SAUGUS — A review of the Saugus Public Schools budget approved by the School Committee last month reveals a bevy of cuts to the budget first put forth by Superintendent Erin McMahon. English language learner (ELL) staff face the largest reduction.
McMahon proposed a $32.8 million budget in January. A week later, she took paid administrative leave. Subsequently, the committee voted down her budget by a four to one margin in early February. It then voted to approve a dramatically reduced $31.6 million budget on Feb. 16 after meeting with Town Manager Scott Crabtree to address concerns that McMahon’s budget asked for more money than the town could afford.
The initial budget submitted by McMahon represented a $2.5 million increase over fiscal year 2023, while the budget approved by the committee is a $1.3 million increase. Chair Vincent Serino has said the budget represents needs, not wants. Despite that rhetoric, Crabtree is proposing an increase of just $500,000. Serino expressed confidence the differences between the committee’s budget and Crabtree’s proposal would be ironed out. The budget is set for discussion before the Finance Committee on Wednesday.
Still, the $1.2 million in cuts to McMahon’s proposal landed on areas that she believes are key to improving Saugus’s statewide standing. Currently, Saugus ranks in the bottom 20 percent of the state in MCAS scores.
Cuts came across the board — at each of the town’s schools, as well as district-wide.
On a district-wide level, a request from McMahon to purchase an additional bus to aid congestion at the middle/high school was removed from the budget despite an initial request from Serino to add a seventh bus. In addition, requests for curriculum specialists, translation services, adjustment counselors, and OT/PT/Speech Therapists were all slashed. One line item — an annual wage adjustment — rose by nearly $5,000.
At the Veterans Early Learning Center (VELC), McMahon had proposed adding an additional principal, funding learning management systems, and adding ELL staff — requests that were all removed from the budget approved by the committee. McMahon had suggested spending $26,960 on instructional materials, while the committee’s budget allocates $24,713 for that item.
Reductions at the Belmonte STEAM Academy (BSA), which underwent an extensive renovation beginning in 2020, were again directed toward ELL staff, in addition to literacy teachers. Those reductions totaled more than $100,000. Other cuts at the BSA included fine arts teachers and instructional materials, with McMahon proposing allocations of $183,376 and $84,736 for those items, compared to $133,685 and $56,321 in the approved budget.
Those ELL cuts will impact the nearly 10 percent of students at the BSA who are learning English. That population is even higher at the VELC, where 15.4 percent of students are considered English language learners according to the department of elementary and secondary education.
Unsurprisingly, ELL staff were also cut at Saugus Middle/High School — meaning a request from each principal to add an additional ELL teacher will likely be denied. At the Middle/High School, a multi-million dollar state-of-the-art facility, additional cuts included a request for additional fine arts teachers to better take advantage of the new facility, technology teachers, physical education teachers, and math textbooks. The difference in the two budgets totals $263,015 for listed district-wide expenses.
Yet, despite the rhetoric from committee members regarding the need for cuts and an inability to fund McMahon’s proposal, Saugus is set to receive $11.9 million in Chapter 70 funds under Gov. Maura Healey’s FY2024 budget proposal — more than enough to cover the $2.5 million budget request.
