Topic

Schools: staffing, costs and open seats

How is Brookline's school system staffed, what does an added student cost, and how much room do the schools have?

Brookline staffs its schools somewhat more than its peers and has somewhat higher needs, and its teacher pay is the highest of its peers. An added student costs about $16,975 when staff are added, and far less when the student fills a seat the schools already have, which, with enrollment falling faster than staff, many will.

This page sets out how the schools reached their current size, how their staffing compares, and what an added student costs. How many students there will be is on Enrollment: three forecasts compared, and why Brookline draws fewer young families than its suburban neighbors is on Why families settle elsewhere. The new homes page applies all of it to new housing school by school.

Enrollment, open seats and new housing

A common worry is that new housing fills the schools with children who cost more to educate than their homes pay in tax. The breakeven test answers that one building at a time. The town-wide answer turns mostly on something else: Brookline is having far fewer children. Brookline residents had about 690 babies a year in 2008–13 and 423 in 2025, and each birth year becomes a kindergarten class five years later, so the effect on the schools is still arriving.

Enrollment depends on births and on families moving in and out. One number summarizes the second: enrollment divided by the children born to Brookline residents in the thirteen years that feed kindergarten through grade 12. It rises when families with children move in or stay, whether into new homes or, far more often, into the 29,000 homes already here, and falls when they leave.

How the 2010s rise happened. From FY2005 to FY2019 enrollment rose 31%, from 5,984 to 7,855. The pool of Brookline-born children feeding the schools grew only 8% over the same years, while enrollment per birth rose from 0.74 to 0.90. Roughly a quarter of the rise came from more births and three-quarters from families moving in, staying, and choosing the public schools, mostly in homes that already existed. The schools felt it. A September 2019 School Department staff planning draft describes "historic enrollment increases, overcrowding, and substandard spaces," refers to planning work since 2009 to respond, names Pierce, Driscoll, Baker and Runkle as overcrowded, and plans to move classrooms out of leased space. Voters approved debt exclusions to rebuild or expand Devotion (now Ruffin Ridley, 2015), the High School (2018), Driscoll (2019) and Pierce (2023). Those buildings were sized for the peak. Enrollment fell to 6,891 in FY2021, during COVID, and has held near 7,000 since, which is why this fall's kindergarten-to-grade-8 classes have about 1,100 empty seats (the new homes page sets them out school by school).

So far, families moving in have held enrollment level. From FY2021 to FY2025 the pool of Brookline-born children fell 4%, yet enrollment stayed near 7,000. Had enrollment per birth stayed at its FY2021 level, FY2025 would have had about 6,620 students, roughly 400 fewer. Families moving into Brookline made up the difference.

From here, smaller birth years bring enrollment down. In the base case it falls from 6,833 this fall to 6,402 in FY2030 and about 5,400 by FY2040, even with families continuing to move in at about the recent rate. The School Department's own forecast instead expects a rebound, mainly because it assumes more births than have been counted. Enrollment: three forecasts compared sets the forecasts side by side, and Why families settle elsewhere compares Brookline with the suburbs that draw more young families.

Where new housing fits. New homes bring their students through the same in-migration steps as any family buying or renting an existing home. At the recent pace of about 105 homes a year, plus Chestnut Hill, about 2,000 homes by FY2040 would bring about 340 to 490 students, using 0.17 (the middle of ten recent Brookline buildings) to 0.24 (the forecast's average). That is real, and it is smaller than the decline from births. Those students arrive in a system with fewer students than it had: the district served about 7,850 students in FY2019 and is projected to serve about 5,400 in FY2040 under NESDEC (updated for actual births), which is taken to include homes built at the recent pace. That is an assumption, not a calculation: NESDEC's forecast has no housing input. It projects each grade from how classes grew or shrank as they moved up in recent years, which reflects the families who moved into the homes built in those years; the building permits it lists averaged about 107 homes a year from 2019 to 2022, close to the recent pace. If homes at that pace bring more children than they used to, or fewer, the forecast would not show it until the October counts do. Only homes built faster than the recent pace add students explicitly, at 0.24 a home.

What that means for cost. It depends on what the schools do as enrollment falls. If staffing stays where it is, as the School Department's own plan assumes, students from new homes fill seats that would otherwise sit empty and add little cost beyond the forecast. If staffing shrinks with enrollment, as the base case assumes at half the pace of enrollment (the FY2019 to FY2025 pattern), students from new homes mean fewer positions cut, and their cost is the saving forgone, which is what the per-home breakeven test measures. Either way, the town-wide question is not whether new housing will crowd the schools. It is how quickly enrollment falls, and whether staffing follows it. Indicators to watch tracks both each fall.

Two cautions. Births for 2026 and later are not yet counted, and 2025's count, 423 in the Town's annual report, is a little below the 449 a year the base case assumes; more years like it would deepen the decline. And the number of children a building brings varies widely with its bedrooms and tenure (0.03 to 0.56 in the ten recent buildings), so the per-home test still matters for any one project.

