Westfield School Budget: Health Benefit Surge Drives $142.5M Preliminary Proposal

As with the other budgets we covered, the numbers we’re looking at on Westfield’s preliminary school budget can change before it’s adopted. We’re using the ’24-’25 ACFR, ’25-’26 revised and ’26-’27 preliminary budget for our data points.

Westfield’s total operating budget moves from ~$133.2M (’24-’25 actuals) to ~$138.2M (’25-’26 revised) to ~$142.5M (’26-’27 prelim)- a $4.3M year-over-year increase (+3.11%).

The tax levy goes up almost 6% from $121.20M to ~$128.4M, base budget levy goes even higher at 6.24%, but the total levy comparison includes the prior separate proposal amount that drops out in ’26-’27- so like most of the budgets we’ve looked at levy is outpacing the operating budget.

Westfield is one of the few budgets on our dashboard where state aid moves up (~$9.9M to ~$10.4M/+5.41%). Special Education Aid increases by $415K, Security Aid and Transportation Aid also go up, ~ $74K, and ~ $45K respectively, while Extraordinary Aid stays flat at $975K.

Federal and grant funding goes the other direction with total grants and entitlements dropping from ~$2.5M to ~$2M (-22%). Money from the Fed also drops almost 25% to ~$1.31M representing a ~$433K reduction with IDEA Part B falling by about $417K.

Regular instruction increases from $40.23M to $41.5M, a $1.27M increase (+3.15%). Teacher salaries rise across bands with grades 1-5 up 1.78%, grades 6-8 up 4.46%, and grades 9-12 up 2.79%.

Special education pops by almost 6% (~+$564K) to ~$10.6M with notes pointing to increases in staffing and para salaries along with several subcategories tied to program need and staffing changes.

Tuition moves from $6.44M to $6.72M, an increase of about $279K (+4.34%). The biggest line remains tuition to private schools for students with disabilities (in-state) $5.26M to $5.35M.

The benefits story is the same as we’ve seen in every other district budget as total unallocated benefits go from $29.85M to $35.11M, a $5.27M increase (+17.64%).

Health benefits alone go up over $5.3M from $25.51M to $30.86M a ~21%.

Operations and maintenance are relatively stable with required maintenance seeing a slight .78% bump landing at $1.51M and custodial services rising by ~1.8% (~$5.6M to ~$5.7M) and total plant operations rise from $7.88M to $7.99M (+1.34%). Security actually drops by over 5% to $449,757 (-5.10%) which is still a hefty number for a line that deserves scrutiny.

Transportation is basically flat going up by less than a percent to $6.39M. Capital outlay drops sharply from $5.27M to $1.35M, a $3.92M budget reduction (-74.39%). The notes describe that as a budget reduction.

Reserves are interesting as there are a slew of projections showing big balance/reserve drops; Unassigned fund balance is projected to fall from $3.90M to $2.71M, legal reserve from $314K to $0 and capital reserve from $7.52M to $6.26M, with a $1.27M withdrawal from capital reserve included in the budget. Maintenance reserve is basically stable, ticking up slightly to $1.75M.

So instruction is rising, special education is rising, tuition is rising and the district gets some help from state aid, BUT health benefits continue to steal the show $5M+ increase while federal/grant funding falls and capital spending is pulled back hard.

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