Saugus school board OKs 2 articles for warrant

SAUGUS – The School Committee got serious about using surplus funds to pay off the bond for textbooks when it voted to put the request on the town warrant for the next special Town Meeting.When Finance Manager Richard Weeks closed the books on the school’s fiscal 2008 year he came up $268,000 in the black. Superintendent Richard Langlois turned the money over to the town’s general fund. Initially School Committee Chairman Joseph Malone suggested the town could use the money to pay off the bond, but Thursday the committee made the request official.In a memo to Selectman Chairman Donald Wong, the committee sent an article aimed at the next Town Meeting “to see if the town will vote to raise and appropriate the sum of $300,000 from available funds and/or certified free cash for the purpose of paying off the town’s bond for textbooks for the Saugus Public Schools as voted June 6, 2008.”Meeting members voted to bond the $300,000 for the textbooks after the School Department’s budget came in several million dollars short of its request.It was shortly after that vote, however, when the School Department came up with its surplus. The funds, according to Weeks, came from mainly unexpended Special Education monies. The accounts included $21,125 in 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.The committee also voted to put an article on the warrant seeking an amount not to exceed $80,000 to replace student furniture in all school buildings.Committee member Wendy Reed put the emphasis on the fact it was student furniture. She said she didn’t want meeting members to think money would be spent on desks or furniture for the teacher’s lounge.Student furniture, Reed added, has been replaced in pieces in some schools but has not been replaced on the whole in years. Cafeteria tables on the elementary level, chairs at the middle school and desks at the high school all need replacing.Town Manager Andrew Bisignani has yet to call for a special Town Meeting, but said he will likely do so before the end of the year.