Two enrollment forecasts that disagree

Two demographers produced forecasts for the district in 2023, and they point in opposite directions (Enrollment: three forecasts compared sets them side by side with the base case). NESDEC projects enrollment falling to about 6,130 by 2033–34. Cropper-McKibben, the forecast the School Department plans with, projects a low in 2027–28 and a rise to about 7,440. Both have been close so far.

This fall NESDEC was closer on both. For kindergarten through grade 8 it projected 4,436 students, exactly the October 1 count, against Cropper-McKibben's 4,588. The School Department's own projection for next fall, made in October 2026, has kindergarten through grade 8 falling another 98, to 4,338; NESDEC has 4,337 and Cropper-McKibben 4,635. The base case uses NESDEC because the population data points the same way: births to Brookline residents fell from about 690 a year (2008–13) to about 490 (2020–22) and 422, 443 and 423 in 2023, 2024 and 2025, and UMass Donahue Institute projections have Brookline's 5–14 age group falling about 28% from 2020 to 2035. With school staff falling half as fast as enrollment as it falls and rising with it as it rises, as in the base case, the choice between the two moves FY2040 by $47.9 million.

How Brookline's staffing compares

Against 17 peer K–12 districts, Brookline had 5.6 students per staff member in FY2025, the 7th most staffed of 18 (peer median 5.9), and the same rank ten years earlier. Its needs rank 4th: 41% high-needs students (median 30%) and 11% English learners (median 4%). Peers added staff faster than enrollment too: over ten years Brookline's staff grew 10% while enrollment fell 6.5%; the peer median was +17% staff and −4% enrollment. Brookline serves most special education students in-district, so its out-of-district tuition is low (5% of spending, 16th of 18). What stands out is pay: Brookline's average teacher salary ($132,000 in FY2025) is the highest of the 17 districts with data, against a peer median of about $112,000.

For the forecast. Staffing is somewhat above peers and so are needs, so there is no strong case for treating it as an outlier to be trimmed. School pay growth is the larger open question, and it is being bargained now. How Brookline got here shows how the students-per-staff ratio moved from FY2011 to FY2025.

How the cost of an added student is calculated

The forecast treats two-thirds of the school budget as moving with enrollment and one-third as fixed (buildings, administration, leadership), the split RKG set with Town staff. It staffs the enrollment-linked share at the FY2027 ratio of 5.50 students per staff member (6,833 students, about 1,242 staff). An added student therefore brings 0.67 ÷ 5.50 = 0.122 positions, or one position per 8.2 students.

That is 77% of the $21,745 average school budget per pupil in FY2027, and close to RKG's $15,572 (FY2025), which uses the same two-thirds split. It rises with pay and premiums: about $22,500 in FY2034 and $28,900 in FY2040 in nominal dollars. Teacher pensions are paid by the state and aren't included. In practice the cost is lumpy: with K–8 classes averaging 17 to 21 against guidelines of 22 to 25, a child joining a grade with room costs little, while one that forces a new section costs a teacher. $16,975 is the long-run average.

Filling an open seat

The cost above assumes each added student brings added staff. That is the right assumption for a growing school system, but Brookline's is shrinking: enrollment is projected to fall from 6,833 in FY2027 to about 5,400 by FY2040, while the base case lets school staff fall only half as fast, as they did from FY2019 to FY2025 (the School Department's own plan keeps staffing at the FY2027 level). This fall's kindergarten-to-grade-8 classes already have about 1,100 open seats under the School Committee's class-size guidelines, or about 440 if every class stays three students below them, and more open as enrollment falls faster than staff. Counting empty classrooms as well, the kindergarten-to-grade-8 buildings, including the larger new Pierce, have room for roughly 1,000 to 1,700 more students (school seats map). A new home's children can fill seats the Town is already paying for, and the added cost per student is about $7,760 (supplies and the like, plus special education at the district average; see the tiers below) rather than $16,975. On that basis even a $434,000 rental apartment nets about $1,700 a year. With staff held at the FY2027 level, the seats that open as enrollment falls would take about 1,800 homes beyond the recent pace by FY2030 and about 5,800 by FY2040; with staff falling half as fast, as in the base case, about half as many. The open seats could instead be cut to save money, so the two uses compete. The new homes page sets this out school by school, and the Forecast Explorer's Students from added homes setting runs it through the forecast.

