By Adam Swift
Additional state funding could be on the way to help with budget shortfalls in Chelsea and other school districts across Massachusetts.
Last month, Governor Maura Healey filed legislation to deliver $100 million to school districts across Massachusetts in Fiscal Year 2027.
Local districts are still waiting to hear what the final numbers will be for their school budgets. Chelsea, along with many other school districts, faced budget cuts in their FY27 budgets as they saw the end of Covid grant funding, among other financial issues.
“We are grateful for the Governor’s continued commitment to public education and recognize that any additional investment in our schools has the potential to positively impact students and families across the Commonwealth,” said Superintendent of Schools Dr. Almi Abeyta. “At this point, we are reviewing the details of the proposal to better understand how it may affect Chelsea Public Schools before offering more specific comments. We look forward to learning more as the budget process moves forward.”
In June, the city council approved a FY27 budget that included $156,248,491 for the Chelsea Public Schools.
The school department budget increased by 3.55 percent, which City Manager Fidel Maltez called a minimal increase to address the revenue loss from an enrollment decline of nearly 350 students.
For FY27, the city increased its support of Chelsea Public Schools by approximately $4 million, according to Maltez, which he said is the highest contribution above net school spending from any gateway community.
Maltez said the city is able to contribute this additional funding by utilizing $4,495,000 in reserves to support the budget.
In addition to declining enrollment and the loss of Covid funding, the city and district faced economic challenges due to issues such as the cost of regional schools, transportation, employee healthcare costs, and charter school costs.
In Revere, Superintendent of Schools Dr. Dianne Kelly said that that city looked to receive about $850,000 in additional school funding from the state.
Kelly noted that the supplemental money proposed by Healey is one-time funding.
“We do need to be thoughtful about how we want to spend that; we don’t want to put ourselves in a position where we’re using that money in a way that creates a legacy of being able to need to fund it going forward when we don’t know what the forward budgets are going to look like,” Kelly stated at a Revere School Committee meeting.