needs from immediate five-year repairs to larger 10-year projects that could reshape Swampscott’s schools and municipal services. Much of the more short-term capital improvement plan focused on  keeping essential systems functioning, especially in school buildings. The 10-year vision looked more at rebuilding the middle school and the town’s Department of Public Works (DPW) yard.

The Select Board, Finance Committee and School Committee will meet again before the Town Meeting in May, focusing on long-term town financial issues. There is also discussion to work on parameters around reserve funds. 

Prior to that, the School Committee will meet Thursday, January 22, with the fiscal year 2027 district budget recommendations on the agenda.