What a filled seat costs. The forecast's cost of an added student includes $2,497 of non-personnel spending, built from an estimate that 17% of the school budget is non-personnel spending: 17% of $149.8 million is about $25.5 million, the two-thirds of that which moves with enrollment is $17.1 million, and divided by 6,833 students that is about $2,500. The 17% is this project's own estimate, derived from Town-wide spending by object class. The Schools' own FY2026 year-end report shows less: $125.0 million of salaries and $17.8 million of non-salary spending. That year's tuition line is low, though: to close a budget gap, the School Department moved $1.9 million of out-of-district tuition onto the state's special education reimbursement (Circuit Breaker) fund for FY2026 only (FY2027 proposed budget, p. 33). Putting it back gives $19.7 million, so non-salary is about 13.6% of the budget. On that share the same calculation gives about $2,000 a student. Most of the $19.7 million does not grow when one more child joins a class that is already running:

The lines that really scale with each seat (supplies, textbooks, online tools, computers, field trips and instructional equipment) come to about $4.5 million, roughly $650 a student across FY2026's 6,948 students. Transportation and out-of-district tuition follow particular students, mostly those with special education needs, rather than seats, so the tiers below count them with special education. (Source: Public Schools of Brookline, FY26 General Fund Financial Report, Line Item, 4th Quarter, 14 August 2026, budget column, with the $1.9 million tuition shift from the FY2027 proposed budget added back.)

Three tiers for the cost of an added student

An added student costs the schools about $670 a year if they fill an open seat, about $7,760 if they also bring the district's average special education needs, and about $16,975 if they fill an empty classroom with full staff. All three are in FY2027 dollars. The middle tier exists because special education staff and services grow with enrollment, and classrooms don't. When added students fill open seats (the Forecast Explorer's Students from added homes setting), the forecast charges the middle tier. The base case staffs every added student, so it charges the third.

Tier 1 is the FY2026 budget lines that grow with each student (supplies, online tools, computers, textbooks): $4,520,903 across 6,948 students, $651, carried to FY2027 at 3%.

Tier 2 adds Brookline's special education spending per student, from DESE's FY2025 figures, the latest year published:

Per-student figures divide by FY2025 enrollment, 7,023. Three adjustments take DESE's total to what Brookline pays:

• Federal grants (mainly IDEA) are not paid by Brookline taxpayers, so they come out.
• Circuit Breaker is the state's reimbursement of about 75% of each high-cost student's costs above a threshold, paid the following year. DESE's spending figures include what districts spend from the Circuit Breaker fund, so the reimbursement for FY2025's claims, paid in FY2026, comes out too.
• Benefits. DESE's special education figures cover instruction and tuition only; districts report employee benefits separately. The forecast's cost of an added student carries health insurance ($1,854) and other payroll-linked benefits ($433) on $12,192 of salary, 18.8%, and the same rate is applied here. It is applied to all of "other instruction," part of which is contracted services that carry no benefits, so it may be slightly high.

The all-in $6,681 is carried to FY2027 at 3% a year, $7,088, and added to tier 1: about $7,760.

What it assumes. New students need special education at the district's average rate and mix of needs: 18.6% of Brookline students had individualized education programs (IEPs) in 2024–25. If new homes bring more students with high-cost needs, the cost is higher; if fewer, lower. Out-of-district placements are few and expensive, so the actual cost from any one building can be well above or below the average.

If Circuit Breaker shrinks. The state pays Circuit Breaker from each year's appropriation. Statewide payments grew from $205.7 million in FY2009 to $663.6 million in FY2026, but in FY2010 and FY2011, during the recession, they fell to about $128 million, reimbursing roughly 40% of eligible costs instead of 75%. A cut like that would add about $370 to tier 2. Without Circuit Breaker at all, tier 2 would be about $8,550.

Tier 3 is the forecast's cost of an added student when every student brings new staff: 0.122 positions at $100,109 each, $12,192, plus non-personnel costs ($2,497), health insurance and payroll-linked benefits. It already includes special education staff, at the forecast's staffing rate rather than the district average.

An earlier estimate. In 2014 the Town's Override Study Committee put the long-run cost of an added student at $15,748 in FY2014 dollars, about $23,000 today, a figure that also counted debt service and capital spending. The committee tied it to growth: its method "would not be appropriate in the absence of the type of ongoing and persistent growth" Brookline then had (p. 10), and with stable enrollment the Town would not save the full amount if enrollment fell (p. 11). By the same reasoning, while enrollment falls, an added student costs less than that full figure. (The Economic Impact of Enrollment Growth on the Public Schools, Override Study Committee, 2014.)

Sources: DESE, Direct Special Education Expenditures, FY08 to FY25 (from each district's End of Year Report, Schedule 4); DESE, FY2026 Circuit Breaker reimbursement and statewide payments by year; Public Schools of Brookline, FY26 General Fund Financial Report, 14 August 2026. The calculation is on GitHub.

Go deeper

• Enrollment: three forecasts compared: Why do the enrollment forecasts disagree, and which one does the base case use?
• Why families settle elsewhere: Why does Brookline draw fewer young families than towns like Lexington?
• New homes and Brookline's budget: What does a new home cost the Town, now that enrollment is falling?
• Will Brookline need another override?: When would Brookline need another override, and what would prevent it?
• Data and sources: Where does each number come from?

Last updated 2026-10-27. What has changed.