Financial Mismanagement by Framingham City Government Threatens the School System

There is an immediate crisis in the Framingham Public Schools (FPS) FY27 budget where the city seems to be reneging on funding negotiated contracts affecting FPS staff, and the Mayor may be about to prove that his campaign message, that he is a big supporter of education in Framingham, was a hoax.

There is currently an $8 million shortfall in the increase that the FPS FY27 budget requires and what the Mayor is offering the schools. If that does not change, over 100 FPS staff will be cut.

That would be disastrous in a situation where student performance has been declining for the last 4 years and hundreds of experienced teachers have left in the same time period.

An Emerging Pattern of Incompetence
This also seems to be another case where a lack of competence in basic city financial management is becoming evident, following the elementary accounting mistake made at the end of 2025 in setting the tax rate.

That mistake got past the city administration’s key financial advisors: Chief Financial Officer and her deputy, and the City Accountant. It also got past the City Council Finance Subcommittee and City Council reviews of the FY26 city budget in the spring and the FY26 tax rate setting in the fall.

The mistake was only picked up after the state Division of Local Services (DLS) reviewed the city’s tax rate submission and noted that the city’s Excess Capacity (unused tax levy) would decrease in FY26.

No one noticed that the tax levy was going up by more than 3.5%, rather than the advertised 2.5%, until DLS made that clear.

The city CFO took the hit for the mistake and resigned, effective December 31, 2025.

The city continues to operate without an experienced, competent Chief Financial Officer, and in the last 2 years, 2 CFOs have been forced out.

Further, for the last 8 years the City Council has remained without the critically important financial advice which the City Charter aimed to provide it through the Auditor, or City Council financial analyst position. In 8 years, that position has never been filled.

That has been a giant failure of financial leadership in the City Council.

A lack of competent financial management of the city is now a major problem, exacerbated by the inability of past City Councils to provide checks and balances.

The consequences for the FY27 budget could be very serious for sound funding of the schools and other city operations.

More analysis of the problems facing the city will be forthcoming in the coming weeks.

Never has it been more important for the community to step up and engage with the Mayor and the City Council in the annual budget process to ensure that the government does not make a series of very bad budget decisions.