SAUGUS – Class sizes at the Lynnhurst and Veterans Memorial schools should see a dramatic decrease on at least two grade levels, thanks to some shuffling by Superintendent Richard Langlois.Langlois said he became concerned when he saw student levels in the third grade at the Vets School and second grades at the Lynnhurst creeping into the 30s.Langlois said by re-appropriating funds from elsewhere within the budget, he was able to put one new teacher at the Lynnhurst and three at the Veterans School.”The Vets is different because they have a significant amount of special education classes,” he said. “I focused on Grade 3 and we got them down to low 20s. We’re also monitoring grades 1 and 2.”Town Meeting members voted last spring to give the school an additional $75,000 with a strong push to use the money to replace reading teachers that had been let go due to previous budget cuts.Before retiring, Superintendent Keith Manville replaced the reading teachers and managed to shuffle staff around enough to give Principal Charlie Naso a reading teacher as well.When the Finance Committee grilled the Langlois last week on all things school-related, he said he’s kept his focus on getting the rest of the necessary staff on board for opening day.That includes hiring a principal for the Waybright School, an athletic director for the high school and 15-20 teaching positions across the district, the most recent whom resigned just last Monday.Langlois said he’s been fortunate to have a strong pool of teachers to choose from and filling the slots has not proven to be a huge problem. He said he also had an impressive round of applicants to fill former Principal Glen McKay’s shoes at the Waybright School and he expects to make an announcement on that appointment possibly as early as today.With staff in place, Langlois said he would next like to turn his focus on establishing curriculum maps. The maps, he explained, are guides to show teachers not only what they should be teaching to match the state’s frameworks but how they should be teaching it as well.
