FY2026 Budget

The District and Town have faced significant financial challenges during Fiscal 2023, Fiscal 2024, and presently in Fiscal 2025. A number of factors have coalesced to create an atypical financial circumstances in which the ability of the town to raise and appropriate revenue has been greatly outpaced by the costs necessary to maintain level service for students. These factors include economic instability post COVID, volatile and escalating energy costs, rapid increases in the costs of goods and services, labor shortages and resulting wage increases, and, most recently, global social and political circumstances initiating a wave of migrants seeking refuge in the United States. While many of these factors appear to be stabilizing, FY2026 presents another challenging year. 

As the Town and residents faced the same economic turbulence outlined above, Town Meeting supported the School Department through these challenging economic circumstances with budget increases that greatly exceeded historical budget increases which averaged ~4.3% over the last 12 years. In Fiscal 2024 Town Meeting endorsed a 6.95% increase and in Fiscal 2025 voted an 8.06% increase. Even with these generous increases, the cost of level service in Fiscal Years 24 & 25 far exceeded those appropriations and, as a result, required significant budget reductions to balance the School Department’s books. These reductions included (1) significant cuts to professional development spending resulting in decreased investment in staff development and training; (2) significant cuts to supplies and materials resulting in delays replacing textbooks and core curriculum materials and fewer consumables on hand for students and teachers, and; (3) significant cuts to personnel resulting in the loss of 7.5 full time equivalent (FTE) administrative staff, 8.0 FTE support staff, and 11.0 FTE instructional staff. 

Given the Town’s financial circumstances and a looming fiscal cliff, Dedham is forced to make incredibly difficult decisions that aim to preserve essential services and protect the Town against future economic and financial uncertainty. On May 19th, 2025 Town Meeting voted on the School Department’s budget for Fiscal Year 2026. The approved budget includes a 3.97% increase over the FY 2025 budget. To sustain the level of service that DPS currently provides students would require a 7.7% increase over the FY2025 budget. This results in a 3.73% gap between the cost of level services and the funding appropriated by Town Meeting. To close this gap the School Department applies a methodical process to consider spending reductions and make decisions that minimize impact on programming and students. 

Through this process the District has determined that it will close the budget gap through:

(1) approximately $750,000 in cuts to non-personnel expenses for goods and services that will result in further reductions to staff development and training and significant risk of a Fiscal 2026 deficit due to unpredictable transportation costs;

(2) approximately $350,000 in cuts to substitute teacher budgets and stipends for after school athletic and extracurricular programming that will result in fewer, if any, daily substitutes to cover when educators are not able to attend work, elimination of middle school athletic programming, and fewer after school activities; and

(3) the reduction of approximately $925,000 in personnel which will result in the loss of approximately 11.5 FTE including building based substitute teachers at DMS and DHS, the loss of library aides at DMS and DHS, elimination of instrumental music programming at the elementary level, and reductions of elective class offerings at DHS. 

All programming and services that exist in DPS are deeply valued by the District. They would not exist if this were not the case. When the cost to safely and efficiently operate the District at level service far exceeds the revenue that the Town is reasonably able to generate and appropriate, difficult decisions must be made. The District’s leadership team has explored all options to reduce spending over the last three years and, unfortunately, the School Department is no longer in a position to span budget gaps through reductions in non-personnel expenses. Budget reductions in FY26 and potential reductions in FY27 and beyond will be personnel and programming as any further cuts to non-personeel goods and services are not possible. 
 

Dedham Public Schools FY2026 Proposed Superintendent Budget Proposal presented to the Dedham Finance & Warrant Committee on March 11, 2025 by Deputy Superintendent Dr. Ian Kelly and Superintendent Nan Murphy.

Dedham Public Schools FY2026 Proposed Superintendent Budget Proposal to be presented during Public Hearing session on January 29, 2025 by Deputy Superintendent Dr. Ian Kelly and Superintendent Nan Murphy.

F26SuperintendentsProposedBudget-PublicHearing-12925pptx.pdf

Dedham Public Schools FY2026 Proposed Superintendent Budget Proposal presented to School Committee on January 21, 2025 by Deputy Superintendent Dr. Ian Kelly and Superintendent Nan Murphy.

F26SuperintendentsProposedBudgetProposal-12125pptx.pdf

A video broadcast recording of the School Committee presentation can be found here.   The budget presentation occurs at 25:00 minutes into the broadcast.