Can Framingham Councilors Find $1.2 Million in a $400 Million Budget to Protect Vital Programs in the Schools

The city FY27 budget review by the City Council Finance Subcommittee is winding down, and the major problem of a damaging $1.2 million cut to the Framingham Public Schools remains unresolved.

The Finance Subcommittee has a meeting scheduled for today, Tuesday June 9, 2026, at 5pm, at City Hall. The agenda for the meeting lists the items to be discussed, and includes a Zoom link for remote attendance.

Community members have another opportunity to turn up in person or online to encourage City Councilors to provide $1.2 million in FY27 budget relief to the schools.

As explained in a prior article, the School Committee was forced to approve an additional $ 1.2 million budget cut to avoid issuing pink slips to almost half the schools teaching staff if the city budget process did not finalize by June 16, 2026. See:

In a Forced Play the School Committee Sacrifices Two Crown Jewels of the Framingham Public Schools

$1.2 million may seem to be a large number for the City Council to add back to the Framingham Public Schools budget, but it actually is quite small when viewed in the right context.

That context is provided by looking at the large and rising city budget surpluses which have been generated in the last 3 years, and which have received absolutely no attention in the many Finance Subcommittee FY27 budget meetings so far.

Here is a snapshot of the budget surpluses, which are referred to as Certified Free Cash in financial lingo. That data is taken directly from the state Municipal Databank link dealing with the city operating position.

If you select Framingham on that web page, you’ll see this chart for Framingham:

You can see clearly that budget surpluses are rising rapidly.

The FY26 budget surplus is $26,048,978!!!!!

Big budget surpluses are a hallmark of the Sisisky administration, and result from actual city revenues being much higher than budgeted, actual spending much being lower than budgeted, or both.

It is reasonable to characterize the budget surpluses as roughly the error in the budget planning, and those errors are large and increasing.

So, we have the schools needing $1.2 million for FY27, and at least $20 million in errors in typical city budget planning.

Just reducing those errors by about 5% would fix the schools budget problem!!!!

In closing out the FY27 budget review process, the one task which the full City Council should make sure is attended to with rigor, is to carefully review how each department is contributing to the exploding budget surplus problem, and make some adjustments to reduce the errors.

Note that the Framingham Public Schools have a very accurate budget process and generate no budget surplus, so all the budget errors are on the city side.

City side revenue is being underestimated, and city side expenses are being overestimated, systematically.

That is a serious problem, which needs to be fixed now.

It would be crazy for the government to inflict serious damage on the Framingham Public Schools in the next week or so, and the end up swimming in cash, with another giant budget surplus, at the end of FY27.