Watertown school officials closed a budget gap of nearly half a million dollars without cutting staff. On Monday night, Superintendent Dede Galdston will present the Fiscal Year 2026 Watertown Public Schools budget at a public hearing.
The budget hearing will take place during the March 24 School Committee meeting, which will be at Lowell School beginning at 7 p.m. While the FY26 Budget of $61.9 million, which will cover the 2025-26 School Year, was a challenge, Galdston said, Watertown is in a better position than many other communities.
“In the relative scheme of things, it was a more challenging budget for Watertown, not quite as challenging as Brookline or Newton or Lexington or some of the people who have experienced pretty dramatic decreases in their budgets,” Galdston said.
Coming into the budget making process, Watertown knew it would be facing a $1.1 million increase in special education tuition for out-of-district placements, but the district also saved about $227,000 in staff turnover savings that occurs when a veteran staff member retires and someone with a lower salary replaces the person.
The schools got a 3.5 percent increase in the allocation from the City from FY25, or nearly $2.1 million. With those numbers, the starting point for the FY26 budget was a $495,749 shortfall.
A budget that would replicate what the Watertown Schools provided in FY25 in FY26 would require a budget increase of 4.2 percent, Galdston said, but she built the budget around the 3.5 percent increase.
“I myself as a superintendent and my School Committee would not be in a position to go back and say, well, sorry, I need 4.2 percent knowing that that’s not realistic based on the entire budget,” she said.
When looking for places to cut spending, Galston said she and her staff focused on areas that have the least amount of impact on the services to students and to staffing.
“You always want to start with a reduction that isn’t going to hurt anybody, period,” she said. “Our goal is never to reduce services, or reduce staffing, or reduce expenses to a place where it’s going to detrimentally impact the operation of schools.”
Some savings was found in the utilities because natural gas has been cut to zero at the new schools, which provided a savings of about $200,000. Some unfilled positions were cut that were no longer needed, including nursing positions added during the Pandemic. Another was a teacher for the visually impaired. Galdston said there are no longer enough students requiring that service to warrant the district having its own program, so now it uses contracted services.
The district also did an in-depth analysis of budgeting to find areas where an expense has consistently had funds left over at the end of the year.
Galdston said that Federal grants and funds have become unpredictable.
“We don’t know exactly where we’re heading, but in Watertown right now, our federal entitlement grants,” she said. “We receive $1.6 million from federal grants.”
About $1.1 million of those funds are Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) funds which are used for special education services. The district also receives about $500,000 in Title 1, 2, 3 and 4 grants.
“Those are all out of the Civil Rights Act and we’re meant to try to ensure that all children, regardless of their socioeconomic status, are receiving supplemental supports to help them,” Galdston said.
The IDEA funding is used to support Watertown’s school budget, so losing those funds would have more impact than losing the other funds, Galdston said, because they are used to supplement what the schools are already doing.
The FY26 budget includes Watertown’s Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging Department. Galdston said that department was created in 2021 and it is focused on making sure the Watertown schools can meet the district’s core values of equity, excellence and community.
“So, if I were to think about what the core purpose of the department is, it is family engagement, student engagement, inclusion, and a sense of belonging,” Galdston said. “I think that there’s a misperception of what DEI is for us. It is making sure that every kid, every kid, doesn’t matter who you are, gets what they need to be successful.”
Galdston wrote about the District’s core values in a recent Superintendent Newsletter (click here to see it).
See the Superintendent’s Fiscal Year 2026 Budget by clicking here. The agenda for the March 24 School Committee meeting, which also includes introducing the new Watertown Middle School Principal, Jeff Gaglione, can be found here.