Plympton School Committee Reorganizes, Warns Override May Be Needed in FY27

PLYMPTON — May 27, 2025 — Plympton School Committee reorganizes under Fraser and warns an override may be unavoidable by FY27. The committee unanimously re-elected Jason Fraser as chair, John Lawson as vice chair, and Rob Montgomery as secretary at its May 27 reorganization meeting, then spent the bulk of the evening on a post-mortem of a bruising FY25 in which the district drained $50,000 from its Special Education Reserve Fund, drew down its entire Rural Aid account, and closed the year, in the words of Director of Finance Sarah, "by the skin of our teeth" — driven by more than $100,000 in unexpected long-term substitute costs and new special-education and ELL expenses. Lawson tied the precarious finances directly to Town Meeting politics, noting that roughly 40 percent of voters rejected a fire station replacement carrying a $660,000 net cost impact, or $485 per average household per year. "It doesn't take long over a few years to very quickly eat up that amount of money," Lawson said, citing a local 1-percent budget increment of approximately $43,000. The committee also accepted Principal Peter Veneto's mid-year DIBELS and STAR literacy data showing grade 2 at 73 percent meeting or exceeding expectations against a 70 percent target, while grade 3 lagged at 57 percent — a gap the school is already addressing with daily push-in phonics sessions — and heard Superintendent Jill Proulx announce the April adoption of HMH as a unified K through 8 math curriculum across Dennett and Silver Lake.