The main event at Tuesday’s Lowell City Council meeting was City Manager Tom Golden’s presentation of his proposed FY26 city budget to councilors. The formal public hearing on the budget is scheduled for the council’s May 27th meeting.

A concise PowerPoint presentation identified five “major fiscal challenges.”

• Increase in the Pension Assessment of $1.4 million;
• The average overall Health Insurance premium increase is 12.7% from the GIC;
• Increase in the Charter Schools assessment $4.9 million;
• Increase in Debt Service of approximately $2.8 million;
• Increase in union collective bargaining agreements $2 million.

Omitted from that list is a cut in the amount of cash that this budget would provide to the Lowell Public Schools, something that School Superintendent Liam Skinner and others highlighted in their remarks to councilors on this agenda item. Before getting into Skinner’s remarks, let’s review how public school funding works in Lowell.

Back in 1993, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in the case of McDuffy v. Secretary of the Executive Office of Education held that the Massachusetts State Constitution imposes an enforceable duty on the Commonwealth to provide an adequate education in the public schools for all children. That duty ultimately rested on the state, not just on local communities. The court also found that the existing school financing system, which relied heavily on local property taxes, resulted in vast disparities in educational opportunities. It concluded that this system was not currently fulfilling the Commonwealth’s constitutional duty to provide an adequate education, especially for students in less affluent communities.

In response to McDuffy, the state legislature passed the Massachusetts Education Reform Act of 1993. This law, often referred to as Ed Reform, substantially increased state funding to municipal schools and directed a larger share of state dollars to less affluent school districts to close funding gaps with wealthier communities and to provide more equitable educational opportunities.

Recognizing that if the state simply gave more money to poorer communities, those communities would likely shift whatever municipal money was being spent on the schools to other purposes, Ed Reform established a minimum local contribution to the schools by each community with the intent that local government contribute its fair share to school funding.

The city’s contribution to the schools takes two forms: One is a direct appropriation of cash from the city that is spent by the school committee as it sees fit; the other is “maintenance of effort” which is a credit for in-kind contributions that benefit the schools. Examples of “maintenance of effort” expenditures would be snow plowing, facility repairs and maintenance, utilities, insurance, certain employee benefits, and administrative support.

To illustrate how maintenance of effort works, let’s say there is a broken toilet at Lowell High School. The school custodian submits a work request to the city’s Department of Public Works for a plumber to come to the school to fix the toilet. The plumber, whose salary is paid by the city’s DPW, comes to the school and makes the repair. Fiscally, the city then gets a dollar amount credit for the portion of the plumber’s salary attributed to that repair that is counted as a maintenance of effort contribution to the schools.

This process recognizes legitimate expenditures by the city on behalf of the schools, however, it has long been a point of friction between City Hall and the school department. While there are complex state regulations that govern this and while the city’s claimed maintenance of effort expenditures are reviewed by the state, the school department has little if any control over these costs and how they are prioritized. Furthermore, the school administration has no control over the city employees performing the tasks, so there is little incentive on the city side to do things more efficiently or faster. (Notably, this dysfunctional arrangement is one of the reasons some city councilors are pushing so hard for a joint facilities department although I’m not sure that would solve this problem.)

While the city must still contribute some amount of cash directly to the school department budget, there is a temptation for the city to offset as much as possible with “maintenance of effort” credits. The city must pay that DPW plumber anyway, so the more of their salary that can be attributed to school jobs, the less cash the city must pay to the schools with the savings used on other priorities.

With that as background, let’s return to Superintendent Skinner’s remarks. He pointed out that most of the school department’s funding comes from the state. The city’s minimum contribution to the schools under state law is $68.9 million, however, most of that comes in the form of “maintenance of effort” with only a small portion being a direct cash payment to the school budget. Skinner said that over the past three years, the amount of cash from the city to the schools has been $14 million, however, this budget cuts that amount to $10 million.

This reduction, Skinner said, has “practical and moral implications.” Specifically, it would cause 53 school department employees to lose their jobs which will result in many of our neediest students losing essential services.

