MARBLEHEAD — Marblehead officials are no longer just arguing over school cuts. They are arguing over whether town leaders can be trusted to follow through on a budget process that both sides say should have been in place years ago.

At a joint budget discussion, school officials pressed town finance leaders over a proposed shift in how shared costs such as pensions, health insurance, and retiree benefits are assigned between the town and schools.

Town officials say the revised formula supports a request for about $1.5 million in additional school cuts on top of a level-funded fiscal 2027 budget that already includes layoffs.

The potential reductions come as school officials are also beginning to explore a possible override request that could restore some of the cuts and address the town’s broader structural budget gap. During recent meetings, members said any override proposal would likely need to account not only for restoring staff positions but also for rising contractual salary increases and other long-term financial pressures expected in the coming years.

Finance Committee Chair Alec Goolsby said the analysis was designed to replace rough estimates with a line-by-line review of expenses carried on the town side, but tied in part to school employees and retirees.

“We’ve always heard this 60-40 split,” Goolsby said. “I’ve never really gotten great analysis in past years on that. As an accountant, I actually like to see line by line. Can I see a supportable percentage?”

Goolsby said the town had about $97.1 million available to divide between town and school operations last year, compared with about $96.5 million this year. He said lower projected local receipts, less free cash available for operations, and other offsets created a roughly $600,000 drop in revenue available to split.

Using the new framework, Goolsby said the schools accounted for about 63% of those shared operating costs last year, not the even split many residents have long associated with the budget. After recalculating the numbers, he said about $3.2 million of the current deficit is tied to school-related costs and about $4.5 million to the town side.

But school officials repeatedly challenged whether the numbers behind that framework are firm enough to justify immediate job cuts.

Assistant Superintendent of Finance Mike Pfifferling said he supports the concept of assigning costs more accurately but said the district should not make staffing decisions based on assumptions that still need to be verified.

“I think this is a great idea,” Pfifferling said. “If the data were substantiated.”

He questioned some of the pension and health insurance figures used in the town’s analysis and warned that even relatively small errors could have major consequences for school staffing.

“I’m still not convinced that number is the right number,” Pfifferling said of the $1.5 million target. “I don’t think that there is enough analysis.”

That concern was echoed by other School Committee members, who said they were being asked to make cuts based on what one member described as “an estimate on an estimate.”

The stakes, Superintendent John Robidoux said, are not abstract.

“We’re in the business of students,” Robidoux said. “This will 100% impact classrooms, which will 100% impact students.”

Robidoux said school leaders will follow whatever direction the School Committee gives, but he warned that this year’s reductions will not be the end of the pressure.

“This year’s bad. Next year’s going to be way worse,” he said. “We need to plan now for the future too.”

Even committee members who said the town’s framework made conceptual sense expressed discomfort with changing the rules in the middle of a crisis.

Committee member Melissa Clucas said the model appeared more logical than the shorthand used in past years, but said the larger issue was whether both sides were prepared to formalize the process so the schools would not face a different formula the next time the town hits a fiscal wall.

“I think the framework makes sense to me,” Clucas said. “I can understand how you got there.”

Still, other members asked how they could be sure this year’s approach would remain in place in future budget cycles.

That question led the discussion to a broader complaint: town and school leaders already had an agreement intended to force earlier collaboration.

School officials noted that a 2019 memorandum of agreement between the Select Board and School Committee created a framework for exactly that kind of coordination.

Committee Member Jennifer Schaeffner said there was no need to “reinvent the wheel” because the agreement already laid out the process officials are now promising to create.

The 2019 MOU states that the Select Board and School Committee “have a vested interest in the long-term financial health and stability of the Town of Marblehead” and that the town would benefit from “increased collaboration, cooperation and long-term planning” between the two governing bodies.

The agreement called for an annual joint finance summit including members of the Select Board, Finance Committee, School Committee, and senior town and school administrators to discuss the town’s financial outlook and upcoming budget challenges.

It also established a joint budget review committee to analyze revenue trends, financial forecasts, and department needs, and required monthly meetings between town and school financial leaders to review spending, revenue, and potential problems in real time.

Several School Committee members said those steps either were not implemented consistently or were not used effectively enough to prevent the current crisis.

Goolsby acknowledged that earlier collaboration could have changed the situation.

“If we had this level discussion back in October, November, I think we’d be having a much different conversation,” he said.

Still, he pushed back on suggestions that the town’s warnings about cuts were political theater. Goolsby said that without the school reductions and other budget changes, the town side would have faced dozens of position cuts.

“These are not scare tactics,” he said.

School Committee members said they do not want to deepen cuts to classrooms, but several also said they do not see a viable path in presenting a budget completely detached from the town’s broader financial limits.

Committee Vice Chair Kate Schmeckpeper said the schools and town cannot continue to operate as though they are separate financial systems.

“We need to find a way to work together instead of sort of negotiating with one another for the pot of money that belongs to the entire community,” she said.

At the same time, members made clear that any override campaign must be aimed at more than restoring one year of losses.

“I’m not interested in backing a band-aid situation,” Clucas said. “I’m interested in backing something that structurally fixes the problem.”

Several members said they expect to discuss multiple override scenarios in the coming weeks, potentially including one that restores positions lost under the current proposal and another that addresses the town’s longer-term structural deficit.

For now, the central dispute remains unresolved: how much the schools should cut, and whether the number driving those cuts can withstand scrutiny.

Pfifferling said district leaders need clarity soon.

“I need from the committee a number that’s as close as possible,” he said.

Without that, Marblehead’s budget debate is likely to keep circling around the same issue: not only how to divide scarce money, but whether town and school leaders can rebuild confidence.