Swampscott and Nahant school districts agreed to a five-year contract that will keep allowing Nahant students to attend Swampscott schools from seventh grade through twelfth grade.

The current contract between the two districts was set to expire after the 2027 fiscal year. The new contract will start in the 2028 fiscal year and expire after the 2032 fiscal year. The School Committee voted unanimously to approve the contract.

Swampscott School Committee Chair Glenn Paster said Wednesday at a meeting that the sustenance of the contract “basically stayed the same” as far as services and responsibilities.

“Over the last 6 to 8 weeks or so Superintendent (Jason) Calichman and myself have been negotiating a contract with the Superintendent in Nahant and the School Committee Chair,” Paster said. “We did ensure that Nahant students coming on will pay basically the same as what a Swampscott student will pay.”

There will be a 3.25% increase in payments in the 2028 and 2029 fiscal years. In the 2030 and 2031 fiscal years, there will be a 3.5% increase, and the agreement lays out a 3.75% increase in the 2032 fiscal year.

In the current contract there was a 2.5% increase each year, ending with a $1,773,978 tuition payment in the 2027 fiscal year, according to the documents reviewed by The Swampscott Tides.

Paster also said that there is the potential to re-open a clause if Nahant wants to send students to Swampscott for fifth and sixth grade. There was a memorandum to the current contract for a similar situation, signed in July and August 2023, for sixth graders to attend Swampscott’s middle school at a $16,897.70 rate per pupil, according to the documents reviewed by the Swampscott Tides.

“We’ve had a lot of conversations with that,” said Paster. “We would absolutely take them, however that is not our decision. That would come from the town of Nahant.”

The money within the fund tied to the students attending Swampscott Public Schools from the Nahant district has been a hot button topic in not only School Committee meetings but also Finance Committee, Select Board and tri-board meetings.

Select Board Member Mary Ellen Fletcher has raised concerns about the revolving fund balance at several budget meetings, most recently on Wednesday, April 8.

“We all have to really focus on our fiduciary responsibilities,” Fletcher said, suggesting that money retained from the Nahant tuition is used to “offset” the Swampscott School District’s fiscal year budgets.

Swampscott maintains a revolving fund tied to students attending the district from Nahant. The Nahant Revolving Fund, like other revolving funds, is regulated by state law and the Department of Revenue and allows school committees to spend certain revenues without appropriation for specific purposes tied to the programs or services that generated the funds.

Assistant Superintendent of Finance and Operations Cheryl Herrick Stella said at the last School Committee meeting that the Nahant Revolving Fund has been used for  both portions and complete expenses of full-time staffing position salaries. Because there are no designated “Nahant teachers,” she said the budgeting process aims to distribute costs evenly across schools and comparable staff.

The school district ended the 2025 fiscal year with a $574,000 balance in the Nahant Revolving Fund. The fund is projected to have $428,000 balance at the end of the 2026 fiscal year, which is on June 30. 

With budget projections for the 2027 fiscal year, the district is showing it will charge about $168,000 “more than the current year’s revenue,” Finance Committee Chair Eric Hartmann said at the end of March.

Herrick Stella agreed it “is a choice” to potentially zero out the account, but she noted there was a thought process behind leaving money within the Nahant Revolving Fund. 

“We thankfully had very positive budget results last cycle. We finished the year with 99.3% of the budget spent, so we had decisions that we could make at that point. We could spend it on things. We could spend it on pre-paid tuition. We could leave it unspent, which it would revolve into the reserve, or we could have spent less out of any of our revolving funds to be quite frank with you,” Herrick Stella said. “Our election was to spend less of the revolving fund because we knew that at that time we were entering into some tough financial years now. That would allow us some money going into the next couple budget cycles to be able to pull from to have a lower budget ask of the town.”

Herrick Stella added that within the upcoming budget cycle, “we’re seeing that happen,” as money will be pulled from the Nahant Revolving Fund to compensate for the lower budget ask.

If there was no balance, that would in turn “create an issue in FY28,” Herrick Stella said. 

“If you zero it out, we have nothing to offset our ask as we go into FY28,” Herrick Stella said.

Herrick Stella also pointed out that neighboring towns that are having budgetary issues this year first made cuts by relying on their revolving funds. She said Marblehead’s policy is to keep a full year of revenue in its revolving fund, similar to a circuit breaker. Another town Herrick Stella previously worked in, however, worked to keep 5 to 10% of its operating budget within the revolving fund.

“When towns get into really tough financial times, then they’ll start drawing on the revolving funds so that they’re not having to lay off 100 teachers but maybe just 10 teachers,” Herrick Stella said. “I think ideally if we could have somewhere around 5% of our operating budget in revolving funds, that is a fair amount.”

The district ended the 2025 fiscal year at 4% in all revolving funds overall, Herrick Stella said. 

“We were trying to do what we could to build some levers to help as we go through some really tough financial times here in the community,” Herrick Stella said.