Nauset Officials Advance New Budget

ORLEANS – After lengthy review, the Nauset regional school committee has settled upon its new budget for the coming 2027 fiscal year.

The committee on March 18 unanimously voted on the $40.5 million budget, which represents an increase of approximately 4.2 percent over the current fiscal year.

The budget includes a $31.9 million operating budget for the new fiscal year, as well as an additional $7.97 million in debt service related to the newly-reconstructed Nauset Regional High School campus and $632,805 in capital project spending.

District expenses for FY27 stand at $40.7 million, an increase of about 1.7 percent over the current fiscal year. That figure includes budgets for both Nauset Regional High School ($13,564,208) and Nauset Regional Middle School ($10,183,975). The high school budget represents an increase of just under 1 percent from FY26, while the middle school budget is up 3.7 from the current fiscal year.

The draft budget also reflects an 8 percent decrease in overall revenue at $8,893,073. The district is anticipating noticeable reduction in charter school aid (37.9 percent) and state transportation aid (25.6 percent) for the coming fiscal year.

The district’s interim finance director, Robert Dutch, said that the reduction in transportation aid is due to money the district is saving in not paying lease fees for its bus fleet. 

“We are scheduled for new buses for next year, but you won’t see those lease payments until the FY28 budget,” he said.

Assessments for FY27 include $18,967,265 for Brewster; $8,736,506 for Orleans; $8,138,228 for Eastham; and $4,662,553 for Wellfleet. Assessments are based on the number of students from each community enrolled in the district.

Chris Easley of the regional school committee pressed for more clarity on where the district’s revolving accounts stand, including its excess and deficiency, the district’s equivalent of free cash.

“We’re spending all this money, but we don’t have an accounting for those accounts,” he said. 

“We are sitting in a positive position in all of those,” Dutch said. “We have not overspent the budgeted amounts that were in there. To be honest, we have not drawn those amounts down yet in this year’s budget. I’m confident we’re fine there.”

Judith Schumacher, who chairs the regional school committee, said a full overview of where the district’s revolving accounts stand is due to be presented and discussed at the committee’s next meeting. But Easley said that a more complete accounting of the district’s revolving funds is usually provided as part of the regional committee’s budget deliberations, and that it is difficult to support a new budget without those details.

“We’ve always gotten an accounting of where our revolving accounts (stand), their dollar amounts, because we’re draining them to help pay for this budget,” he said. “It’s like we’re acting blind now not knowing what we have left.”

Dutch said that the budget subcommittee looked at the status of the revolving accounts. But Easley noted that budgeting is “a responsibility of the total committee,” not just the subcommittee.

“We’d be happy to provide you with that,” Dutch said. “We have healthy balances in our funds. We didn’t go in and take everything out.”

Kari Hoffman of the regional school committee noted that four revolving funds were used to offset costs in the “region only” budget. Those include the district’s circuit breaker, school choice, and the Cape Cod Tech and Orleans Firebirds revolving accounts.

Dutch added that the district has filed to certify its excess and deficiency funding, roughly equivalent to a town’s free cash account. The proposed FY27 budget calls for $1 million in E&D to be expended, which Dutch said would leave the district with about $1.5 million in E and D funding. 

With the regional committee’s vote last week, the committee will begin the process of presenting the proposed budget to the select boards of the district’s member towns of Orleans, Brewster, Eastham and Wellfleet. Schumacher said the voted-upon budget was to be passed along to each town by March 20.