SAUGUS – Superintendent Keith Manville made his presentation simple for the Finance Committee Wednesday, telling it the School Department couldn’t survive another year like this one.The committee submitted a $27,650,461 budget that restores all of what was cut last year and then some.Manville told the committee that last year’s $3.4 million budget cut manifested itself into classrooms with 30-plus students on the elementary and middle school level. The cut wiped out gym, music and art on the elementary level, took 58 people off the payroll, more than half of whom were teachers, and stalled the purchasing of new textbooks, technology and software upgrades and all supplies except for copy paper.”We can’t teach anything but the basic, ‘I’m going to teach you, you’re going to learn,'” Manville said.Although the department suffered devastating cuts, it still didn’t make it through the year unscathed. The athletic account has a $46,000 shortfall and electricity went up 14 percent, with oil shooting up 48 percent over last year.Pupil Personnel Director Judy Masucci said the department also needed to add at least two autistic classrooms, one at the high school and another at the middle school level.Masucci said adding the classrooms made not only educational sense but fiscal sense. The cost to hire one teacher and an aide is about equal what the School Department would have to pay in tuition for one student if they were forced to send them out of district.Manville said there was also another important component to his budget and that was the living, breathing student factor.When reading teachers were cut on the third grade level, Manville said that resulted in some kids entering fourth grade reading at a second grade level.”You can’t go back and rewind the tape,” he said. “Once a year is lost, it’s lost.”The ripple effect of the budget cuts is also being felt in enrollment. While state aid figures for the School Department might have been up from last year due to a new formula, they are down considerably compared to other schools, and that is based solely on enrollment.Manville said he estimates there are 800 students going to other schools and he can’t win them back if he can’t offer programs and he can’t offer programs without funding.Town Manager Andrew Bisignani has proposed $22,474,400, which he considers level funded, but Manville said that wouldn’t even get the School Department what it had last year.Factoring in transportation increases, Special Education tuition increases, the teachers’ raise and other projected increases, Manville said the School Department would need a minimum of $23,372,449 to maintain a level service budget. That is an $898,049 difference.”If you just let us maintain services this year we’re going backwards,” he said before adding, “I said it before and I’ll say it again – there is nothing in this budget to cut.”The Finance Committee will hear from all departments before it votes whether to recommend the proposed budgets. It is unlikely the vote will be taken before late May.