Superintendent Skinner next addressed what he called a “false narrative” that the school department had been awash with money from the federal ESSER program – ESSER stands for Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief, a series of federal grants designed to help K-12 schools address the profound impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on education – and that the employees who would now lose their jobs were just those added through ESSER funding, so the school department should have foreseen and prepared for these cuts. Skinner said that was not the case. He said the school department did add employees with ESSER funding but that all those positions were eliminated in last year’s budget. All the ESSER jobs are already gone, he emphasized.

Knowing that funding would be tight this year, Skinner said the School Department prepared its budget by cutting Central Office positions and level-funding the schools. However, that budget depends on $14 million in city cash, not the $10 million City Manager Golden is recommending.

Superintendent Skinner repeatedly stressed the moral obligation the city has to its schools. He said the school staff “does a heroic job” with one-third of the students learning English; ten percent of the students being homeless (an astounding and disturbing number); and 20 percent of students receiving special educational services.

In closing, Superintendent Skinner acknowledged that there is much good happening in the city of Lowell but “you cannot bring success to our city unless you bring the schools along with you. That’s practical, but it’s also moral.” He asked that the city’s cash contribution to the schools be restored to last year’s level to avoid these cuts.

Councilors who spoke were mostly supportive of Superintendent Skinner’s request, but councilors have no power to increase the city budget. That power lies exclusively with the city manager. Councilors can only ratify the manager’s proposed budget or cut it.

Citing the great relationship he has with Superintendent Skinner, City Manager Golden told councilors, “We’ll pull back and reconsider” the amount of cash directed to the schools.

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Although City Manager Golden is congenitally upbeat, some foreboding crept into his overall remarks on the city budget. Because of “uncertainty at the state and federal level” Golden predicted “a very bumpy FY26.” (The state and city both use a fiscal year that begins on July 1 and ends on June 30, so FY26 runs from July 1, 2025, to June 30, 2026). He also advised against the use of “one-time funds” for budgetary purposes. In this he was likely referring to the city’s “rainy day fund” which Golden said was now at $17.1 million. Sustaining that financial cushion is critical to rating agencies keeping the city’s bond rate in a favorable place. While this might not seem like such a big deal, a better bond rating saves the city substantially in the long run with lower interest rates on borrowed money for things like the Lowell High addition.

Golden’s “one-time funds” comment could likely be a reference to the $4 million cash cut in the city’s contribution to the schools. The easy way out would be to just pluck that amount from the city’s rainy-day fund and give the schools what they ask for. But that would be short-sighted in two respects. First, it would embed a structural deficit in the school department budget and simply put off this reckoning for another year.  Perhaps more importantly, this would raise a red flag with the bond rating agencies which would likely manifest in the city having to pay higher interest rates to borrow money in the future.

Which is not to say that the proposed $4 million cut in cash to the schools should stand but finding that money will be a challenge. The formal public hearing on the FY26 budget is scheduled for the May 27, 2025, council meeting.

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The month-long Proleung Khmer observance wraps up this coming Friday night with its Closing Ceremony and Cultural Showcase beginning at 5:30 pm (on May 23) at the Lowell Memorial Auditorium. Tickets for the event which features a buffet dinner, entertainment, and dancing, are available online.

Proleung Khmer commemorates the 50th anniversary of the onset of the Khmer Genocidal Regime in Cambodia which took the lives of an estimated 1.7 million to 3 million Cambodian people due to overwork, starvation, disease and executions. This tragedy also launched a chain of events that led thousands of survivors of the genocide to settle and remain in Lowell.

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If you’re reading this early today, today’s tour of Lowell Cemetery begins at 10 am at the Lawrence Street gate. The tour will visit the graves and tell the stories of some of the hundreds of veterans of the US military who are buried in the cemetery.

The regular spring tour of the cemetery will be held on Saturday, June 7, and Sunday, June 8, both starting at 10 am from the Lawrence Street gate.

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This week on richardhowe.com:

Louise Peloquin recently visited Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris and shares her observations on the post-fire restoration complete with two dozen photos.

Louise also contributed her weekly translation of a L’Etoile newspaper article. This week, local coverage of high school proms in 1924.

In her monthly “Living Madly” column, Emilie-Noelle Provost writes about the importance of Third Places in our lives.

Leo Racicot has another nostalgic look at life in Lowell, this one about the importance of music.