2024 Budget Battle
What Happened?
In an inflationary environment of 6-8%, our Superintendent (with the support of the School Committee) proposed a reasonable 4.7% 2024 budget increase for K-8 Concord Public Schools (CPS).
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Dr. Hunter and her team are careful stewards of the CPS budget and presented a transparent "level-service" proposal to meet the needs of our students - with no new programs.
But the Select Board and FinCom pushed back against this and voted to recommend only a 3.3% increase (their "guideline" target), advocating for $600K in additional cuts that would have impacted our kids and the educators who teach them. Meanwhile, the town asked for and got a 6.5% 2024 Town Government budget increase, the second biggest line item in the town budget.
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At Town Meeting April 30th, these cuts to a reasonable budget were viewed to be disproportionate and arbitrary and, as such, the motion they brought to reduce the CPS budget was defeated by an overwhelming margin (90%?).
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Voters then approved Article 17 (the proposed CPS budget ask with the 4.7% increase) via an overwhelming (95%?) majority. Perhaps more importantly, 100% of the extensive public comments made were in support of Dr. Hunter's budget and the School Committee's ask and against the FinCom and Select Board's position. These comments were made by a wide variety of voters across various age groups in the audience, not just parents.
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The Cuts That Could Have Been Made
To get down to the 3.3% increase the FinCom and SB wanted, the potential cuts that would have been needed were as follows:
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