Lunenburg School Committee Elects New Chair, Endorses Balanced Budget After Override Defeat

LUNENBURG — May 20, 2026 — Lunenburg School Committee installs new chair and commits to balanced budget following decisive override defeat. The committee unanimously elected member Laura Brzozowski as chair for 2026-2027 at its May 20 meeting, with the outgoing chair moving to vice chair and Mandy Gilman provisionally nominated as secretary pending formal acceptance. Superintendent Dr. Jody Fortuna recommended against an immediate second override attempt, warning that returning to voters "may be perceived as tone deaf" after a resounding defeat, and instead called for implementing the balanced budget in full — including class sizes up to 30 in grades one through four, the loss of elementary interventionists, elimination of middle school sports and athletic transportation, and removal of AP world language courses — while building a community task force aimed at a 2027-2028 funding push. The committee debated the task force model at length, with the outgoing chair arguing for personally inviting named community skeptics rather than issuing a general call for volunteers, framing the goal as presenting the budget as "a document of falsifiability." The committee also unanimously adopted four policies on third reading, including a new student data privacy policy barring student records from being entered into open AI systems such as ChatGPT, and accepted a composite evaluation of Dr. Fortuna with an A-minus equivalent rating for her first year.