The Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School committee voted Monday to certify a Fiscal Year 2026 operating budget of approximately $29.5 million, an increase of 8.76 percent from the current budget.
Town meetings in all six towns will have to approve the proposed budget.
This year’s budget increases, school principal Sara Dingledy told The Times, are due in part to school spending to support special needs students taking classes off-Island, as well as increases in health insurance costs and contractual obligations to staff.
Supporting off-Island placement for a student with residential disabilities, she said, can cost nearly half a million dollars per student, but the state supplements this cost after a student’s first year.
The assessed budget — which accounts for grants and other funding sources — has come in at $23.4 million, a 6.82 percent increase from the previous assessed budget.
The budget is subject to further adjustments, such as regarding use of grant funds or to account for changes in health insurance costs.
The Monday hearing followed the committee’s public hearing on the budget on December 19.
School finance officials also announced at a MVRHS school committee meeting Monday that the school recently received a Rural Aid Award, a state grant of nearly $440,000. Mark Friedman told the committee that the funding can be used for a wide variety of purposes including regionalization, and must be spent by June 30.
Dingledy told the committee that after speaking with district officials, the school is looking to use the Rural Aid funds toward regionalization efforts, such as reducing transportation costs.
“The big [uses] that we were talking about, logistically, were how we can reduce the assessments for the taxpayers for next year [and] invest in things that are regional, that’ll be used by all students here on the Island,” she said.
The committee voted on Monday to earmark nearly $200,000 of the Rural Aid funds to purchase two vans by the June 30 deadline. This would allow an equivalent reduction in the coming budget, finance officials said.
Committee members also approved an increase of $15,000 in the budget to cover transportation reimbursements for sports officials. The school’s athletic subcommittee recommended this proposal.
Committee member Skip Manter approved the proposals despite some discomfort. “I thought the budget was already up high enough,” he said. “Those funds could have been filed somewhere else rather than having to increase, even additionally. And I understand what we’re doing in Rural Aid here to reduce the assessments to some degree, but we’re still spending the money.”
