SAUGUS – Superintendent Richard Langlois can finally sleep easy since the School Committee voted to allow him to hire a vice principal for the Veterans Memorial School.”It’s been really bothering me,” Langlois said. “I think about it all the time.”With nearly 700 students, the largest elementary school in the district also comes with the largest number of special needs students. Langlois said 104 students are disabled on some level, 54 have behavioral issues, more than 30 speak only their native language with no English whatsoever.”It’s staff intensive,” he said.Of the nearly 81 staff members it takes to wrangle those students alone, Langlois said there is only one administrator, Principal Uri Harel, and one secretary to oversee them all, not to mention the rest of the staff and students.”Uri has the most difficult responsibility to oversee all of that,” Langlois said. “How do you guarantee teachers are doing what they’re supposed to be doing unless you monitor?”Langlois said it also gives added support to the team of teachers, aides and sometimes psychologists working with the students.”It’s a very challenging department; we need the support before something happens,” he added.Langlois had already posted the position, which he is allowed to do, in anticipation the committee would support it.The School Committee voted to transfer $62,860 from the Vets media specialist line item and $12,140 from the Belmonte ELT Specialist Account to fund the position.Langlois said the Evaluation Team Leader and media specialist duties were scaled back and reassigned to free up the funds.School Committee Chairman Joseph Malone asked Langlois if he knew of any other school district that had a school as large with only one administrator.Langlois said in his experience any school with 600 students or more generally had a vice principal.”I feel very strongly about this,” he said. “(Harel) needs the support, the staff needs the support and the kids need the support.”When Langlois first floated the idea of hiring a vice principal he raised the ire of at least one Town Meeting member.Peter Manoogian said earlier that the hire was contradictory to the picture the School Committee painted for meeting members in June. Town Meeting voted to not only bond textbooks for the School Department but also gave the district an additional $75,000 for reading teachers. Malone said the reading teachers were in fact hired and when the school closed its books with a $268,000 surplus it turned it over to the town to cover the bond.Committee member Christine Wilson said she had no problem granting the transfer or allowing the hire.”I think he’s done a fine job explaining his reasoning,” she said. “He certainly is spending money where it is needed.”Langlois said it boils down to the safety and welfare of the students.”Anyone who doesn’t understand the need for this doesn’t understand what we need to do in education,” Langlois said. “I feel so strongly about the safety and welfare of kids, because of the demographic and the volume of kids-nothing can take a backseat to the safety of the kids.”