I've shared the preliminary budget presentation in my Dropbox here:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/w1brrf43kj6kehz/FY24%20Preliminary%20Budget%20Estimates%20March%2016%2C%202023.pdf?dl=0

(it's also in the agenda, but I know people can find that unwieldy to deal with)

In addition to the points made by u/teddygrahamdispenser, it's also due to deliberate decisions by the School Committee to:

1. hold staffing harmless from the enrollment drop two years ago due to COVID and remote learning. Our elementary enrollment took a dive; we usually would have laid off teachers and did not. We used federal pandemic aid to retain staff (an entirely supported use). That now needs to be folded back into the regular budget; we can cover it, but it's part of what's "already spent."
2. Similarly, we've been "preloading" some of our expected state funding increases due to the Student Opportunity Act; you can see this illustrated on page 28 of the presentation. Thus we have had those staff a year ahead of when state funding would have supported them.

Slides 24 and 25 then show how that shakes out over our budget increase (which is both significant and largely state funded).

I'm always glad to take questions on budget stuff.