The cost of services shared by public schools on Martha’s Vineyard could be going up by nearly 9 per cent, superintendent Richard Smith told the all-Island school committee Monday night as he presented an $11.4 million draft budget for the coming fiscal year.

This was the committee’s first look at the draft spending plan, which will be hammered into its final form over the next few weeks.

The 8.9 per cent increase is driven largely by staffing expenses that are rising by 5.47 per cent, Mr. Smith said.

Collectively bargained pay increases are adding more than $263,000 to the spending plan, while health insurance premiums, still in flux, are expected to jump by a double-digit percentage representing at least $260,000 in additional expenses.

Mr. Smith, who is retiring at the end of June, is seeking an additional $317,350 in administration and other expenses for the central office in the next fiscal year, with $125,000 of that amount to hire a full-time assistant superintendent.

“It’s likely that our [next] superintendent will be coming from off Island, and so building a supportive group around her or him will be necessary,” Mr. Smith told the school committee.

Another $32,000 is penciled in for the superintendent’s family health insurance plan. Mr. Smith, whose wife is a longtime teacher at Oak Bluffs School, said he has not been using the health insurance benefit for his own position.

Overall, the administrative increases Mr. Smith has requested are 3 per cent higher than in the current fiscal year.

The superintendent’s office provides public school students with behavioral health care, English language learning programs, special education — including transportation — and early childhood education, which begins at age three for children with significant disabilities.

Among other services, the superintendent’s office administers all-Island music programs, allowing town schools to save on the costs of site-specific instruction, and employs clinicians to provide speech and language therapy for children from all schools.

The central office also handles payroll and finances for the individual schools, and is responsible for ensuring their educational programs meet state standards.

A former principal at Oak Bluffs School, Mr. Smith became the Island’s assistant superintendent in 2015 and took the top job in 2022, on a short-term contract upon the early departure of former superintendent Matthew d’Andrea for a mainland job.

Instead of replacing himself with a new assistant superintendent, Mr. Smith has used his former salary to revamp the central office structure, hiring retired Island principals as part-time assistant superintendents of curriculum and operations.

This year he hired away Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School principal Sara Dingledy, for a new position working with town schools to coordinate their middle-school classes so that all eighth-grade graduates are equally prepared to enter the regional high. 

The all-Island school committee has been studying the possibility of unifying all six public schools into a single district, for which a strong central administrative staff would be needed.

A regionalization subcommittee, including all-Island and Tisbury school board chair Amy Houghton and up-Island school board chair Alex Salop, has been meeting regularly since January to learn about the process from representatives of the Massachusetts Association of Regional Schools.

A unified district could save Island towns a significant amount of money by streamlining purchases, transportation and other procedures that are currently handled by individual schools.

Finance director Mark Friedman told the committee during last year’s budget process that regionalization could save more than $750,000 in transportation costs alone.

The all-Island school district will resume its budget review on Nov. 20, Ms. Houghton said.