Saugus schools surprised by extra cash

SAUGUS-Superintendent Richard Langlois has a little end-of-the-fiscal-year surprise for the town, but is not quite sure how to gift wrap $268,907.The School Department closed its FY 2008 budget on June 30, leaving the unspent balance. Finance Manager Richard Weeks wrote in a memo to Langlois that there were no unpaid invoices being carried into the 2009 fiscal year.School Committee member Rick Doucette was quick to point out that the surplus funds only materialized in July, after the books were closed.”We had no knowledge this was available when the town voted $300,000 for a bond or $75,000 for reading teachers,” he said.When the School Department received a budget several million short of what it requested, Town Meeting helped out in other ways. First, meeting members agreed to float a bond to purchase new textbooks. Members also diverted $75,000 in surplus funding from the town side to the School Department to re-hire reading teachers for the elementary schools.School Committee Chairman Joseph Malone suggested the town might want to use the surplus funding to pay off the bulk of the bond.”Or spend it elsewhere,” he said. “How they saved this money I don’t know . . . it’s unbelievable.”Malone attributed the feat to former Superintendent Keith Manville and former Director of Pupil Personnel Judy Masucci, as well as Cynthia Joyce, the new director of Pupil Personnel.According to Weeks, a majority of the unspent funds was reserved for anticipated needs and/or remained in special education accounts. The accounts included $21,125 in the physical therapy services; $75,000 in legal services; $41,393 in proprietary, testing and evaluation services; $75,624 in transportation of homeless students; $12,082 in public tuition accounts and $11,770 in private school tuition accounts.Langlois said although the unspent funds were part of the School Department’s budget, they technically remain in the town’s account.Malone said he hoped the funds would prove to further tighten the growing bond of goodwill between the School Department and the town.