Peyton Palmer

Ray Han and Sophie Li prepare their boat for a sailing practice last Spring. Clubs and departments are addressing changes and adapting in light of new, smaller budget cuts.

While students, faculty and family have had to adapt to the large budget cuts announced last year, which elicited a crestfallen reaction from the community, administrators say additional small cuts to clubs, departments and other expenses implemented for the 2025 fiscal year will help keep Lab in a financially stable position but will not impact student experience. 

The budget cuts announced by Director of Schools Tori Jueds in May caused concern from the community. While Ms. Jueds understands the cuts were difficult, she also said there are lessons to be learned from the experience.

“I haven’t enjoyed being the person that is ultimately responsible for this particular round of disappointments,” Ms. Jueds said, “and yet, it’s not a bad life lesson to absorb the fact that sometimes we don’t get our first choice in life. Sometimes there are no solutions, or the solutions we would like to see to particular problems are not available. I think it would be great if we went into this school year understanding that we’re in a community where everyone’s doing their level best for the leaders of the future.”

Dave Ribbens, who returned this summer as interim athletics director, has been working with his colleagues to find ways to adapt to the changes in the athletics program and enhance experiences.

He explained one way they are doing this is by putting together a game program for each home contest in the form of rosters of the opposing and home team. The paper and digital roster allow fans to further interact with the games they are watching.

The sailing team has adapted to its new status practicing as a club sport.

“Practice is still happening — nothing’s really changed,” Jack Colyer, a sailing team member, said. “Everyone I’ve spoken to with the school has said it’s final. There’s nothing that we can do, so there’s no point trying to fight it, and now we just have to find a way around it to still operate. I’m going to try and see if I can find other means of funding, otherwise we’re on the hook for whatever the cost is each season.”

To stabilize Lab’s budget, Ms. Jueds said there were also necessary marginal budget cuts put in place to ensure this. 

Ms. Jueds assured that these cuts will not impact student experience like the previous cuts.

“Cuts to some co-curricular offerings were also necessary to get us to where we needed to be with regard to the budget,” Ms. Jueds said. “There is absolutely no intention — and you would have heard about it if there was — of diminishing or phasing out those programs. I would call that a temporary measure.”

Some programs impacted by these cuts are the U-High academic teams. Each face a cut of at most 10%, but club leaders say the cuts will not be a challenge.

While not taking a heavy toll on club finances, the Cache Money 8096 Robotics Team plans to increase fundraising efforts through its network of academic grants and corporate sponsorships to counter the cut. Senior Alexander Saratovsky, a member of operations, said the team has grown its fundraising team, which works during the summer and fall, to put a greater emphasis on bringing in money this school year. 

“Our final product won’t look different this year,” Alexander said. “It’s just we have to take a few extra steps in the beginning of the season to raise extra money so that we’re prepared to build a robot. It’s a positive challenge, because it’s improving our team engagement in raising money, which is an essential part of any engineering operation. There’s always money out there. You just have to go out and find it.”

Alexander said he predicts that the cut will affect travel costs more than parts for the robot itself.

“As a robotic team, we do spend a fair bit of money on the robot itself,” Alexander said, “but it will probably most impact travel. We try to go to three competitions per season to increase our odds of making it to the World Championships, and this year we’re still going to try to go to three, but travel costs may hurt us. The cut will make us more budget conscious this year.”

Senior Helen Kraemer, a secretary general for the Model United Nations team, said the cuts do not pose a concern to the club’s finances. The majority of the MUN budget goes into travel costs, but Helen said the club’s budget still allows for the team to attend the same number of conferences as last year.

“We haven’t really seen much of a dent,” Helen said, “and we’re really grateful for that.”