VOTE NO ON ARTICLE 7

By Corinne Hogseth

Many folks have asked me for a summary of what happened over the last couple months, which resulted in the passage of a $6.6M override. Here’s the summary:

• Together for Acton outspent Keep Acton Affordable by a 2-to-1 margin;
  • Half of their money came from the state and local teachers’ unions;
  • They  had an army of teachers, local progressive activists – even children – handing out flyers, displaying signs, making calls and sending robo-texts;
• Select Board, School Committee and Finance Committee members did not just inform the public about the override – they campaigned for it from their town-owned seats, wearing pro-override buttons and promoting the Together for Acton group as a source of “information”;
• The superintendent allowed teachers to bully their colleagues and discuss the override with voting-age students (a state ethics violation);
• The Town Manager told a group of seniors – a key constituency in this vote – that there was no in-person early voting at Town Hall – this was false;
• The Town Meeting “Moderator” “moderated” a Together for Acton “open forum”, in which all questions had to be written down so they could first go through her filter. She has made it her personal mission to get the school budget voted on before free babysitting ends at 9:30 pm on Monday;
• Override proponents relied on fearmongering and lies, including that there is support for “anyone” who needs tax abatement, property values would plummet (a totally baseless claim), that the schools would “collapse” and class sizes would “explode” (to what they were 10-15 years ago) if the override didn’t pass. These are the same people who were perfectly fine with allowing students to do Zoom school for a year – that wasn’t a catastrophe but another 3 or 4 kids in a class would be??

Even with all of this, the override passed by a razor-thin margin. I firmly believe there is more opposition to this override in town than there is support. I believe the override proponents know this, as well.

We have one more opportunity – Town Meeting on Monday night – to restore some sanity and balance to the school budgets. And let’s be clear – this is all about the schools.

Of the $6.6M override, only $5.4M is being used in FY25 for the Town and District A budgets. Remember, they didn’t actually need $6.6M; they want to keep $1.2M in their piggy bank so they can raise taxes again next year without  having to go through another override.  

The Town wants you to believe that they’d have made significant cuts without the override, but the truth is that they are using funds from Free Cash (their rainy-day fund) to support the A budget. Normally, the Town budgets about $1M from Free Cash; this year, it’s over $2M. The difference in their A and B budgets is $844K. So how much of the $5.4M are they getting? Seems like $0, or less.

On the other hand, the District finally had their come-to-Jesus moment and decided running reserves down too low is a bad idea. The difference between their A and B budgets is $5.25M, and the best I can figure, it’s entirely funded by 97% of the $5.4 million.

There was some hope that the School Committee would make some adjustments to their budgeting process and assumptions after an amendment to Acton’s assessment was defeated by a much narrower margin than anyone anticipated at the 2022 Town Meeting. That seems to not have been the case.

They claimed that a huge increase in out-of-district placements for some special needs students was one of the main drivers. But this 14% increase was known in October 2022. This was not the “surprise” they claimed it to be last fall.

They claimed a small number of very high insurance claims was another major driver, but the problem was that the Acton Health Insurance Trust had run their balance down too low. These claims were covered by “borrowing” from OPEB (Other Post Employment Benefits fund for retiree benefits); they did not come out of the FY24 operations or the FY25 budget they will seek to pass on Monday. I say “borrowing” because it will never be repaid; it simply puts the Town further behind where it should be with closing the liability gap.

The main driver in this budget “crisis” is the contract the School Committee signed with the teachers’ union, the ABEA, in the spring of 2023 – nearly a year after the 2022 Town Meeting. They locked in average salary increases of approximately 4%, far more than the average 3% annual school budget increase. This would have been fine if the plan was to reduce the number of teachers, but we actually have more teachers, even though we have hundreds fewer students. Teacher compensation and benefits represent about 80% of the total district budget; without cutting headcount, we can’t cut the budget.

Which gets us back to the crux of the issue – declining enrollment. Regardless of the reason for this trend (declining birth rates, more Acton kids choosing Minuteman Tech or going private), we cannot afford to allow the School District to continue to maintain the status quo with regard to staffing.

With this override, per pupil spending will have increased 67% over the last ten years, while cumulative inflation was only 32%. The FY25 budget alone increases per pupil spending by nearly $1,600, or 7.7%.

With the reelection of the two incumbent School Committee members and no contested races on the Select Board, there has been zero turnover on any of our boards. We have no reason to hope they’ll change the spending trajectory they’ve set us on. One of the School Committee incumbents has declared that his reelection represents a “mandate”. This was literally a LOL statement (for me anyway) – more people didn’t vote for anyone than voted for him. It speaks volumes to his inability to take the pulse of the community.

Let’s do that for him. We need every single able-bodied, voting age NO voter to attend Town Meeting at 7 PM this Monday, May 6 at the high school. Check-in starts at 6 pm and will be in the cafeteria – just follow everyone else. Please arrive early.

Vote NO on Article 7.