(10-minute read)
For residents looking to stay up to date on key town matters, this recap highlights the major takeaways from the School Committee meeting held on Thursday, October 15, 2026.
Watch the full meeting here on RCTV’s Youtube page.
Review the full School Committee packet.
Key takeaways
Budget reduction scenarios. District staff presented scenarios showing that, without an override, Reading Public Schools would need to cut $3M to $4M from its FY28 operating budget, depending on the cost-sharing ratio between the town and the schools.
Wide-ranging options, not recommendations. Superintendent Dr. Henry Turner and district staff outlined a dozen possible reduction scenarios, from administrative and intervention staffing to larger class sizes, fewer electives, a reinstated kindergarten fee, and reduced transportation and athletics funding, stressing that none of it represents a recommended path.
Strong community turnout. Dozens of teachers, students, and parents spoke in support of the override, describing the district’s support staff, arts programs, and middle school team model as central to students’ well-being and academic success.
Focus on excellence [0:2:30]
The committee recognized several students for their academic achievements, presenting awards to students with the most competitive PSAT scores in the country.
National Merit Commended students: Jake Ryle, Alex Vincent, and Jacob Schneider
National Merit semifinalists: Kevin Luo and Ilsa Paraguya
A changing student population [0:19:51]
After approving a consent agenda that included PTO donations, several grants, and funding tied to the Innovation Career Pathways program, the committee took up the FY28 budget reduction discussion out of order.
District staff presented the scenarios as a menu of discussion, not recommendations, noting that 81% of the district’s budget goes to staff, so a failed override leads directly to staffing cuts. The presentation described six shifts in student needs over the past decade: a more phone-based childhood, a shrinking attention span, rising stress and anxiety, a cultural rise in “safety-ism,” a stronger preference for visual over text-based media, and information overload. Staff said Reading has adapted by shifting from a traditional model of a single classroom teacher, family, and counselor to an interdisciplinary team that can include general and special education teachers, counselors and psychologists, administrators, related service providers, paraeducators, inclusion specialists, and program coordinators.
Staff said the investment has paid off: Reading spends less per pupil than comparable districts, and 2025 MCAS results placed the district at roughly the 90th percentile in grade 6-8 ELA and 87th in math. Nearly 60% of juniors and seniors take an AP exam, with 83% qualifying for college credit, and 296 students are enrolled in Innovation Career Pathways or dual enrollment courses this year. Among multilingual learners, 67% made expected progress on state ACCESS testing, up from 49% in 2021, while chronic absenteeism in that group fell from 38.9% in 2022 to 14.7%. Special education inclusion specialists saved an estimated $12.85M in out-of-district placement costs over 3 years, supported more than 115 individual student teams, returned 11 students from out-of-district placements, and generated $285,000 in tuition revenue from other districts’ students enrolling in Reading’s specialized programs.
Maintaining level services required a 5.25% increase to the district’s $62,823,983 budget, driven by contractual cost-of-living and step increases and $274,000 in non-personnel costs for curriculum, technology, and transportation, offset in part by anticipated School Choice and Deaf and Hard of Hearing program revenue. Without an override, the district would need to cut $3M to $4M, depending on a cost-sharing ratio negotiated between the town and schools and on actual, rather than average, salaries. Non-staffing options presented alongside the staffing scenarios include raising extracurricular and athletic fees, raising facility rental fees, reinstating full-day kindergarten tuition, eliminating new laptop purchases, pausing prepayment of out-of-district tuition, drawing down the special education reserve fund, and using a portion of current-year circuit breaker funds.
A menu of staffing reduction scenarios
District staff presented a series of structural scenarios, describing each as a consideration rather than a recommendation:
Administrative and support cuts: 1.0-4.0 FTE per category, cuts to be determined and shared among assistant principals, team chairs, and school adjustment counselors, pushing their work onto already-stretched principals and teachers.
District-level cuts: 4.0-8.0 FTE ($277,528-$781,685) among coordinators, directors, coaches, and inclusion specialists who oversee curriculum and professional development districtwide; outsourcing that work would cost $50,000 to $300,000.
Intervention programming: 5.0 FTE plus 10 tutoring positions ($742,248), reducing targeted academic support for the 15-20% of students staff said need it beyond core classroom instruction.
Community Education and Recreation staffing: 1.0 FTE, cuts to be determined; staff noted both departments already run lean and generate revenue, so the net savings could be smaller than the position cut suggests.
Larger elementary classes: 3.0 FTE ($254,083) without redistricting, affecting two sections at Killam and one at Barrows, or 10.0 FTE ($835,476) with full redistricting, which would reduce the number of sections in grades 3 through 5.
Fewer elementary specialists: Scenario A, 4.0 FTE ($376,134), cuts one art, music, and library media position each; Scenario B ($521,790) also replaces library media specialists with paraprofessionals. Staff said no reduction in physical education is possible under current staffing ratios.
Fewer paraprofessionals: 31 positions ($926,295), including 14 kindergarten paras ($493,325), 9 coverage-support paras ($186,253), and 8 office paras ($246,717), reducing classroom support and safety coverage.
Middle school restructuring: three options were presented, moving Parker students to Coolidge (15.0 FTE, $1,483,187, requiring construction and transportation studies and called impractical given the cost), raising class size and teaching loads while rebuilding the master schedule (9.0 FTE, $934,292, eliminating interdisciplinary team collaboration and a block period used to help struggling students), or moving fifth grade into the middle schools (16.5 FTE, $1,483,187, requiring construction and transportation studies and called impractical for FY28). All three would eliminate the team model and raise class size to 28.
