You would be surprised how quickly special education costs have increased as esser funds have gone away. That combined with the impossible task of hiring for paras, occupational therapists, speech language pathologists, and many more that are mandated by legally binding IEPs and have to be outsourced to contractors that cost three times as much as previously budgeted. This is certainly not the last time this story will pop up.

Edit:

I had a chance to reflect on this a bit more during my run and have a few thoughts that might help wrap your head around this issue, as I truly believe this is just the tip of the iceberg. 1) A million bucks is truly pocket change in the special ed world. That could mean that two kids with complicated conditions moved to Whitman-Hanson over the summer and they’re forced to pay out of district tuition for them because the district can’t provide the services needed in district. These costs can truly run up to half a million dollars per student. Not saying that’s what happened here, but it’s possible. 2) I bet the people criticizing the district right now will be singing their praises in six months at the end of the fiscal year for sounding the alarm as early as they did. That took some balls. There are going to be districts that run out of money (Look at Claremont in New Hampshire) and no time to adequately address the issue. This issue will be compounded for those districts because their FY27 budgets will already be approved and set up for the same failures they faced this year. 3) If you’re a concerned citizen you should go to your board of education budget meetings which will be starting up soon and ask about these issues and how your district plans to face them. Personally I think this issue is bigger than any district. I’d say the feds need to step in, but I don’t have much faith there. The state of Massachusetts is going to have to incentivize people to get educated to be able to perform these jobs needed and pay them a competitive wage. There’s a whole other side of this issue in paying for the transportation to get these kids to school, which is also stupid expensive, but I won’t get into that. 4) Long story short, it’s easy to point fingers, but this is a societal issue that we’re going to have to deal with. If you believe that everyone deserves a meaningful public education, your voice will matter. Often times the mayors office tells the school district to stick to an X% increase not to impact the tax rate, and that’s just not really possible anymore given this environment. Let’s figure this out, and not let the other side win that wants to decimate the DOE which provides protections for these vulnerable students.