Saugus school board spends remaining funds

SAUGUS-The School Committee voted to spend the rest of its August windfall Thursday, but not without a little tussle over a technology director.Town Meeting voted to give the schools the additional $175,000 during the last special Town Meeting, but the committee had only spent about half the funds.Superintendent Keith Manville asked the committee Thursday to consider his list of requests so he could spend the rest of the money. The list of pressing needs included two special education aides for the Veterans Memorial School, a district wide technology coordinator, $50,000 for the Fine Arts Department, funds to offset user fees, bringing back part time custodians, a part time aide for the Lynnhurst School and a second nurse at the Veterans Memorial School.Unfortunately, the wish list adds up to approximately $204,000 and Manville said the remaining funds are closer to $91,000.”I suggest you take off the aide for the Lynnhurst,” he said. “Fund two aides at the Vets and carefully examine the technology coordinator . . . we’re really on the verge of collapse and add a nurse.”Manville said he whittled his list with the help of the principals who all agreed on the priorities of the school community. He also said he felt that as the new school year kinks were worked out of the budget and as funds from the rental of the Ballard and Evans schools began coming in, he thought the department could probably afford everything on the list in short order.School Committee member Ellen Faiella said she thought the expenditure was a good first step to rebuilding some of the structure lost to budget cuts.”Hopefully this will alleviate some problems,” she said.But Committee member Wendy Reed said she would prefer to hold off on the technology director until after the new year. The committee, she said, would have a better handle on the budget in January and she felt there was no need to hire a coordinator if they couldn’t sustain one.Committee member Christine Wilson disagreed.”I think completely opposite,” she said.Wilson said if they hire a coordinator now they would at least be moving forward, even if they found they couldn’t sustain the position next year.”We would be that much less behind,” she said. “It’s a technological world and the schools can’t survive without technology.”Committee member Joseph Malone sided with Wilson.”We are on the verge of collapse and I just don’t think we can wait on this particular item,” he said.New technology and technology upgrades have repeatedly fallen to budget cuts over the last two to three years.”There are just so many other needs,” Reed argued. “We’re holding off on user fees, we’re holding off on part time custodians. I don’t think holding off until after the first of the year is asking too much.”While Faiella and Chairman Debra Panetta lamented the difficulty of the decision in spending the little amount of money they had, in the end the technology director, along with the two aides and the half time nurse, won out.”There is an argument for both sides,” Faiella said. “This is what happens when your budget gets down to this level.”