Health care, transportation costs drive School Committee’s $159.4M FY26 budget

Advocate Staff Report

The Revere School Committee voted to finalize and approve the $159.4 million budget for FY2025-26 at their meeting this week. The committee has been working for weeks to try and close a multimillion-dollar budget gap. Ultimately, the committee was forced to dig into the district’s $10 million reserve account for $1.7 million to balance the budget.

Prior to the vote, Revere Public Schools Supt. Dianne Kelly said several of the proposed cuts under consideration were scrapped. The school department will retain its civics coach, an adaptive elementary physical education instructor and four health aides. Cuts in overtime for the financial office, the student-teacher program and summer programs for new students were among the cuts made to keep the budget in the black. The committee also voted to eliminate busing for high school students and middle schoolers who live less than two miles from their school.

“We knew it would be a difficult budget session coming in,” said Mayor Patrick Keefe, chair of the School Committee.

“The big killers for us were health care and transportation costs,” said Keefe, adding that those costs were spiraling out of control.

Keefe said residents had sent many emails and made many phone calls to officials about the budget but there was no finger pointing, just advocacy.

The school budget needed to be voted on in series or pieces, and Ways and Means Subcommittee Chair John Kingston read out a list of amounts, which the committee unanimously approved. Among the big-ticket items were $86.1 million for instructional services, $3.6 million for administration, $14.1 million for student services and $9.9 million for plant operation and maintenance.

Keefe said the committee intends to work throughout the upcoming year to keep the budget in balance.