Credit: Reva Datar

Since October, Wayland Public Schools has been experiencing a partial budget freeze due to the rise in certain services and inflation. “I’m hopeful that sort of the impact of the partial freeze hasn’t been felt or realized by our students,” WHS Principal Allyson Mizoguchi said. “That’s the most important thing that everybody’s sort of working on.”

Since October, the Wayland School District has been in the midst of a partial budget freeze. The freeze was put into place after the district identified a $1.4 million budget shortfall due to expenses that exceeded original budget projections.

To cover part of the gap, the district identified $900,000 in funding from various sources, including unspent funds and specific accounts. An additional $500,000 was frozen, with expectations of receiving state funding in May to unfreeze these accounts.

On Oct. 9, 2024, the Director of Finance and Operations for Wayland Public Schools (WPS) Susan Bottan sent a report to the Wayland School Committee (WSC) that included a First Quarter Summary, which explained the district’s financial situation from July 1, 2024, to Sept. 30, 2024. The report also explained how the district’s budget during the first quarter will have an impact on the rest of the Fiscal Year 2025 (FY25).

“While the district is on track to meet all contractual obligations and legal requirements, it is facing financial challenges,” the report read.

The report states that these financial challenges have primarily been attributed to “a 32% increase in the cost of special education transportation (both in-district and out-of-district)” and “an unanticipated increase in the need for out-of-district special education services.”

Superintendent of Schools David Fleishman also sent a letter to WPS staff on Oct. 9, 2024, informing them that a partial budget freeze was going to take place. Fleishman said that curtailing spending in the middle of the school year can be challenging, as the district’s budget is “fixed” due to salaries and other factors. He explained that adjustments would have to be made to only non-personnel items.

“Our only option is to reduce non-personnel items at both the district and building levels,” Fleishman wrote. “These items include supplies, equipment and services.”

Due to the timeline of town meetings and structure of town government, Bottan and her team began planning the budget of FY25 over a year in advance. Like any other year, they used student enrollment projections, staff-related projections and other factors to develop the FY25 budget.

“We’re looking at enrollment projections,” Bottan said. “We’re making decisions based on what we believe students’ needs will be in the future, which is a very tricky thing to do, because everyone learns and grows at different points. It’s very difficult to project out what our needs will be a year in advance.”

However, once the 2024-2025 school year started, it became apparent that some expenses would exceed the amount initially appropriated.

“Our projections for this year were different from how the year actually began,” Bottan said. “We knew immediately, you know, just as school started, that some of these shifts and changes were going to impact our budget and make us unable to end [FY25] which [ends] on June 30, with a break even budget.”

Bottan identified a $1.4 million budget shortfall due to the unanticipated expenses. These expenses ranged from the rise of costs of materials due to inflation, to the need for different educational services for students.

Bottan went through various funds, such as fee-based funds, gift accounts and operating funds. Through this, she was able to identify roughly $900,000 from these accounts in order to help close the gap of this shortfall. Bottan then began efforts to close the remaining shortfall of $500,000. After meeting with building leaders and principals, a course of action was determined.

“We made a decision to work with our principals to identify certain accounts that we could kind of freeze, [and] hold steady,” Bottan said. “[We decided to] not spend any funds until we learn more from the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.”

Bottan, along with school leaders, teachers and various departments within the district, identified accounts that held money that wasn’t urgently needed. This money might have been spent towards the purchasing of new supplies during the school year.

Some of these accounts have been temporarily frozen as part of the freeze, meaning that money in these accounts cannot be spent until the account is unfrozen. The total amount of money temporarily frozen adds up to roughly $500,000, accounting for the rest of the shortfall. However, this money has not been used to cover any expenses resulting from the shortfall, and has been frozen with the expectation that the money will be available again for use in the spring.

Other accounts, which educators decided would be needed for immediate use, or may be important for other reasons, were considered as “protected” accounts, and were not frozen as part of the freeze.

“We were able to preserve some funding for things we knew that were essential, things that we knew were sort of coming down the pike that we hadn’t already set money aside for,” WHS Principal Allyson Mizoguchi said.

