Maynard School Committee approves Nature's Classroom trip, tables DC travel

MAYNARD -- February 27, 2025, Maynard School Committee unanimously approved a seventh-grade Nature's Classroom trip for April and tabled a Washington, D.C. trip pending more detail on student accommodations. The committee spent much of its open session on a fiscal-year 2026 state budget briefing from a legislator, during which Superintendent Brian Haas warned that town appropriations growing at only about 2.5 percent annually cannot keep pace with salary and benefit cost increases of 3 percent or more, leaving the district facing a structural deficit. Haas said the district is already drawing heavily on reserves and that a $1.4 million Proposition 2.5 override is necessary to maintain level service. Chair Marla Hogan reported that a joint Select Board session has surfaced a proposal to split the school's override request into two separate questions, a move the full committee rejected, with members agreeing to send individual letters to the Select Board urging that school funding appear as a single question before any vote is taken.