Dear Holliston Parents, Guardians, Caregivers, Staff & Community Members:
The Holliston School Committee is pleased to present to you our finalized FY2027 budget request which has been supported by the Finance Committee and will be voted on at Town Meeting (on May 11th, 7pm, Holliston High School Auditorium). We believe that this budget solidly balances the current needs of the District while ensuring prudent fiscal discipline to help us achieve our goals. As previously stated, our level service budget meets the commitment made to the residents in 2024, during the operational override to fund the teacher contract, for a 3.25% budget increase. Due to the strong advocacy of our state elected leaders, especially Representative James Arena-Derosa, a higher House 1 school aid (Chapter 70) budget, gave Holliston enough “extra” money to allow the Finance Committee to also recommend our top priority need which was for the reimplementation (after being cut many years ago) of an Out-of-District Coordinator (OOD, 0.5 FTE) which will help ensure that our special education population is being served as best as possible. With the OOD taking over most of the out of district travel currently being undertaken by our SSAs and SSD, this will free them up to ensure better support for students in district which we hope will allow more students to remain in District. We are very grateful for the support of the Fincom on this request.
With this one additional position, the HSC’s budget request now stands at $45,874,162 representing a 3.39% increase over FY2026. At a time when many districts are undergoing significant layoffs, even to get to similar sized budget increases, HPS has been able to achieve our budget with minimal impacts to staffing.
Please feel free to reach out with any questions and we hope you are able to attend Town Meeting (5/11,7pm, HHS auditorium) to support our budget request, some capital requests, as well as our High School Feasibility Study.
We look forward to seeing you then!
Sincerely,
The Holliston School Committee