Get your popcorn ready

Welcome back!

It’s a lighter news week in Sudbury and we’re inclined to keep things light this week.

But before we get into that we need to share some news that’s revelatory, earth-shattering, and downright triumphant.

After a long, empty silence since bankruptcy, the Ground Round is returning to its home state of Massachusetts. They’ll be opening a new location in Shrewsbury in January. The new owner has indicated that they will be serving ice cream in those miniature baseball helmets. No word yet on the creepy clowns and the acceptability of throwing food waste on the floor. Times have changed, and you can actually just buy those helmet bowls online for a buck-a-pop and scoop your own ice cream into them. However, if you’re a purist who believes the helmet-bowl-ice cream is a sacred tradition that may only be enjoyed inside a Ground Round with popcorn and peanut shells composting on the floor around you, then your multi-decade wait is almost over.

Here’s what we have for you:

1. SudburyWeekly.com News Roundup

2. How Might DOGE Impact Sudbury Schools?

3. School Roof-a-palooza

4. Open Table Begins Gift Bag Drive

5. The Sudbury Weekly Presidential Endorsement

Let’s get into it!

SudburyWeekly.com News Roundup

How Might DOGE Impact Sudbury Schools?

By Kevin LaHaise

Over $2 trillion of federal government spending could be on the chopping block according to statements from the heads of the proposed Department of Government Efficiency. We’ll leave national news to national news outlets. But what about the local impact, particularly on public education in Sudbury?

President-elect Donald Trump has said he will name Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy as head of a new entity, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which would not be an official government agency but would be tasked with identifying how to reduce spending.  It should be noted that only Congress has the actual power to decide how federal funds are allocated, so DOGE’s findings could only result in recommendations. Nonetheless, one of the heads of DOGE this week posted a video of Trump calling for the Department of Education to be shuttered. 

Investopedia has a helpful visualization of federal budget here. Social Security is the single largest bucket of the federal budget, at nearly $1.5 trillion.  Debt service, the military and defense, and Medicare are also huge and largely untouchable chunks; Trump has declared cuts to Social Security and Medicare off the table. 

The Department of Education gets $268 billion. But the incoming administration has floated proposals to eliminate or restructure the Department of Education. The Education Data Initiative reports that the federal government provides 13.6% of funding for public K-12 education. It also reports that states contribute nearly $400 billion to public K-12 education. That’s nearly half of all public expenditures for K-12 education in the country, though there are other sources of funding. 

If any of that federal funding for public education or aid to states is subject to a significant cut, it could send a shockwave through the states, even in states like Massachusetts that don’t tend to get as much federal support in the first place. On average, states get about a third of their revenue from the federal government, which amounted to a touch more than $1 trillion in FY2022. 

Meanwhile, the Sudbury Public Schools FY25 budget book reports nearly $6 million in estimated state aid, over $800,000 in estimated federal grants, and another $500,000 in estimated state grants. That totals out to about 12% of the estimated total spending in the budget book for FY25. The bulk of the federal aid comes from the Individuals with Disabilities Education (IDEA) Grant program.

Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School estimated about $4.5 million in “State and other revenue” for FY25. That’s roughly 11.8% of their estimated revenue for FY2025, but they don’t break out what portion, if any, is federal. 

Educators in California are already sounding the alarm about possible cuts in funding from the Department of Education. And schools in Massachusetts are already struggling with their budgets. California has a lot at stake if federal aid is significantly cut. But what would those hypothetical cuts mean for Sudbury?

In a small town that spends the majority of its budget on education, some of these possible DOGE-proposed cuts could be a recipe for significant disruption in the years ahead. What exactly will be proposed and what might happen in Congress is entirely unpredictable. 

Campaign comments and stump speeches aren’t the same as enacted legislation or official actions. But we do know school budgets in Sudbury are overwhelmingly funded by local taxpayers, and the Town is dependent on property taxes for most of its revenue. Any cuts to state or federal aid to education could, at least in the near-term, force cuts in Sudbury’s budgets, delays in new education initiatives, or push added burden on local taxpayers to just to keep the schools level-funded. Those do appear to be surmountable challenges for Sudbury, at least relative to other communities in Massachusetts.  

Perhaps ironically, the overwhelming dependence on local taxpayers to fund the public school system in Sudbury provides a bit of a buffer from the worst effects of any major reduction in aid from the state or federal governments. For example: the municipal contribution to Sudbury Public Schools is over 85% of total spending. That gives Sudbury some ability to self-determine regardless of what’s happening at the State House or the White House. As budget season accelerates in the coming weeks, the Town cost centers have the opportunity to make decisions that are at least cognizant of possible sweeping changes in Washington. The real question is how much of the rhetoric actually becomes action, policy or law. 

School Roof-a-palooza

By Kevin LaHaise

Three local school buildings are in the planning process for roof repairs or replacements. School roofs are major capital projects. They often cost millions of dollars, and each step of the process needs to be carefully timed to avoid, or minimize, disruptions during the school year. Here’s what Sudbury is looking at in the next few years:

Josiah Haynes Elementary School and General John Nixon Elementary School Roofs

The roof replacement projects for both schools were recently approved by the Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA) to proceed to the schematic design phase. That puts the Town of Sudbury and Sudbury Public Schools on a pre-determined schedule for the project, as set by the MSBA. If all goes well, the Town would get reimbursed for some portion of the projects. That could be a significant cost savings on major capital projects. In a letter to the Select Board asking for assistance with funding the designs, the chair of the school committee noted:

There could be funding sources available that would allow the Town to avoid calling a Special Town Meeting for the design funds. One potential could be for the Select Board to allocate funds from the remaining American Rescue Plan Act funds, which have to be “obligated” before the end of this year, and spent by the end of 2026.

