Belmont Superintendent's Blog

Hello Belmont Families!

This weekend brings Veterans Day, when we honor the men and women who have served in the United States Armed Forces with their dedication and courage. I had the honor this past week of commemorating this day with the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the Belmont Chapter at Butler, Burbank, and BMS, including a luncheon where we came together in appreciation of our veterans. I would like to express my gratitude to the VFW for the opportunity to share in that event and to our veterans for their service to and sacrifice for our country.

As I noted in my previous message in October, this year presents a challenging budget season. For FY25, we have been developing an override and a non-override budget, both of which we’ll be sharing next week.

We began the FY25 budget season by establishing the district’s FY25 Budget Assumptions and Priorities, which were produced with feedback from leadership and the School Committee. From there, we developed an FY25 “level service” budget, which describes the same level of services from year to year, but includes a redistribution and/or increase of current resources in order to respond to the changing needs of students.

After determining our level service budget, we then developed a budget for an override scenario, which includes requests for added resources necessary for program improvements. Over the past months I have been doing my entry planning, looking at the strengths and areas for growth of the district. Through that process, I have been identifying resource gaps that we have to address to strengthen the educational programming we offer our students. These requests for additional resources in FY25 are necessary to close those gaps.

In addition to the level service and override budgets, we also developed a budget for a non-override scenario, which shows reductions across departments and schools. On October 18, 2023, I presented a Non-Override Budget Methodology to the School Committee. This methodology outlines a framework that would guide the reduction decisions of the School Department. It is important to note that these reductions would have a detrimental impact on our students’ educational experiences and the Belmont community more broadly. Therefore, these are not recommendations, but rather reductions that the district is prepared to implement if there is insufficient funding in a non-override scenario.

Next week brings two important opportunities for community engagement for the school budget process. On November 14, we will present the FY25 school budgets to the School Committee. This is a hybrid, public meeting open to anyone who would like to attend in person or watch on Zoom or local cable television. At that point, the budget documents will be publicly available.

On Thursday, November 16, there will be a public forum about the FY25 school budgets. The purpose of this forum is to solicit comments and feedback from staff, families, and members of the Belmont community regarding the budgets. This meeting is also hybrid, and we welcome anyone from the Belmont community to join us either in person or on Zoom.

Notices with Zoom links for both meetings on November 14 and November 16 can be found on the School Committee page of the website: School Committee Notices and Agendas

This is a very important budget year for the schools and all town departments in Belmont. It is my sincere hope that we will avoid the difficult situation that a non-override scenario would bring to the Belmont school community. Respecting the challenges of budgeting for the whole community, we believe a pragmatic, supported budget will enable the district to improve essential educational programming, so that students continue to receive high-quality learning experiences, and families feel confident that schools are serving their children in the best way possible.

Included here are key dates of budget meetings that are coming up over the next few months. These include school focused meetings (highlighted in blue) and town meetings. I encourage everyone to listen to and participate in these conversations to contribute your voices to the process.