Despite a common grumble against rising school costs, next year’s spending plans for districts across Merrimack County show a more modest increase than last year.

In the 18 school districts that include at least one Merrimack County town, the proposed operating budgets are a total of 3.2% higher than last year’s proposals, a Monitor analysis found. At last year’s annual school district meetings, the proposals were a total of 5.4% higher than the previous year’s, according to data obtained from the Department of Revenue.

The 3.2% increase is less than the rate of inflation, which was 3.9% from January 2024 to 2025, according to the MA-NH consumer price index.

Of course, costs vary significantly between individual towns, and an overall rate of modest growth will be of little comfort to voters in districts experiencing larger increases. Andover has the largest proposed percentage growth at 8.8%, followed by Hooksett, Pittsfield, Epsom, and Merrimack Valley, which all experienced growth at or above 7%.

The Newfound Area School District has a proposed budget reduction of 3.2%, the most significant of the three districts who are proposing budgets that are smaller than what was proposed last year.

The comparisons rely on the proposed budgets that districts reported to the Department of Revenue Administration rather than on the budgets that were approved by voters or expended by the district. In some cases, there is significant variation between these numbers, as in Pembroke, where the operating budget approved last year was $3 million less than the budget proposed. (In one case where it appears there was an error in the number reported by the DRA and the Monitor used the number from the municipality.)

The analysis also only involves districts’ operating budgets and doesn’t include the hundreds of thousands of dollars that may have been approved through warrant articles.

In all, districts in Merrimack County are proposing appropriating $543 million for next year, up from $526 million proposed last year.

In the lead up to town meeting season, many district leaders have said that the most significant drivers of budget growth are special education costs and benefits.

In the county as a whole, the largest category of special education expenses grew 10.7% from last year’s approved budget to this year’s proposed budget, according to data from the districts themselves. (In five districts, this line item was not easily discernible from the documents available and those districts were therefore omitted.)

In Andover, the district with the largest percentage growth, special education expenses were set to grow 87%, according to the proposed budget. Pittsfield and Hopkinton are expected to see the second and third-largest percentage growth, at 16.5% and 15.3%, respectively.

Out-of-district tuition is the largest driver of special education growth in most districts. Though a very small percentage of students require out-of-district placements, the cost for a single student who does can total hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The analysis omits the Franklin School District, which operates on a different budget schedule because it is a city. It includes the Concord School District, because the district has already compiled an initial proposal for the 2025-26 school year.

Jeremy Margolis can be contacted at jmargolis@cmonitor.com.