Fewer middle school specialists: 2.0-4.0 FTE across art, music, world language, and health and wellness, reducing the frequency of those classes districtwide.
Fewer high school courses: setting a 15-student minimum to run a class would eliminate or consolidate 56 classes across seven departments, led by the arts (22 classes), saving $464,166 to $928,333 (5.0-10.0 FTE). Courses that could disappear entirely could include AP Studio Art, AP Spanish, AP Computer Science Principles, Musical Theater, and Digital Animation & Design; other sections, including some of Biology, English 11, Algebra 1, and Chemistry, would instead simply grow larger.
Revenue options and student experience reductions
District staff outlined a second category of options that avoid staffing cuts but change costs or families' experience. School Choice, which fills otherwise-empty seats with students from other districts, is expected to bring in $495,000 with 99 students enrolled in FY27, up from $382,500 and 77 students in FY26. Reading Public Schools Director of Finance and Operations Phil Littlehale noted the program barely existed five years ago; Superintendent Dr. Henry Turner said the district doesn’t see it as displacing Reading students, but the committee could eventually discuss a cap.
Other options presented included raising athletic fees or cutting teams from the district’s $842,590 general-fund athletics budget, which does not include the portion already covered by fees; reducing transportation, where staff said only 36 of 231 current riders (spread across Killam, Reading Memorial High School, Parker, and Coolidge) qualify for state-mandated busing, and eliminating high school service would leave a single remaining bus costing $99,000; reinstating a full-day kindergarten fee, eliminated in 2024-25, for an estimated $413,250 to $1,268,250, with staff noting they are not aware of another district that has reinstated such a fee after dropping it; reducing outside cleaning services ($180,000) and laptop purchases (up to $200,000); and one-time measures such as pausing prepayment of special education tuition or drawing down the special education reserve fund, which staff said would each free up money for FY29 at the cost of a safeguard against unpredictable mid-year placement costs, with every option in this category making FY29 harder.
No easy answers
District staff summarized the full presentation by saying there are no easy answers and that any scenario would significantly change how services are delivered to students. Staff and the committee flagged a list of open questions for further research, including how many comparable districts run 28-student elementary classes, whether redistricting would require a yearlong outside study, whether Coolidge has room for roughly 65 more students, what a reinstated kindergarten fee’s legal standing would be, and who would absorb team chair and counselor duties in buildings that no longer have their own.
Public comment draws strong turnout for the override [1:50:00]
The Reading Teachers Association’s president urged a yes vote, telling the committee she believed the district could see 15 to 21 staff layoffs as a baseline if the override fails, an estimate she offered during her public comment. She argued that the state needs to do more to fund education.
A Killam teacher said staff “teach whole children” and that Reading's schools have no extra hands left. A longtime leader of the high school’s drama program, herself an RMHS graduate, said the district had no theater program when she was a student and credited the stage with turning traits once seen as flaws into strengths. A Killam media specialist called literacy and critical-thinking instruction “survival skills,” not optional extras. A K-5 visual arts teacher read a statement from the Performing Arts Department head urging the community to weigh cuts’ effect on “the soul of the community.”
Several students spoke in support of their teachers and programs, including one who described the arts department as a “safety and sanctuary” for students who might not otherwise find their place, and another who credited band with giving him a sense of community. One parent said his daughter chose to stay in Reading’s arts program over a private school; another described how her son’s middle school team noticed and addressed his struggles after her husband’s cancer diagnosis, crediting the team model with catching him before he fell through the cracks. A teacher who has worked in Reading since the 1970s urged support for the override so the arts program could remain in schools.
Committee discussion [2:09:42]
Chair Shawn Brandt urged residents to watch the meeting in full to understand the stakes, cautioning against leaning on one-time savings that could leave the district facing a larger gap later. Committee member Erin Gaffen called the options a “nightmare list” she could not endorse, while member Geoffrey Coram said the committee would likely need to combine several smaller cuts rather than choose one outright. Member Lara Durgavich, who said 18 months on the committee had convinced her the district runs fiscally lean despite online rumors to the contrary, said any cuts need to avoid falling disproportionately on one group.
Brandt said positions added in recent years reflect real student needs, and that School Choice, special education, and METCO revenue have already helped offset costs. Turner said staff could bring an initial proportionality proposal the following week.
Gaffen said she sees full-day kindergarten as an equity issue and wants to wait for the override vote before recommending further cuts; Durgavich compared the full scenario list to a “cheesecake menu with too many options” and asked staff to identify low-hanging fruit, while opposing any redistricting or school changes. Turner said ruling options out is difficult without more committee direction, and that any middle-school restructuring would require years of planning. Brandt said the committee has two more meetings before Town Meeting to get it right.
Gaffen asked for more detail on which sports might be at risk and what added fees would fund; Turner said the district could model new fee structures and provide participation data, and Brandt asked that any review include athletic transportation costs and Title IX considerations. Durgavich asked for a further breakdown of the athletics figures; Littlehale noted the district’s total sports budget, including fees, is about $1.3M a year.
Committee votes to endorse the override [2:55:30]
The committee voted 5-0 to formally endorse a yes vote on the override and authorized Brandt to issue communications on the committee’s Facebook page and to local media, sharing factual information about the vote and the endorsement.
Watch the October 15, 2026 School Committee Meeting on the RCTV Youtube page.