Bottan also attributes the accumulation of the $500,000 to the work of teachers, who were able to adapt to the circumstances the budget shortfall brought about.

“The teachers got together and said, ‘Well, you know what, I’ve got enough supplies, enough textbooks, enough equipment, enough material to last through the spring. I think I can set aside some funds to be put on hold,’” Bottan said. “So it was a lot of communication, a lot of collaboration.”

The Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) provides support, oversight and funding to the roughly 400 school districts in the state. DESE has a 25% threshold that districts must meet in order to be eligible for relief funding.

Wayland’s shortfall of $1.4 million out of $5,565,410 of projected expenses makes the district eligible for this funding. Bottan says that Wayland is eligible for up to $600,000 of DESE funding, however, the exact amount of funding Wayland will receive in aid will not be known until the spring. Bottan and administrators are hopeful that the money provided by DESE funding will cover the remaining $500,000 shortfall, and subsequently, allow the town to unfreeze the temporarily frozen accounts.

“DESE has only so much money that they can allocate to all the communities in the state that are looking for some relief,” Bottan said. “So we might not get all of the funding that we need or qualify for, but we do expect to receive some funding. Once we receive that funding in May, we’ll be able to unfreeze the budget so that teachers and department heads and others can gain access to the services and supplies and equipment they need through the balance of the year.”

In the meantime, administrators and educators have worked to ensure that the effects of the partial freeze aren’t felt by students in schools. Despite the partial freeze on some accounts, the needs of students and educators have been met, according to Bottan.

“During the year, some schools and some departments have come to me and have said ‘You know, I wasn’t anticipating this. I really need to do this, this and this, how can you help me?’ and we’ve been able to help them,” Bottan said. “So there has been no one to my knowledge that has needed something that we weren’t able to get for them.”

The science department at WHS purchases materials needed for the school year during the summer before the year starts. Since the freeze was implemented in October of 2024, the science department has already purchased materials needed for the 2024-2025 school year. While the department purchased all necessary materials well in advance of the school year, the purchasing of other materials, such as new textbooks or new pieces of lab equipment, have been put off.

Though the science department wasn’t significantly impacted by the freeze, according to department head Bill Bobrowsky, there were other factors that impacted purchasing. Science materials have become more expensive, and the cost of shipping has also increased, taking more out of the department’s budget than expected.

“[This year], things are more expensive,” Bobrowsky said. “Shipping killed us this year, and so we ended up spending just about all of our money. So [once the freeze started] we didn’t have much to give back.”

Inflation in the United States economy has been another complicating factor to the district’s budget, as well as the budgets of towns all across the country. Inflation — in addition to the disproportionate rise in costs of Special Education, which has increased by 35% in the last 10 years — makes budget planning especially difficult.

“If our revenue is only increasing by 2.5% [a year] and our expenses are increasing anywhere between 8% and 40%, it makes it very difficult to balance a budget and even to anticipate [future expenses],” Bottan said.

Wayland isn’t the only town dealing with budget shortfalls due to the economy and increased costs of certain services. Districts across the state are collectively spending $1 billion on these additional services this year, and have faced an unprecedented amount of expenses due to the economy.

The state recently created a new funding formula which helps the state calculate how much aid should be given to districts. However, this formula did not account for the increased inflation rates, meaning that aid given out to districts by the state might not adequately meet the needs of some districts.

Additionally, districts across the state and country have lost the federal funding that was granted due to the COVID-19 pandemic, deepening the hole in some districts’ budgets.

WPS, however, has not had to frequently rely on state and federal funding before the freeze. While WPS is hoping to receive funding from the state in the spring, Bottan and Mizoguchi believe that until then, the district is well-resourced to navigate this shortfall.

“We’re so fortunate to have access to a bunch of resources for, you know, supporting students [and] helping our programs grow,” Mizoguchi said. “We’re accustomed to being able to work within, I think, a very reasonable budget to make those things happen. I have a long history of admiring Susan Bottan and the work that she and her team do.”

Fleishman will be presenting the recommended budget for FY26 to the WSC on Jan. 27 at the town building at 6 p.m.. Bottan will also be presenting a financial summary of quarter two of FY25 at this school committee meeting.

This article is a developing story that is subject to updates.