A smaller budget increase than in past years and a shift of staff time toward high-need student populations were focal points of a March 4 joint meeting of the Cambridge City Council and the School Committee. The meeting was to discuss the proposed 2027 Cambridge school district budget.
The budget will allot for literacy interventionists and student need-based staffing, Superintendent David Murphy said at the meeting. Murphy said the district will need to be “thoughtful” about the structure of staffing models to ensure all students are being served, “with a particular emphasis on our high need student populations.”
Staffing makes up 83 percent of the district’s spending. Of the projected $293.5 million budget for the upcoming fiscal year, a 4.5 percent increase from last year, the district estimates it will spend $244.3 million on staff salaries and benefits, Murphy said at the meeting.
The district is built on its personnel, Murphy said, and the costliness of staffing “speaks to the relatively marginal impact that other types of either reductions or efficiencies can represent.”
Specifics on how the district might restructure staffing are still in discussion.
Performance improvement the goal
Councillor Patty Nolan, a former School Committee Member, noted at the meeting that Cambridge spends double the national average in total costs per pupil, and the sixth most in Massachusetts. It also far outspends state averages on per-student costs in professional learning and instructional materials. Professional development, she said “can really help teachers. But also, if it’s not tied directly to the classroom, it often is not that effective.”
The recent release of an equity audit that urged a more effective use of the district’s “human capital,” as well as potential staffing interventions to address the district’s elementary literacy gaps both point to a need to prioritize high-need students.
Murphy said the true measure of progress will be improvements for students, adding that recent conversations with the school committee have centered a need to monitor whether “staff charged with supporting all of our students, including students that qualify under high need categories, are benefiting from that improved professional learning.”
Certain public commenters at the previous day’s meeting of the school committee pointed to the importance of literary interventionists to prevent students from falling behind. Murphy said the budget will prioritize individualized instruction.
“In response to the meeting last night” there will be “heavier investments in interventionists,” Murphy said. “We are essentially maintaining the staffing level that we had prior to the closure of one of our schools.”
The district’s Chief Financial Officer, Ivy Washington, said Cambridge Public Schools use a tiered system of staffing under which there are “base level positions that are the same at every school,” like principals and psychologists, “enrollment-based” positions like classroom teachers, and “student need-based” positions for students that may be English Learners or require special education. The student need-based tier will be a priority in the upcoming budget, Murphy added.
Smaller budget increase
The district is proposing to add $13.5 million to its budget, lower than percentage increases in recent budgets. Since the 2023 fiscal year, spending has increased by about $61 million, up 26 percent. The biggest jump came in the 2025 fiscal year when the district added about $23 million to accommodate costs associated with a longer school day. (Elementary and middle Schools in the district gained thirty minutes of instructional time per day at the start of the 2024-2025 school year).
Murphy said this year’s budget decisions are unusual because of the lower percent increase requested and the number of collective bargaining agreements – nine – that expire this year. Notably, the district’s current agreement with the teacher’s union will expire at the end of August. Also, there will be higher-than-usual spending on facilities and special education.
The increase for the 2027 fiscal year is slightly lower than in previous years because of unusually high increases in recent years and the economic climate.
While many costs will be similar to those in the previous fiscal year, the district’s responsibility for special education tuition will be more expensive. The number of out-of-district placements has been largely stable, Murphy said at the meeting, but the costs themselves are “escalating dramatically.”
Facilities expenditure will also rise in the upcoming fiscal year, which generated conversation about whether the district needs all of the buildings it owns, some of which are not at full capacity.
Councillor Marc McGovern urged against giving control of the buildings back to the city, referencing the decision to keep the vacant building at 158 Spring Street following the shutdown of the Kennedy Longfellow School. “You may want those buildings in 10 years,” McGovern said.
The future of 158 Spring Street will likely be the district’s most notable facility-related decision this year. The district needs to maximize “that asset in a way that improves the conditions for learning for all students across the school system,” Murphy said.
The district will also add $500,000 to fund MBTA passes for students at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, a decision voted on by the City Council in 2022. That money will transfer from the city’s budget to the school’s operation budget.
Murphy also noted increased spending on out-of-school “learning time programs” at Fletcher Maynard Academy and King Open School, expenditures he said will continue at least into fiscal year 2028.
Property taxes fund 91 percent of the district’s budget, with the remainder coming from Chapter 70 Aid, or state aid given to public schools. The Cambridge Public Schools budget represents almost 28 percent of the city’s total budget.
The district operates on a fiscal year that begins on July 1. Superintendent Murphy will present the proposed budget during a virtual special meeting of the School Committee on March 11 at 6 p.m. Community input will be received at a March 17 meeting of the committee. A final vote on the budget will be taken April 7.
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