In the fall of 2023, the school committee reported that the estimate for the Nixon roof was $2,480,000. (Page 28) The committee report for the warrant article also noted the reimbursement rate isn’t certain:

The factors used by the MSBA to adjust the reimbursement include “community income factor,” “community wealth factor,” and “community poverty factor.” (Page 12)

In July of 2023, Combined Facility Director Sandra Duran presented on the roofs and the MSBA process to the SPS School Committee. The ballpark estimates presented at that time were as follows (Page 4):

If SPS secures the design funds in time, it’s possible, if not likely, that further action will be needed at the Annual Town Meeting in May 2025.

Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School Roof

The Lincoln-Sudbury School Committee got an update on their roof project timeline during their October 22 meeting.

The committee opted in September to go for a re-coating rather than a roof replacement. A full replacement was estimated at $6,320,000. A re-coating was estimated at $2,690,000, and would come with a 20-year warranty. The re-coating was strongly recommended to the committee. (Report linked in their agenda here)

In their September 24 meeting, the committee voted unanimously to pursue that option. (2:08:00)

It’s still early in the planning process, but they were informed that the district is aiming to do the work in the summer of 2026. They’re going to take a methodical approach that involves preparing a borrowing plan to fund the project, conducting meetings with the Lincoln and Sudbury Finance Committees to build consensus on the approach, and then they will go through the owner’s project manager selection and bidding process.

What is not yet known is precisely what approach each town will prefer for funding their portion of the project. However, that should emerge as discussions continue. As the timeline states, it’s possible that the towns choose a funding scenario that drives the need for a Special Town Meeting in the Fall of 2025. Right now the school district is getting its own borrowing plan in place as a baseline for moving forward with the process.

Open Table Begins Gift Bag Drive

[Submission courtesy of Open Table]

Open Table, the MetroWest charity dedicated to fighting hunger and building healthy communities, has launched its Family-to-Family Gift Bag Drive for the fifth year. The program offers the public a chance to create holiday gift bags for a local family and/or a senior who are clients of Open Table.

Open Table provides participants with a list of suggested gift bag items such as snacks, art supplies, and gift cards, then sends reminders on each of the first 12 days of December. Items must be unwrapped to allow Open Table to determine an appropriate recipient for each bag.  Items should be placed in a sturdy, reuseable bag, and the total weight should be under 25 pounds.

Completed gift bags may be dropped off curbside at Open Table’s Food Donation Center, 40 Beharrell St., West Concord, Friday, Dec. 13, between 4 and 6 p.m.; and curbside at Open Table at 33 Main St., Maynard, Saturday, Dec. 14, between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. 

Sign up to make a gift bag at:  https://www.opentable.org/family-to-family/.

The Sudbury Weekly Presidential Endorsement

By The Editorial Board

Well this is embarrassing. The editorial board worked tirelessly to reach a consensus opinion on which candidate to endorse for President of the United States. Through a series of candid conversations and full-throated debates, we arrived at a position that we could stand behind and recommend to readers. But the election has come and gone, and our endorsement is too late.

Sudbury Weekly’s owner even authorized us to publish an endorsement. Media endorsements are not very fashionable these days, but he wasn’t going to meddle with editorial operations. We had carte blanche, with one exception: our owner mandated that any political endorsement made by Sudbury Weekly be delivered in the form of a haiku.

Now, we have long been amused by his affinity for haikus. (We are less amused by the quality of his own haikus.) But we tolerated them so long as he didn’t interfere with our editorial freedom.

Just how, exactly, are we supposed to fit a robust endorsement for the “most important election of our lives” into 17 syllables? Our draft endorsement was 1,271 words. At least let us write a sonnet!

We debated for hours, then days. We begged for him to permit us to write an acrostic poem, but he would have none of it. As the election approached, he extended an olive branch. We could do a limerick if we preferred. A limerick. This is no time for humor!

Soon enough, the election had come and gone. Dozens of haikus were left on the cutting room floor. And we never published an endorsement. So, dear reader, the results of the election are in, and any endorsement would be meaningless now. In lieu of an endorsement, we leave you with this random limerick we found, titled “Tooting Tutor.”

A tutor who tooted a flute,
Tried to teach two young tooters to toot.
Said the two to the tutor,
“Is it harder to toot, or …
To tutor two tooters to toot?”

Parting Thoughts

We’re in the thick of the Town budget season, and big decisions are going to be made in the weeks ahead.

On Monday the Finance Committee is welcoming representatives from the Park and Recreation Commission to their meeting to talk about the Park and Recreation financial model and budget pressures. The department wants more funding from the Town, but the Town has voiced a desire to have the department entirely self-fund its operations over time.

The Select Board is meeting on Tuesday evening. Town Manager Sheehan will be presenting the annual financial condition of the Town. That’s like a mini State of the Union speech for Town Managers, but without any pageantry, and there are no special guests on a balcony. They’re also scheduled to talk about the Camp Sewataro financials.

But wait, there’s more!

On Wednesday the Community Preservation Committee begins their public hearings. Two of the applications being discussed are from the Sudbury Housing Trust. As previously reported, housing groups in Sudbury are expected to undergo some scrutiny on the heels of housing controversies in recent months.

But before we get to all those meetings, it’s time to enjoy what looks to be a beautiful weekend!

Onward!