All across the country, public schools are in a serious financial crisis, and Milton Public Schools is no exception. This year, Milton Public Schools is facing about a 2.1 million dollar budget deficit. This isn’t the first time Milton has had a problem with its budget– just last year, Milton was forced to vote for a 9.5 million dollar override, which according to the Town of Milton's website, is a “voter-approved, permanent property tax increase." But how will Milton handle this year’s multi-million dollar deficit? 

One of the biggest problems raised when dealing with deficits is taxes. The law states that you can only raise property taxes by 2.5% every year. This unfortunately does not keep up with the pace of Milton’s inflation, which has been as high as 4% every year. Compounding the problem is the fact that Milton has a small commercial tax base. Most of the town's revenue, about 97%,  comes from residential property tax, while less than 3% of Milton’s revenue comes from commercial properties. Therefore, raising local taxes puts a strain on families. Much of this tax money has to go to the school system, as the schools contain the most employees. But oftentimes, there isn’t enough money coming into the school system to pay for Milton Public Schools staff. 

Now the solution for this year is to make some cuts to different programs here at MPS. These cuts are trying to keep in mind not only the immediate needs of students and staff but also the long term needs of the district as a whole. When making cuts, the School Committee’s finance subcommittee will avoid reducing student-facing positions as well as positions regarding classroom security. Student-facing positions are those that directly interact with students on a daily basis, including teachers and counselors. They will also try to identify workflows in order to redistribute the work of non-student-facing positions, along with any other non-staff positions for reallocation of resources.

 “We are reducing the list of teachers and staff members on the to go list,” says Bao Qiu, a School Committee representative. On behalf of the School Committee, Qiu says they are trying to take in the opinion of the parents and students as best as they can, but they still have to be reasonable considering how much debt they are in. 

This year MPS started the school year with about 8,000 dollars in the Circuit Breaker account, a reimbursement fund for the Special Education Program reimbursed by the state, far below the average 3.1 to 3.5 million dollars that is typically available. This is a piece of the bigger problem with the financial crisis, and these tactical budget cuts will help chip away at this problem. 

Elias Caros, the senior high school representative for the School Committee, explained factors that will directly affect the students here at MHS: "The district doesn’t have enough money to pay their educators, and as a result, opportunities will be taken away, classes will become larger and the resources that the school has to offer will become limited for certain extracurricular activities.” Although no activities will be cut, some resources supporting certain activities, such as musical instruments and sports equipment will be, posing a potential challenge to some extracurriculars. 

The School Committee is constantly searching for a more permanent solution to these budget problems. While there is no solution yet, Bao Qiu suggests that “we should do an override every year, if not every other year so you don’t need to do this gigantic override all at once…[and] the taxes can increase slowly to match the inflation rate.” The committee is trying to make sure the inflation rate goes up at a sustainable and reasonable rate for families of all different socio-economic statuses all across Milton. 

“We are collaborating and having discussions with other towns, such as Newton, to see what they are doing with their budget and learn from them,” explains Qiu. “While we aren't quite sure what we will be doing in the next couple years, for 2026, we have plans to not fill certain positions that aren't filled…, not hire people for positions that are becoming vacant, and limit certain unnecessary resources.”