SAUGUS — The School Committee remains without concrete plans for moving forward with proposals to access the more than $4 million sitting in the Student Support Reserve Fund, created by Town Manager Scott Crabtree and enacted by Town Meeting last fall.
Committee Chairman Vincent Serino said after the committee’s Tuesday-evening meeting that members are working to develop proposals for fiscal year 2024, and are “looking for things that make sense.” Previously, Serino had said that his committee intended to put forward proposals to access the fund at the Special Town Meeting held Monday evening.
Now, Serino said, proposals will be on the next Town Meeting warrant, but it is unclear when the body will reconvene with elections looming this fall. The only guarantee is that Town Meeting will convene next May for an annual session, but it seems unlikely the School Committee would want to wait until nearly the end of the school year to access the fund.
Committee member Dennis Gould suggested the committee petition the Board of Selectmen to call a Special Town Meeting so proposals to access the fund could be voted upon, and Serino indicated the committee would discuss the prospect of doing so when it next meets in executive session.
Crabtree submitted the warrant article to create the fund in October, setting aside $3.1 million worth of additional Chapter 70 monies allocated to the town. He imposed a number of conditions on how the funds could be accessed, including that any proposals must be reviewed by the Finance Committee and Town Meeting. The money must be used for programs that “are supplementing current educational programming and not supplanting it.”
The FinCom and Crabtree stressed in the lead-up to the fund’s creation that the money should only be used for one-time expenses, and not as a way to supplement the district’s operating budget, despite the fact that Saugus has historically failed to meet the budget requests of the School Committee and superintendent of schools.
The article lists eight potential uses for the funds, and any proposal put forward by the committee would have to satisfy one or more of those criteria.
Despite the failure to access the funds to this point, a number of proposals were presented to the Finance Committee by Deputy Superintendent Margo Ferrick, who has since departed the district to become the superintendent of Georgetown Public Schools. Finance Committee Chairman Kenneth DePatto indicated support for each proposal put before the committee.
But, many of those proposals would likely no longer apply.
Those proposals included funding the installation of radio systems at each school building, creating a family resource center, and retrofitting classrooms as clinical spaces for students.
With millions sitting in the fund, it is unclear why the committee has failed to move forward with any proposals.
Earlier this year, Serino indicated his committee would pursue some of those funds to supplement the district’s operating budget, which the committee admitted was essentially just the funds needed to turn the lights on in the fall. Superintendent Erin McMahon proposed a $32.8 million budget for FY24, indicating that the $2.5 million increase she was proposing could be funded with Chapter 70 monies intended to aid public schools across the Commonwealth.
