By Dakota Antelman — Dakota@concordbridge.com
Still early in the 2025 fiscal year, uncertainties abound for Concord school administrators.
Questions about Concord’s new middle school top the list. And, for now, Superintendent Laurie Hunter has opened the door to a “reduction in force” in next year’s budget.
Just over a month after Hunter and Assistant Superintendent of Finance and Operations Robert Conry outlined budgetary challenges in the current fiscal year, they were back before the School Committee on October 22.
Two days later, Hunter, Conry, and School Committee members met with the Finance Committee as part of its budget guideline process.
Hunter cautioned the FinCom that the 2026 fiscal year budget “is still not a budget we’ve built yet. So anything we’re referencing is high-level and could change.”
Gas to electric changeover
The Finance Committee hears from town departments each fall and sets its guidelines as recommendations for budget increases in the next fiscal year.
As they gave their presentation, school officials highlighted the Ellen Garrison Building at Concord Middle School.
The new school is set to open in February. Unlike the aging Peabody and Sanborn schools, which run on natural gas, the new CMS is fully electric.
Conry said a consultant’s estimate projects the changeover from gas to electricity will be “relatively cost-neutral.” But projections are not real life, and because staff will build their budget before the middle school opens, Hunter said they will base their 2026 figures on the same estimates they used for 2025.
“The tricky part is we’re going to build [20]26 without actually living it,” she told the School Committee.
Staff cuts possible?
More uncertainty lies in a commitment the district made in 2019 to save $500,000 by consolidating Concord’s middle school programming into one building.
Though she said staff were still working to identify how they would cut costs, Hunter told the School Committee, “There will probably be some reduction in force unless attrition naturally takes care of it.”
In an email responding to questions from The Concord Bridge, Hunter said, “We do not have any positions identified or even categories of employees at this point as we start to review the options.” This, she said, “aligns with the 2019 discussion, where we were not specific, knowing it was so far in the future.”
Concord Teachers Association secretary Kate James, in a separate email, said the union did “not have anything to add” to Hunter’s comments.
The schools started new contracts with both teacher unions in July.
Separately, Hunter also said staff hope the state will renew a subsidy supporting homeless students. She said Concord has nearly 50 such students matriculated in grades K-8. With a state-run shelter still operating in town, she called the state allocation the most effective subsidy of its kind since she started her career.
“It feels like the state is paying for the services,” she said.
More financial forecasting
The Finance Committee plans to issue preliminary budget guidelines in late November ahead of final guidelines in December.
As it continues its process, the committee is mulling a new joint guideline with the Carlisle Finance Committee for the Concord-Carlisle Regional School District.
Concord’s FinCom next meets on November 7.
Meanwhile, talk of an amenities building for Concord-Carlisle High School’s athletic fields is back in circulation after the School Committee withdrew a spending request from the 2024 Town Meeting warrant.
Conry has said early cost estimates on the facility came back at less than $2 million — lower than expected. Said Hunter, “At least we didn’t hear that it had gone up by millions.”
The firm designing the potential amenities building is scheduled to bring the School Committee four design options — and their price tags — on November 19.
