The Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School committee has unanimously certified a $29,560,540 school operating budget for fiscal year 2026, which begins this July 1.
The new spending plan is 8.76 per cent higher than the current school budget, with the portion to be paid by Island towns growing just over 6.82 per cent, to $24,390,427.
The school committee’s vote Monday night followed a pair of last-minute budget adjustments — one addition and one deletion — that trimmed more than $180,000 from the bottom line.
A recently-awarded state grant will provide nearly $196,000 to buy a pair of vans equipped for special education students, reducing the budget by that amount, school finance manager Suzanne Cioffi said.
On the other side of the equation, recent hikes in the cost of hiring game officials for sports matches drove the spending plan up by $15,000.
Committee chair Skipper Manter said that while he supported better pay for game officials, the $15,000 increase came too late in the budget process.
“I thought the budget was already up high enough. Those funds could have been found somewhere else,” Mr. Manter said, before voting to certify the spending plan.
The $195,904 expenditure for special education vans, which are used Island-wide, came from a $437,549 state grant for rural schools that was belatedly awarded in December.
Superintendent of schools Dr. Richard Smith said the state education department, which granted MVRHS more than $500,000 in 2023, initially overlooked the high school for this year’s round of rural aid. The state reversed its decision thanks to the persistence of school business manager Mark Friedman, who convinced the education department to recalculate the data it uses to determine grant recipients, Mr. Smith said.
The delayed award still must be spent by June 30, before the new fiscal year, or the school forfeits the money, Mr. Friedman said.
Also Monday, principal Sara Dingledy discussed graduation requirements, which no longer include a passing score on the standardized MCAS test after state voters eliminated the standard in November. About 10 current MVRHS seniors have not passed the state test, Ms. Dingledy said.
In the absence of a statewide criterion, she said, the school will need to develop its own requirements for a diploma.
“In all likelihood, it would be saying that students need to pass state standard-aligned curricula in English, geometry and biology,” she told the school committee.
The state allowed a similar system during the Covid-19 shutdowns, when MCAS testing was suspended, Ms. Dingledy said.
