Inside the Budget, Part 7: Required Net School Spending

One of the issues that emerged in the first Override Listening Session was whether the override should go for schools or other city services.

In fact, schools and other city services are all part of the same budget, and a dollar spent on schools is a dollar not spent on potholes, animal control, or keeping the library open longer hours.

One key difference between the schools and other departments, however, is that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts sets a minimum amount that we must spend on our schools. If we don’t meet that minimum, the state will take strong enforcement action, such as not letting us set our tax rate or suspending all state aid.

This minimum is called Required Net School Spending. It’s a bit complicated—the details are on the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education website—but the bottom line is very simple: In Fiscal 2018, Melrose was required to spend approximately $39 million on education, regardless of how much we had to allocate to anything else.

With so much of the budget already spoken for, the other departments in the city are left to divide up the rest, which means there is little flexibility. Increasing revenues through an override would allow us to put as much as we need to into the schools and would benefit other city services as well: Fire, snow removal, potholes, trees, library hours, the Milano Center, kids’ recreational programs, and all the other things we do. Because in the end, just as we are all one city, this is all one budget, and what affects one department affects all.