SAUGUS — Superintendent David DeRuosi said his $30.07 million Fiscal Year 2022 budget proposed to the School Committee Thursday night would support the district’s needs as it prepares to transition to a “post-pandemic landscape.”’
The FY22 budget represents a $725,674 increase over last year’s approved spending of $29.57 million.
“We are conscious of the academic deficits our students will face next year, and this budget protects our core areas of education,” DeRuosi wrote in his January 14 budget letter to the board. “The reduction of force in this budget has been done in order to support this, and a few other high-priority needs of the district.”
In anticipation of increased social-emotional needs among students as they return from fully remote learning, the budget includes funding for a full-time school psychologist, DeRuosi said.
He noted officials had made a point of keeping the district’s support staff intact in order to help meet students’ evolving needs.
“As a district, we provided the best remote and hybrid platforms of education we could,” DeRuosi said. “Still, we recognize nothing replaces the power of in-person instruction. We must prepare to address the academic deficits our students will bring into school with them next year.
“Our community and families have suffered financial hardship during this pandemic. These financial hardships bring additional issues and concerns into the hallways and classrooms of our schools. Students cannot simply leave those issues at the doors to our schools.”
Because the district will close three of its elementary school buildings by the end of the year in the wake of the completion of the town’s new middle-high school, DeRuosi also told the board that the need for certain positions will be reduced, such as for three elementary school principals.
Instead, he said the district hopes to use a portion of those funds to restore a designated elementary school music teacher.
“With two distinct complexes being built, it would be nice to have (fewer) traveling teachers and more teachers in one spot,” DeRuosi said Thursday.
However, in an earlier interview with The Item, School Committee member Arthur Grabowski, who also serves on the board’s finance subcommittee, called the proposed sum a “bare bones” budget and expressed frustration at what he felt was a lack of commitment from the town in regards to the betterment of Saugus schools.
He noted that in 2020, the town did not approve any increase in funding from the district’s 2019 budget.
“If you look at the historical funding we’ve gotten from the town, it’s never been adequate,” Grabowski said. “The budget does not take into account the measures we need to make our district improve.
“We’re always maintaining, maintaining, maintaining with the amount of money we’re given, and we never seem to get what we ask for, which means we need to make cuts in our operating budget.”
The School Committee must vote on and submit the budget to the town manager’s office by the end of the month. A formal vote is scheduled to take place next Thursday.
Once submitted, Town Manager Scott Crabtree will review the budget and submit his own recommendations to the Board of Selectmen, which must then approve it before sending it to vote at Town Meeting.
“The impact of this pandemic on our students, and the community, will reverberate for years to come. A return to ‘normal’ is simply not enough for the Saugus Public Schools,” DeRuosi said. “Years before the pandemic, we committed to transforming our district into a model of 21st century education.
“For the sake of our students, and our future students, we cannot allow anything to deviate from that commitment.”
Elyse Carmosino can be reached at [email protected].