Acton-Boxborough superintendent outlines preliminary FY26 budget, warns of staffing cuts and service reductions

Peter Light, superintendent of the Acton-Boxborough Regional School District, presented the district's preliminary fiscal year 2026 budget and told the school committee that the leadership team had built a three-percent guideline-level budget while attempting to preserve core student supports.

Light said the budget assumes roughly $525,000 in revenue above earlier projections but still leaves a structural gap once one-time funds and retiring excluded debt are removed. "A fair guess is probably somewhere between $700,000 and $1,000,000" in year-end turnbacks, he said, and described a maintenance-of-service budget that still required reductions to balance.

Why it matters: the district's operating budget is overwhelmingly personnel-driven (Light said roughly 85 percent of finance-related costs and 63 percent of total expenses are salaries and substitutes), so continued flat state aid and rising costs for special education, transportation and health insurance force cuts in staff or services that directly touch classrooms.

Light framed the choices facing the committee: use reserves or increase assessments to towns, reduce staff and services, or undertake a long-term reorganization of how students are configured across schools. He recommended keeping the two-town assessment allocations steady and allowing the preliminary budget figure to rise if additional state revenues materialize, so the towns would not see a higher assessment while the district could restore services if new money arrives.

Public testimony and educator evidence came largely during the budget portion of the meeting. Multiple teachers and specialists said the district is at a tipping point where larger class sizes and lost support staff will reduce educators'capacity to meet students'emerging academic and social-emotional needs. "With 20 percent larger classes'that means that the quality and depth of my relationships will suffer," said Karen Joshi, a seventh-grade teacher at RJ Gray. Carrie Cusick, a reading specialist, warned that cutting positions that provide targeted tier 2 and tier 3 support would mean "significantly fewer students will receive this targeted support." Thomas Sandock, a social-studies teacher, told the committee that reductions in supervisory and campus-monitoring staff had already increased teacher workload and would make it harder to find common planning time and meet students'needs.

Light and his leadership team itemized proposed changes in the preliminary budget: reductions in elementary classroom assistant hours (a roughly 25 percent reduction in assistant hours while preserving full-time kindergarten assistants and lunch/recess coverage), several general-education teacher reductions driven by enrollment and class-size realignments (including three general-education positions at secondary levels), a proposed restructuring of districtwide special-education leadership, and small reductions in high-school campus security and a STAR tutor position. He also said the district planned to add certain special-education hours and a classroom assistant based on current student need, and to preserve some BCBA (behavior-analytic) hours.

Light highlighted two budget offsets: the district's move to the Maya insurance pool and an employee health-insurance opt-out program, which he said will save about $613,000 next year; and a reduction in run-out claims from the Acton Health Insurance Trust that reduces a previously budgeted $600,000 amount to roughly $150,000, providing an additional roughly $450,000 of relief.

State revenue remains a key unknown. Light said the governor's budget proposed increasing the minimum Chapter 78 aid from $30 to $75 per pupil and increasing regional transportation funding; the administration will incorporate any confirmed increases into the next budget iteration but cautioned the legislature has added or removed items in prior budget cycles. The superintendent also said Maya confirmed a near-15 percent statewide health-insurance rate increase for the coming year, which would add roughly $300,000 to the district's costs compared with earlier estimates.

Committee members voiced frustration at the lack of state funding and emphasized outreach to state legislators. Several members said they would support Light's recommended approach of holding assessments steady and restoring positions only if additional revenues arrive. "We all have to mobilize and we all have to push" at the State House, said a committee member, reflecting the meeting's repeated theme that state aid, not local reallocation, is the decisive factor.

What's next: the committee will hold a full budget workshop on Saturday, Feb. 8, when principals will attend to discuss the proposed staffing changes in more detail. The district plans to release a recommended budget after taking public input; statutory votes and town meetings follow the committee process.

Ending: Light asked the committee for direction ' which the committee provided by consensus ' and emphasized that the budget process will continue in public, with the Feb. 8 workshop and a public hearing in March. "If we could, we would raise everybody's salaries and throw money at this district," a committee member said. "We can't get there without state action."