Lowell school finance panel flags errors in city's $50 million maintenance report

LOWELL -- September 30, 2025, Lowell's School Committee Finance Subcommittee scrutinized a 320-page city maintenance-of-effort report and found calculation errors that could affect the district's state aid compliance. CFO Derek Pento told the subcommittee that the city used a tax recapitulation figure of $519 million instead of the correct $591 million when computing the district's 49.46 percent share of shared administrative costs, inflating charges to the schools; the city acknowledged the error and is recalculating. Of an estimated $50 million maintenance-of-effort total, $6.8 million covers facilities work and more than $858,000 funds five school resource officers and two supervisors, a figure subcommittee member James Conway called out directly. The panel also pressed for itemized work-order descriptions after spotting two entries for identical ballast replacements priced at $57.98 and $273, respectively, with no explanation for the difference. Both sides agreed to quarterly reconciliation meetings, beginning October 26, and the subcommittee plans to vote on certifying the corrected end-of-year report at the October 15 full School Committee meeting, with a parallel push to rewrite the 2011 memorandum of agreement that governs how costs are split between the city and the district.