Freetown-Lakeville School Committee Fails to Reduce Budget, Level-Services Plan Advances to Town Meetings

LAKEVILLE -- May 27, 2026, Freetown-Lakeville School Committee sends $49.5 million level-services budget to town meetings after failing three times to muster the two-thirds supermajority needed to reduce it. Meeting May 27 in the wake of a failed Lakeville override vote, the committee heard Director of Finance Jack Higgins lay out three options: reduce to $47,104,370 to match the override-constrained Lakeville figure, adopt a compromise at $47,765,151 that could restore nine of 63 impacted positions, or hold the original $49,551,387 level-services budget approved at the prior meeting. Two separate roll calls on the lower figure and one on the compromise each fell short, with members Becky Cushing and Catherine Trost voting no on reduction and Tim Emery abstaining throughout. Member Courtney Bregman said she saw "no viable path forward" with the level-services figure given the override result, while Cushing warned that state education regulators "are not going to change their regulations, regardless of our funding source," arguing cuts would hit students with disabilities hardest. With no reconsideration passing, the $49,551,387 assessment goes to Freetown's town meeting June 1 and Lakeville's June 8, both at the Apponequet Regional High School auditorium at 6 p.m. and if either town votes a lower number, the committee must reconvene, with a July 1 state-imposed spending deadline looming.