This is a presentation on the 2026 2027 Dennis Yarmmouth Regional School District operating budget. In this presentation, you'll be provided some information on the overall school district budget as well as some
information related to expenditures or costs and that the district [clears throat] spends money on and the increases in those costs factored for next year. You will receive information
on monies that come into the district to offset those costs, otherwise known as revenues. You'll find information related to the difference between the school district's operating budget and the assessments to the two towns. You'll be provided with
some information related to how the school district's budget compares to other local budgets. And you'll be provided with some information related to the override and how it uh relates to the school
district's budget. The 2026 2027 operating budget is built on some shared community values. The first value is the belief that healthy schools promote healthy communities. A
healthy school district helps support a healthy community helps promote property values and an informed electorate as well as students and graduates who come back to our community to help uh ensure a strong and healthy
community for all of us. It's also built on the value that our communities deserve. Both Dennis and Yarmouth both deserve excellent school system. And finally, it's built on a shared value that the school district should be a good steward of the taxpayer dollar and
that not only should the school district provide an excellent school district, but it should be done effectively and efficiently. It is with all these uh values in mind that the school district approved a
budget in March of 83,748,973. Unfortunately, this year that does present a reduced service budget, meaning that the school district will not be able to provide the same amount of services to the students and families that it does in the current school year.
The original proposed budget by the school district was nearly a 7% increase over this year, and we'll talk in later slides about some of the factors that influenced that need for increase. However, the school the school committee
reduced nearly $1.4 million from the original proposed budget, which includes 13 staff reductions over the 33 and a half staff reductions that happened just two years ago and deferred over $2 million in projects and
initiatives. [clears throat] And the school committee ultimately settled on an operating budget increase of 4.223%. 223% over last year. And you can see that is in line with the with the budget increases
over the last several years. Uh and actually smaller than the average increase over a 7-year period. Also, it's important to note that the 26 27 operating budget on where the funds
go. 72 cents of every budgeted dollar goes to personnel. These are staff that contribute to our local community. These are many of our staff live in Dennis and Yarmmouth, pay taxes in Dennis and Yarmmouth, spend their money in Dennis and Yarmmouth,
raise families in Dennis and Yarmouth, care for their uh families and their aging um parents in Dennis and Yarmouth. Uh so the our school district dollars are recycled back into our community. um
and 72 cents of every dollar um does get recycled back into our personnel is a significant portion of the school district's operating budget. So what are some of those major major cost drivers? As previously noted, the
school district budget has increased the overall operating budget by just over 4.2%. But you can see the the original proposal by the school committee at seven over 7%
was driven by many factors. Health insurance at over 8% out of district tuition which you can see in the chart to the right has been increasing steadily every year. These are students who cannot be educated inside the school district and need specialized schools.
the cost of that tuition and the transportation increased at over 4% this for next year. Regular day transportation, the big buses that you see out on the roads, that is increasing at 5% next year. The cost of utilities, natural gas and
electricity at 13% next year. Mckin Vento transportation that is the transportation for uh unhoused or otherwise known as homeless students. That increase is at 338% for next year. as well as our need to provide
affordable wages for our staff. The same challenge that I know uh our local municipalities are facing that wage increase for our hourly staff to ensure that our hourly staff are competitive just with our local um options like the
stop and shop and the Dunkin Donuts. Uh our wage increase for our hourly staff next year is at 7.47%. And you can see those are all well above uh the operating increase. So in order to meet those demands, many cuts had to
happen in other places. On the other side of the picture are monies that come into the school district. Those are otherwise known as revenues. The major source of money that comes into the school district comes from the
state referred to as state aid. There are The biggest one that comes into the school district is chapter 70 state aid. But there are a couple of other state aid um pl the couple of other state funds that come into the district.
Charter school um reimbursement as well as school choice funds that come into the school district or make up the net state aid. And you can see in the graph on the right
that for last several years, the amount of state aid coming into the school district has been increasing steadily by nearly on average a million dollars a year. And that has helped offset the amount of money that has had to be assessed to the two towns.
