8.2 million dollars is a figure that draws the eye.

That’s the estimated budget deficit for the Public Schools of Brookline in Fiscal Year 2026 (FY 26). In other words, the school district is 8.2 million dollars short of the allocated revenue it anticipates needing to provide all the services for students next year.

How did we get here?

According to Assistant Head of School Hal Mason, part of the issue is an increase in transportation costs that impact the district and the rising cost of living that wages need to keep up with. Mason also cited a phenomenon occurring across the country as a contributing factor to the staggering deficit for FY 26: Schools were flooded with additional funding, especially from the COVID-19 Stimulus Package (ARPA, 2021).

“That created a large additional source of revenue for towns and schools, and all of that has ended, and so Brookline—like almost every other school district—expanded their offerings,” Mason said. “That money is no longer there, but those services still remain. So that’s a decent part of the problem.”

According to Head of School Anthony Meyer, a deputy superintendent leaving the district suggested financial mismanagement was the cause for the ballooning deficit. The Town Administrator and the Brookline Select Board are commissioning an independent audit centering around town administration and the Office of Finance to assess the allegation.

“They’re the folks who put in controls and lead the budget process,” Meyer said. “But I think it’s more universal than that, looking at our budget practices, looking at the specifics of where money went, where money is planned to go, and whether there were any issues with how we were managing public money or town taxpayer money.”

Simultaneously, according to Social Studies Curriculum Coordinator Jen Martin, the town’s historic inability to maintain stable leadership in central administration has added a measure of chaos to the already uncertain question of financial mismanagement.

“It’s hard because we’re getting this crazy news, and the question is: is this a problem that was created 10 minutes ago, the beginning of this year, last year, or two years ago with a different person?” Martin said. “Because the amount of money we’re talking about isn’t something where one person messed up. And we woke up, and we’re like, ‘Oh my God, where did eight million dollars go?’ It’s not like somebody stole eight million dollars and we’re just trying to find them.”

The impact of the deficit

While the audit is going on, plans are being created by school administrators to deal with the projected eight-million-dollar deficit.

“One of the key pieces is, how do I work with my team at the high school to have the cuts not hit the classroom as much as possible in class sizes?” Meyer said. “That’s difficult, given we have 300 courses we offer and five languages; we have a lot we offer here. How do we not let this budget deficit impact our identity and the experience that students are having?”

Mason said administration is trying to make cuts through attrition by not filling the positions of faculty who retire or resign of their own volition. While in prior years, this might have done the trick, the scale of this year’s budget deficit means attrition is unlikely to account for enough cuts in spending.

“We would hope to figure out a way to make it work so that any reductions would happen in that way, rather than saying, ‘Oh, great, new young teacher that we love and the kids love, sorry, you were the last person hired. You are going to be laid off.’ That’s the last thing that we want to do,” Mason said. “But unfortunately, the way it works in schools, in organizations, is that, essentially, the people that are the newest are the ones who are vulnerable, and sometimes those are very good teachers that you don’t want to lose.”

Meyer said he is determined to protect the student experience at the high school and to lessen the deficit through careful cuts. While the budget crisis is undeniably going to impact the number of people who work at the high school, Meyer wants to avoid losing classroom teachers.

“If you reduce the number of teachers, you either increase class size and/or reduce course offerings,” Meyer said. “So that is an area we want to mitigate as much as possible. It could mean reducing the number of administrators we have, and that would mean reducing the number of social workers; all kinds of positions that are not instructional for the most part, but are student-facing.”

Because of the cuts, certain programs and opportunities the high school currently provides might be on the chopping block. For example, the chance to take a double science, history or math course might not be an option since the school needs to make sure each student has what they need in terms of graduation requirements before adding additional courses in one discipline.

The Materials Fee program

The Materials Fee program was also considered for a cut. This program currently allows the children of Brookline teachers to attend Brookline schools for 3500 dollars each year per student. There is a typical three percent annual raise in fees, however, the potential cut would more than double that fee to 8000 dollars. Thanks to advocacy from Brookline educators like biology teacher Elizabeth Crane, the Brookline School Committee (BSC) and their finance subcommittee voted to reject the proposal.

Crane has worked at the high school for the past 23 years and has two children (in 7th and 10th grade) who attend the Brookline Public Schools through the Materials Fee program. She wrote a letter of support for the program to the BSC when the cut was still on the table, explaining how the current Materials Fee program makes a better experience for all Brookline students. She wrote that the program encourages educators to come to and stay in the district, and that the program gives support to families who would alternatively have to rush to pick up their children in different districts.

Now that the proposal has been rejected, Crane said she, along with other Brookline educators, feel relieved and appreciative of their partnership with the BSC.

“The School Committee is essentially saying, ‘We know that you educators have built this amazing school system, and yes, your own children should be part of it too. You don’t need to disconnect your professional and personal life. If you want to keep them together you can,” Crane said. “We want you to be part of the fabric of this town and we know you will become doubly invested, not only as educators but also as parents. And we believe as you do that that will bolster our community.’”

