Martha's Vineyard Regional High School District — Financial

The district's financial picture for fiscal 2027 began to take shape in early January, when the board certified a $30,275,375.99 operating budget, a 5.17% increase over the prior year, along with a $25,341,140.99 assessment to the six Island towns, up 7%. Those numbers are notably leaner than what the district itself had proposed at its December public hearing — 7.5% operating growth and an 11% assessment increase — after the board cut about $91,000 in spending and eliminated an administrator position and an ELL teacher position to bring the plan down.

Two months later, the board closed out a long-running personnel-cost item: after 15 months of negotiation, it ratified a new contract moving bus drivers and monitors from per-run pay to an hourly wage, effective with the April 10, 2026 payroll. Transportation staff had told the committee that a driver shortage was making buses run late "a lot of days" and sometimes forcing routes to be run twice, so the change addresses both compensation and service reliability.

The most consequential long-term choice came in March, when the building committee voted 6-2 to borrow for the new school using "level debt" — spreading payments evenly over 30 years — rather than "level principal," which pays down the loan faster in the early years. The faster option would have saved an estimated $15 million in total interest but would have meant larger payments, and larger tax impacts, in the first 10 years, a trade-off the majority declined.