Saugus school board mulls budget gap

SAUGUS – School Committee members met with Superintendent Richard Langlois Monday to discuss the budget-gap scenarios facing the School Department for fiscal 2012.According to Langois, Town Meeting must decide whether the school budget will be level-funded or level-serviced, two distinctly different outcomes.”There’s a unique difference,” he said, explaining that level funding delivers the same number of education dollars as the previous fiscal year but does not take into account increased expenses. “Level-funding does not cover our fixed-cost increases.”School Committee Chairman Wendy Reed said level funding means the schools are looking at $4.6 million in reductions.Langois said the schools must maintain the present number of staff. “Staffing is critical to us,” he said. “Without the right people delivering the services, we are dead in the water.”The superintendent painted a gloomy picture of how the town schools will be impacted. “Class sizes will increase. We may have to relocate kids from one elementary school to another to balance class sizes,” he said. “It’s late in the game to do a full redistricting.”Without adequate funds, the School Department cannot provide assistance to at-risk students or comply with every Education Reform Act initiative, he said, adding that restrictions would be placed on the early-childhood program.”It’s painful,” he said.Depending on which version of the preliminary town budget is considered, the School Department is either $1.6 million or $1.1 million short. “If we cut $1.1 million, that would be bad, but $1.6 million is just ridiculous,” Langois said. “You can’t have greater expectations with fewer dollars.”Reed said the drastically trimmed budget will likely translate to increased athletic fees. “Now that they’ve lowered the fees, kids are playing two or three sports. Before that, they were cut back to one sport,” she said, noting many students currently work to pay for their athletic activity fees.Activities and school-related clubs would also be impacted by the lower budget, she said.School Committee member Arthur Grabowski asked that the business manager provide by the next meeting the amount that would be saved if teachers were asked to take a one-day furlough.School Committee member William Leuci said the proposed one-time assessment being discussed by the Board of Selectmen and town manager as a source of revenue would pay only for $850,000 in snow and ice-removal costs incurred over the winter.”That money wouldn’t go to help the schools,” he said.However, revenue raised through the one-time assessment could free up other funding that could be used to bolster the school budget.The tentative School Department budget for fiscal 2012 is approximately $25 million.The School Committee will meet again Thursday to take up budget discussions and review input from the public received during Tuesday’s information session held after the Special Town Meeting adjourned.