Concord schools’ projections for student services and out-of-district tuition continue to grow

Two months after Concord’s Board of Education voted to raise the tax rate in part to cover higher-than-expected costs for special education services, the district’s projections for those and other related services continue to rise.

Business Administrator Jack Dunn said Concord now expects to spend roughly $8 million on out-of-district tuition, in-house contractors and services for Concord students attending charter schools — $3 million more than the district had initially budgeted for.

Though spending on these services has steadily risen across the state since the pandemic, Dunn said that trend has accelerated over the past two years in Concord.

“It definitely is getting more challenging on the student services side,” Dunn said. “No doubt.”

The reasons are multifaceted and involve both increases to costs and to the number of students who need significant services, administrators in the district said. Other districts in the region, including Merrimack Valley and Bow, are also projecting that their expenditures on student services will exceed the budgeted amounts for the year, though not by as much as Concord.

School districts are required by law to provide students with disabilities the services they are eligible for.

“This dollar amount is entirely out of our control,” Concord school board member Sarah Robinson said at a meeting earlier this month. “We just need to adapt and be nimble.”

In Concord, professional services for pupils is the budget line most exceeding projections. The district now expects to spend $4.3 million on the budget line, which encompasses the contractors the district hires to work in its schools. That’s more than double the $1.9 million initially budgeted for.

Between 20 and 40 contractors, who hold positions such as board-certified behavior analysts and registered behavior technicians, currently work in the district, according to Jeni Mosca, Concord’s interim director of student services. The vast majority of these contractors provide services required by students’ individualized learning plans, or IEPs, but some also work with students who don’t have identified special education needs, Mosca said.

The district used to be able to hire employees who provide these services in-house but is no longer able to do so, Interim Superintendent Tim Herbert said.

“We just haven’t been able to fill those positions,” he said. “They are making more in the private sector.”

Mosca said the main drivers of rising needs are mental health challenges and autism. From 2019 to 2024, the number of students with autism in the state increased 26%, the largest percentage increase by disability type, according to data from the Department of Education. Overall, the number of students with documented disabilities increased 6% during that period.

As a large school district, Concord is often able to provide more services in-house than its smaller counterparts, reducing its need to send students out of district. Dunn said that the district’s contracted services costs used to counterbalance each other, smoothing out unexpected increases to either line item. That is no longer the case, he said.

“This year, we’re getting hit from both ends,” he said.

As of October, the district had 29 students attending out-of-district special education schools, according to Mosca. Some of those placements were ordered by courts or required by the foster care system. In all, 750 Concord students have IEPs, Mosca said.

The district is projecting that it will spend $3.1 million on out-of-district tuition this year, Dunn said. It budgeted $2.8 million.

Underscoring the challenges of predicting these types of expenditures, Dunn said the district had expected to have only one student attend a $200,000 out-of-district school this year.

Since the start of the year, however, “we’ve had two more students arrive at $200,000 apiece,” he said.

Though the costs greatly exceed this year’s budgeted amounts, they remain roughly on par with what was spent last year. Dunn said that when the school board initially approved the budget in the spring, it had not become entirely clear how much the 2024-25 expenditures would be.

Though there is a system in place for school districts to receive reimbursement from the state for a portion of the most expensive services, it has not historically been fully funded. This year, districts were set to receive 90% of what they were eligible for — which itself is a fraction of what they spend.

Concord’s spending on student services and out-of-district tuition could still change as the school year progresses. The district will look to cover the difference between its budget appropriations and actual spending either through its unassigned fund balance, if there is one at the end of the year, or through its trust funds, Dunn said.

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