Superintendent presents FY 2026 recommended budget, highlights student-centered priorities and $48 million for school-based allocations

Superintendent Dr. Dunnell and Chief of Finance and Operations Pat Roach presented Springfield Public Schools’ recommended FY 2026 budget to the Budget & Finance Subcommittee, emphasizing investments tied to four district priorities and a large direct allocation to schools.

The proposal frames budget increases around early literacy, middle-school transformation, college and career readiness (grades 9–12) and postsecondary success. Pat Roach told the subcommittee the draft is balanced and called out specific expense changes: salaries and benefits increases, higher utilities and transportation costs, and growth in special-education out-of-district tuition. The presentation also showed districtwide FTEs at about 5,465.

Why it matters: the recommended budget directs most new dollars to schools and to programs the superintendent identified as core priorities. The package would shift recurring resources into school operations and add positions in postsecondary counseling, special education, and home-visit coordination, among others.

Key elements and figures cited by staff

- School-based allocations: the presentation lists more than $48,000,000 allocated directly to schools for local decision-making, including Student Opportunity Act dollars ($31,600,000 reported on the slides), Title I funds (about $5,500,000), extended learning time allocations ($2,900,000) and other targeted school allocations (books, supplies, vocational/chapter 74 funding).

- Personnel and benefits: staff reported an overall salaries increase (cited as roughly $17.4 million) to cover cost-of-living adjustments and contractual steps; health insurance was cited as increasing roughly $2.7 million and city retirement contributions about $2.8 million.

- Special education: the out-of-district tuition line was cited as rising by about 7.3% ($779,007); the special-education budget overall was described as growing ~11% with added district autism specialists, full-time ETLs and paraeducators, plus added speech and assistive-technology staff.

- Curriculum and instruction: the budget reallocates several curriculum costs previously paid from grants into the general fund, increases early-literacy funding (including summer literacy/intervention and software for pre-K), and funds pilot curriculum (OpenSciEd). New professional development and stipends (for CPR certification coordinators, for example) were also listed.

- Information technology and data: a one-time investment of $400,000 for a data warehouse capability and analytics was described as a strategic IT investment to improve district and school-level reporting and to meet new reporting requirements.

Questions from the committee and staff clarifications

Committee members asked about charter and school-choice tuition totals and the district’s lack of direct control over those disbursements; Roach provided a breakout on the record showing charter tuition of about $104,108,623 and school-choice dollars of about $5,000,964 (with a $331,331 special-education assessment included). Members also asked about the effect of “schools returning from the empowerment zone” and were told any return would affect a following fiscal year and is not included in FY 2026 numbers.

Committee members asked about the district’s closed pools and the possibility of restoring swim instruction. Dr. Balsch (staff) explained pools were closed because of insufficient lifeguard-certified staff and required certifications and said reopening would require recruiting certified lifeguards and collaboration with external partners.

Implementation notes and next steps

Staff said some program details (for example, school-level staffing allocation sheets and breakdowns by chief) are in a secondary document and available on request. The subcommittee agreed to bring the recommended budget forward for a formal recommendation to the full school committee at a subsequent meeting.