By Adam Swift
Additional state funding could be on the way to help the Revere schools.
Earlier this month, Governor Maura Healey filed legislation to deliver $100 million to school districts across Massachusetts in Fiscal Year 2027.
At last week’s school committee meeting, Superintendent of Schools Dr. Dianne Kelly said the supplemental funding still needs the approval of the state legislature, and encouraged school committee members and the public to write to their state legislators to advocate for the funding.
“We anticipate that we will get about 850,000 additional dollars,” said Kelly. “It is one-time funding, so 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 said she was also encouraged by the fact that the governor’s budget included the reestablishment of the Foundation Budget Review Commission.
“That gives me hope that there will be a change to the funding formula that will give school districts funding in a way that they don’t have to rely on these one-time late-in-the-summer initiatives that we can’t really use to play into our budgeting process,” said the superintendent. “We are hopeful that in August, ideally, but maybe in September, we’ll be coming to you with a plan on how we anticipate the best way to spend those funds.”
One thing Kelly said she hopes the district can do is to reestablish the building principals’ discretionary that has been cut for the last two years. She said the cuts have hampered the principals’ ability to bring in professional development via building initiatives.
“A second piece is that for the fourth year now, we have applied to the state for their early literacy grants that pays for our Ignite high dosage tutoring,” said Kelly. “We know that we are eligible for less this year than we have been in the past; so we are hoping that maybe we can use some of these funds to augment that program as well, which has been incredibly successful.”
In the next month, Kelly said the administration would have an official proposal before the school committee of how it would like to spend the additional state funds, provided it is approved by the legislature.
“Once the funding is approved, we can start working on contracts and moving forward with the program to start spending the money until it actually comes into our hands in September or October, whatever the case may be,” said Kelly.
Mayor Patrick Keefe said that if the money is approved, it will be deposited into the municipal account and then allocated for the school department.