School and financial officials from Essex and Manchester-By-The-Sea gathered at Essex Town Hall on February 26 to discuss ways to attack the budget problem the Manchester Essex Regional School District faces each year.
Superintendent of Schools Pam Beaudoin said the District has been on the verge of a deficit for several years.
“We have been able to manage ... by using some combination of cuts and (money from) reserves,” said Beaudoin. “But we are at the point where future cuts will lead to a direct degradation of the program.”
One model for the fiscal year 2026 budget that Beaudoin and the District’s Director of Budget and Operations Michelle Cresta presented would include a 27 percent increase in health insurance costs, using $500,000 from the E&D reserve fund, using $150,000 from OPEB funds, cutting two administration positions and shifting some high school teaching positions.
Beaudoin said that over the past couple of weeks, they had searched for a health insurance provider that might offer a lower cost. But came up empty. She said that it was now too late, due to contractual deadlines, to sign on to a new health insurance provider for the coming school year.
According to their model, the changes still would result in a 7.5 percent budget increase over the current year. That would work out as a 6.96 percent increase for Manchester and an 8.64 percent increase for Essex.
The other models that Beaudoin and Cresta created would use up more or all of the school district’s reserves in FY 26. That would slightly lower the percentage increases for FY26, but would mean much higher increases in future years.
“No matter what we do this year, the growth of the school district (budget) will run between 3.5 and 4.5 percent” in coming years, said Beaudoin.
Essex Town Administrator Brendhan Zubricki said that the FY26 school budget was still under review by the Finance Committee and the Board of Selectmen.
“They are very interested in if there is anything else that can be done to help close the gap for FY 26,” said Zubricki. “Otherwise, just from the numbers perspective, we are looking at an override.”
Manchester Town Administrator Greg Federspiel said the school budget presented a “significant structural problem.”
“We’re not going to solve it for next year,” said Federspiel. “It’s going to be a multi-year process.”
Ann Harrison of the Manchester Select Board said that the size of the school district – which she said was the smallest in the state – contributed to financial difficulties.
Benjamin Buttrick, the vice chairman of the Essex Finance Committee, suggested that a two-prong approach is needed – first to solve the FY26 budget and second to look at the bigger picture.
“If you isolate the contractual obligations,” said Buttrick, “we are going to need an override. .... The only thing else is to cut heads.”
The teachers’ salary increase is 6.3 percent, or nearly $600,000, over the current year. The health insurance and other benefits increase is 22.6 percent or $1.37 million.
Jacob Foster of the School Committee, said he hoped the officials would come up with a “strategy or possible strategies for funding the schools for at least the next three years.”
Foster also noted that the expense of building a new elementary school in Essex was also looming over the towns.
Jodi Harris, chairman of the Essex Finance Committee, said school funding was an ongoing problem.
“These meetings are critical to solving the funding problem,” said Harris. “I’m sure we’d like to not be in this budget crisis year over year.”
Foster admitted that the officials were facing a deadline of only a couple of weeks before the school budget needed to be approved by both towns’ finance committees and select boards. Also attending the meeting was School Committee member Anna Mitchell and Manchester Finance Committee member Sarah Mellish.
The next meeting of the MERSD School Committee is Tuesday, March 18 at 6 p.m., when it will vote on a final FY26 District budget.
