The Revere School Committee voted Tuesday night to approve a $164.2 million FY27 school budget that district officials say was shaped by declining enrollment, rising costs, and an effort to avoid deeper cuts seen in other Massachusetts communities.
The approved budget totals $164,257,800 and reflects a 1% increase over the current fiscal year budget. District leaders said the spending plan was built amid a sharp drop in student enrollment and continued pressure from inflation, employee health insurance increases, and limited state funding growth.
According to district data presented during the meeting, Revere Public Schools’ foundation enrollment—the state’s calculation of the number of students a district is financially responsible for educating—fell by 323 students, or 4.1%, from FY26 to FY27. District officials said Revere experienced the seventh-steepest enrollment decline in Massachusetts.
District leaders said the budget process began months ago and included multiple meetings between the School Committee’s Ways and Means Subcommittee, Superintendent Dr. Dianne Kelly, district principals, and administrators.
Ways and Means Chair John Kingston said the district relied heavily on state Chapter 70 education aid, which he described as insufficient to sustain previous staffing and service levels.
“Until Chapter 70 gets corrected, we’re going to continue to have issues at the local level,” Kingston said. “We’re not the only community that’s having issues this year.”
“The 3.0 budget is taking $2.6 million out of district reserves to help this year and to help cushion the blow of having cuts,” Kingston said.
District officials emphasized that while reductions were necessary, the budget was designed to preserve classroom supports and core student services as much as possible.
According to district data, the FY27 budget includes 66 total position reductions or attrition-related staffing changes. Superintendent Dr. Dianne Kelly acknowledged the difficult nature of the staffing decisions but said lower enrollment requires fewer positions.
“For this reason, many of our position cuts make fiscal sense as lower enrollment logically requires less staffing,” Kelly wrote in a budget preamble presented to the committee.
Kelly also stressed that district officials worked to minimize impacts on students and preserve manageable class sizes.
“I’m proud of the fact that we’ve been able to, with very few exceptions, move several positions but still keep class size at the lower elementary right around 20,” Kelly said during the meeting. She added that middle school class sizes are expected to remain in the lower to mid-20s, while high school class sizes will average in the mid to upper-20s.
Committee members repeatedly noted that Revere avoided some of the larger reductions being seen elsewhere in the state.
Committee members also highlighted efforts to reassign employees to open positions whenever possible rather than eliminating jobs outright.
“We try to find them a job in another school or another grade, preserving and thinking of the human first,” Monterroso said.
District officials said principals and central office administrators will continue refining staffing assignments throughout the summer based on enrollment shifts and course registrations.
Kelly also noted that some positions could potentially return in future years if enrollment rebounds or funding conditions improve.
“When the budget is better, or as enrollment increases, we recover these positions as much as we can,” Kelly said. “None of these positions are unimportant.”