However, next year's state aid net state aid the is projected to be down by hund over $130,000. Also, the school district being a school a regional school district is able to get reimbursed for the cost of
transportation for the big buses that you see out on the road. However, that is projected to also be less next year than it was in this current school year by roughly $35,000. And then we have other local revenues,
other funds that come in. Uh some is the cash that we're able to invest during the school year before we have to expend it. Um, and as everyone knows, interest rates have been dropping recently, which is good for people trying to get a
mortgage. However, it is bad from an investment standpoint. So, we will see no increasement increase in our investment earnings next year. We do get funds from the solar fields that the school district is connected with and we do get additional amount of money from
the state, a small amount from that Mckin Vento transportation reimbursement as well as Medicaid. And then the school district, the school committee this year rather, voted to use uh just over $1.3 million
from their excess and deficiency fund, which is very similar to the town's free cash fund uh to help continue to move forward some important things in the schools. Uh it's going to go to purchasing curriculum for
the students. It's going to go towards providing facilities needs in the in the schools to ensure we're taking care of our buildings and it's going to providing technology and ensuring removing each of those items from the
operating budget and so that they will not be part of the operating budget and therefore not part of this year's tax levy. So what is the difference between the school district district's budget and the way assessment works in the two
communities? First, it's important to understand that the way the two towns are assessed is determined by the regional agreement between the two towns. Second, it's important to understand
that there is three steps involved in determining each town's assessment. The graphic on the right attempts to try to illustrate this rather complex and convoluted process. On the top left hand side of the image,
you see a large container of water, which is meant to visually represent the school district's operating budget next year at roughly $83 million. Prior to starting assessment, the first
uh part of the assessment for the first step in the assessment calculation is the district first siphons off any amount of money that it will receive directly in revenue before determining
assessments for the towns. So in this case, as as shown on a previous slide, we are not going to assess the towns for monies that we're going to receive from the state, the the state aid, and any of those local revenues that were
previously uh identified. So all of that money will be removed from the number that is the gross total school budget this year. That totals roughly $17
million in revenues that come directly into the school district, leaving roughly $66 million to be assessed to the two communities. So that brings us to step two of the assessment formula. Step two of the
assessment formula is to assess each town their minimum local contribution. This is not something that is determined by the school district. The school district has zero control over the minimum local contribution. The minimum
local contribution is determined by the state. It is determined by two factors. the property values of the town and what the town determine or the state determines as the town's ability to pay, which is largely
a factor of the median income of the community. And each year this minimum local contribution typically increases for both the two communities.
And unfortunately almost always it does not increase proportionately. So this year the town of Dennis's uh minimum local contribution increased
by approximately 1.5%. Where Yarmouths increased by 3.5%. So you can see in this first step in the of the equation you have an imbalance between the two communities. But this is essentially if you look at the
assessment as a bill that comes in two phases. The first phase of the bill was disproportionate in that Yarmouth saw a larger increase in their first bill than Dennis saw in their first bill. Last year it was in
the inverse. The third step in and you can see that money flows the water flows out of there and into the two buckets or into the two cups. That's the first portion of the assessment. That leaves a certain amount
of money or that needs to be assessed still to the two communities after the minimum local contribution is determined. That remaining amount above the minimum is then split between the two
communities using the fiveyear rolling foundation enrollment between the two communities. This year, that [snorts] 5-year rolling average equates to 69.547%
of the foundation enrollment being assessed to Yarmath and 30.453% of the foundation enrollment being assessed to the town of Dennis. and [clears throat] that makes up the rest of the assessment.
So, when you work your way through the three-step process and you start with an operating budget and you remove state aid and unfortunately this year when you have a decrease in state aid,
what you get is an overall larger percentage increase in the assessment from last year to this year because the state is not picking up as much of the assessment increase as they were uh or as much of the operating budget as they
were last year. More is being required from the two towns because the state is not paying as much of the school district's operating budget as they were the year before or is not as much of the
increase. Then you add on another layer, especially for the town of Yarmouth in this particular year where their minimum local contribution increased at a higher rate than the Dennis minimum local contribution did.
