Cohasset school officials are preparing a scaled-back fiscal year 2027 budget after determining the district cannot afford the cost of maintaining current service levels. A level-service budget for Cohasset Public Schools in fiscal year 2027 would require an 11.88% increase over the previous year, an amount Superintendent Sarah Shannon said the town cannot afford. Her next budget proposal will have a 6% increase from fiscal year 2026—$1.46 million below a level service budget.
Now, schools face serious service cuts that must be negotiated over the coming months.
“Identifying those reductions will require hard conversations about our values as a Cohasset community and will force us to choose among many priorities that we all care deeply about,” Shannon said in a January 23 email.
Shannon presented the first draft of the fiscal year 2027 budget, which sought to meet level services, at a January 21 school committee meeting calling it “the first of several iterations.”
That level service draft included a nearly $240,000 increase in utilities costs, $315,000 in special education tuition, $300,000 in athletics departments, and $1.75 million in salaries. Those expenses account for 90% of the level service proposal.
Those numbers are estimates, and the school district is currently in contract negotiations with the teachers’ union, secretarial union and educational support professionals union.
What services will be reduced?
Level service “continues class size, honors our contractual obligations, and moves us toward the goals outlined in our strategic plan,” Shannon said. Without level service funding, schools face cuts to supplies, technology and staff.
Shannon said that the district would certainly have to cut “essential” teaching positions. The fiscal year 2026 budget was $2.8 million less than the School Committee’s initial proposal, and to bring the budget down by that much, “we reduced as much as we could without really impacting teachers,” Shannon said.
“We will be looking at larger class sizes, potentially loss of critical student support, staff, loss of programming that define our excellence specifically at the high school level, fewer supplies and probably no professional development, which will inhibit our ability to make progress in our strategic plan,” she said.
Classes across Cohasset schools will be cut, and test scores could drop with a higher student-to-teacher ratio, Shannon said. And she believes a hit to Cohasset Public Schools’ reputation could disincentivize growth and damage property values.
“We are at a turning point here, and it’s really frustrating,” School Committee member Jake Squatrito said, “and it’s frankly really frightening.”
Where will budget money come from?
Cohasset Public Schools have been awarded about $800,000 in grant money for fiscal year 2027, and state aid covers a “small fraction” of operating costs, Shannon said. The rest of the budget will have to come from the town.
Shannon said that Massachusetts’s system of funding school budgets is “ineffective and outdated”—and it is something local Cohasset officials have no power to change.
The state calculates a “minimum adequate spending level” for each school district based on enrollment, wages and inflation, and it takes into account property values and local incomes to determine how much of that minimum adequate spending level should be funded by the municipality. Based on Cohasset’s high property values and incomes, the state determined that the town could bear the brunt of the school budget.
Shannon said that the state’s algorithm is flawed and makes the financial situation in Cohasset seem rosier than it is.
The state provided roughly $3.2 million to Cohasset Public Schools in fiscal year 2026, nearly 13% of the total budget.
What are the next steps?
School leadership will present an updated budget proposal February 4 and hold a public budget hearing March 18. Then, the School Committee will vote to approve the school budget proposal March 25.
In the meantime, the School Committee will take funding from the state budget, which was released January 23, into account in crafting the new draft, and conversations with the Select Board will continue. The School Committee will advocate for the Select Board providing the full 6% funding increase that it will request in the next draft proposal.
Dr. Shannon stated that it is too late for the School Committee to propose a town budget override for fiscal year 2027. Some members of the public at the January 23 meeting recommended that the School Committee solicit donations from families to close some of the funding gap.
“We're a community that stands behind our students, our kids, and our schools. And there is nothing more important than our children's education,” one resident said.
*This is updated as of 6:49 PM, 1/28/26.
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