Crane said that with two children in the Brookline Public School system, she views it from multiple perspectives, both as a parent and as an educator.

“My own kids see themselves as an integral part of Pierce and Brookline High,” Crane said. “They love their teachers, coaches, principles and peers. They and we feel really welcomed and wanted here, for our whole family.”

Food service cuts

Another cut still under consideration by the School Committee, according to the school committee meeting on March 6, is eliminating all the food service workers in the cafeterias of Brookline Public Schools and hiring a private company to do that work. This would save the town money because it would no longer have to pay for health insurance for these workers. Guidance counselor Richard Gorman, who knows many of the cafeteria workers well, said he is worried about the implications of this potential cut.

“[The cafeteria workers] represent the poorest paid employees probably in the town, certainly in the school. And they represent the non-white people also. You’re eliminating the non-white poor people who work in the district, some of whose kids go to school here,” Gorman said. “Why would you do that? Another reason is that nobody cares. If you’re going to eliminate AP Chemistry, for example, people would care about that. They’d say, ‘No, I need my AP Chem!’ If you’re eliminating people who are already marginalized, then some people won’t care about that.”

Gorman said he thinks that not enough people know that these cuts are being considered.

“I found that interesting because we preach equity around Brookline, and this seems to be an issue about equity. It seems to be a social justice issue,” Gorman said. “We teach a social justice class at the high school. I think we have a social justice issue here in our basement and no one seems to be talking about it.”

Additional cuts

At their meeting on March 6, the BSC revealed the results of votes regarding some of the proposed cuts. Among others, they voted not to entertain cuts to the Materials Fee program, performing arts, middle school sports and some non-mandatory summer programs. The accepted cuts to IT services, paraprofessionals, new position reduction, along with various internal administration cuts equated to more than 1.15 million dollars. Simultaneously, 8.6 million dollars worth of proposals are still pending, and the town must cut an additional 5 million dollars to eliminate the deficit.

Meyer said the BSC has been receiving a lot of community advocacy against potential cuts. Meyer said he appreciates groups rallying for beloved programs, but he also worries about the implications of this advocacy.

“If you advocate for one aspect or one component, that means that that cut hits elsewhere,” Meyer said. “I think we begin advocating before we have a better sense of our fiscal reality, and that’s what’s been really hard. The clarity of where we are and where we’re headed has been more challenging than it typically has been, which leads people to want to advocate because in a world of uncertainty, you’re going to act out of fear and concern.”

Dealing with the responsibility of making cuts, Meyer said he is deeply saddened by the idea of people losing their jobs.

“I think what I would emphasize of both district leaders and school leaders as we make these difficult decisions, we try to stay focused on: these are human beings, period. So as inhumane as some of this can feel, I want to continue to be able to look people in the eye and tell them where I think we are, and to try to be honest in my communications,” Meyer said.

As social studies curriculum coordinator, Martin is responsible for her department’s budget, hiring and supervision. Early conversations about the deficit suggested that the school couldn’t expect any more full-time equivalencies since they’d hired so many new teachers last year. Over the past few months, the situation was revealed to be more dire than it originally appeared.

“It’s a combination of understanding it might not be one person’s fault, it might be a very complex issue, and then at the same time, people will get fired, and those are people with kids and mortgages and houses,” Martin said. “But also because those people are fired, some part of Brookline kids’ education will be worse for it because whoever we’re firing did a job: whether it was the cafeteria lady, or whether it was a teacher who made it so you had a smaller class size.”

A pattern of deficits

Martin has noticed that overrides have become increasingly necessary to fund Brookline schools in the past ten years.

“I think that the union position on all of this is that, in their official statements, they refer to [the schools] as ‘chronically underfunded.’ Every year we have to do something like this. This is just a very extreme version of it, but it does feel like in the past decade we haven’t had a year where it’s been like, ‘Things are great, everything is cool, can’t wait to hire, let’s just go for it!’” Martin said.

While Meyer says the FY 26 budget deficit has been the largest monetarily, the funding crisis that occurred in the spring of 2020 in conjunction with the COVID-19 pandemic caused a much larger emotional strain on Brookline faculty that is still being felt.

“Hundreds of people received those pink slips because the district wasn’t sure what they could afford going into that next year. And so that was probably the worst experience I’ve seen, budgetarily, where there was mass fear and upset,” Meyer said. “As a principal, that was very hard and emotionally charged in 2020 and very stressful for all kinds of people, and it had a lasting effect.”

Still, Meyer, who has worked at the high school for 21 years, nine of which he was Head of School, said he sees notes of hope in the entire situation.

“I really believe in the BHS team in terms of our process for budget reductions,” Meyer said. “It won’t always be pretty, we won’t always all agree, but I believe in our ability as an administration, to be honest with each other and make decisions that might be hard.”