So that first phase of the assessment increased more for one town than it did the other. And then the remaining amount is done at the roughly 7030 split between the two towns. And what you see is assess an assessment increase in
balance between the two communities where Yarmouth sees a larger assessment increase at uh almost 6% and Dennis sees an assessment increase at 4.2%. In looking at the school district's budget in relative in relation to other
districts in the region as well as other municipal budgets, it's important to remember that this budget has been carefully designed based upon the needs of the school district. It's been carefully vetted by both
finance boards in both towns. as well as looked carefully over by the school committee and the select boards. The school district is already right sized coming into the 20 or 25 school year reducing 33 and a half staff at
that time. If you look around to our neighboring school districts, you'll see that [clears throat] Dennis Yarmouth per pupil expenditure is the second lowest on the Cape. And if you look at what our neighbor school districts are looking
for operational budget increases for next year with only a couple of exceptions, Dennis Yarmmouth's operating increase is lower than most of our neighbor communities.
Both of our towns are also looking at operational increases [clears throat] at or above 4%. And that is because we are all facing the same challenges. We all are facing the same staffing challenges and the need to hire and
retain competitive uh staff at competitive wages. We are all part of the same health insurance uh group that purchases from the same place. We're all facing the same inflationary pressures. We're all facing the same utility costs. Um all the the challenges that Dennis
Yarmouth is facing is being faced by uh my partners in the municipal side in Dennis as well as the municipal partners in Yarmouth um and as well as my colleagues across the entire uh school
district region. And it's important too to look at us as a school district as part of where we fit in the larger bucket of municipal spending in both communities.
These next two slides show charts taken from the department of revenue and they show general fund expenditures from the two towns
showing the year 2020, the year of COVID and the most recent available data on the department of revenue. And what they show is general fund expenditure by uh major function type. And you see the
purple being education spending which includes both Dennis Yarmouth and the Cape Tech uh expenditure. And what you see is over over that fiveyear or fouryear spending on the next slide that education
spending has actually decreased in both communities as a percentage of the overall funding uh or expenditures rather in both communities. So what that is telling us is that the schools are
not becoming in a large burden on the expenditures of the communities. Um rather that DY and our partners at Cape continue to provide an affordable
school program to the taxpayers. That being said, this budget is uh a reduced service budget and is positioned to require an override in
both communities in order to even have the reduced service budget that was that is presented. If the overrides do not pass, the Dennis override does not pass, $1.1 million
will need to be cut from the school district budget. If the Yarmouth override does not pass, $2.2 million will need to be cut from the school district budget. And this is due to again the way the assessments are calculated.
um that the assessment money cannot just not be taken from one town. The operating budget needs to be reduced by the total amount needed to uh get the portionment
of that one town's field override um assessment down. So, for example, in the town of Dennis, the override is roughly $350,000, which would be just over 30% of the
amount of money that would need to be taken from the operating budget in order to um get Dennis's assessment low enough to meet that $350,000
shortfall. So 30% or $350,000 is 30% of $1.1 million. So if we work off the worst case scenario for the school district, which is the $2.2 million, that would result
in 37 uh just just about 37 and a half positions cut from the district. This is in addition to the 13 positions that are already in the school district's budget and [clears throat] the 35 and 33 and a2
positions that were cut in the 2425 school year for a total of 84 positions since 23 24 which represents 23% of the Dennis Yarmouth Regional School District workforce. And so on top of services that we've
already presented about in our budget, this would include or what we would see if in a failed override would be increased class sizes to over 25. We would not be able to provide any afterchool activities from kindergarten up through the seventh grade. We'd have
reduced counseling services uh for our students with uh mental health needs. We'd have reduced responsiveness to family concerns, student behavior, community inquiries. Uh we're talking about laying off uh positions at the
administrative assistant level as well as assistant principal level. A key part of those jobs are responding to those issues. Uh reduced world language offerings. Uh no intermediate sports, no freshman sports, cuts to JV sports, no winter
percussion, no color guard. uh reduced general ed interventions for our students who are strugg uh struggling learners not part of our special education program. Uh and we would not be able to replace aged uh technology which is not able for
software upgrade which would uh increase our cyber security risk and this is just a short list of some of the challenges we'd face. uh more detailed presentation uh is available on our website uh that's been presented to the school committee
on April the 6th. And all of our budget information for the entire year as well as our end of the year reports uh line by line detail on our budget u audits everything is available on our district website for
the public to consume. Um, again available on our website and we welcome any questions that anyone has about the school district budget by contacting us directly here at the school district. Thank you.