PEABODY — The School Committee was able to hit its budget target of approximately $94 million after a series of meetings in which it reduced unfilled positions and found other funding sources for certain budget line items.
Mayor Ted Bettencourt clarified why the district is struggling with the fiscal year 2025 budget, which includes a significant cut in yearly state-aid increases, a historic rise of $1.6 million in health-insurance costs, and an increase of around $700,000 in costs for Essex North Shore Agricultural and Technical School, which he said is the largest increase in the last few years.
“Not a position that any of us want to be at,” Bettencourt said. “We got hit with some difficult numbers over the last few months, some were expected, some were not.”
Over the last few meetings before Tuesday’s meeting, the FY25 budget had come down to $95,831,564.
Superintendent of Schools Dr. Josh Vadala proposed reducing a teaching position at Captain Samuel Brown Elementary School; three positions at Carroll Elementary School, including a reading teacher and an English-language-learner (ELL) teacher; a paraprofessional at South Memorial Elementary School; and a school-counselor position, none of which would result in layoffs.
Dr. Vadala also said that the district wanted to add two more co-teaching positions at Higgins Middle School, but would not be able to do so. In the high school, school officials wanted to add three math teachers, one ELL teacher, and a business teacher, but were only able to add two math teachers.
Dr. Vadala said that reducing the school-counselor and math-teacher positions were the most difficult proposals to make, and is strongly advocating for the positions to be reinstated if funds become available.
“Not filling it would not require a layoff, but that’s one that I think is one of the hardest positions to not fill,” Dr. Vadala said.
To get to the target number, School Committee member John Olimpio suggested funding a portion of wages for athletics staff using a revolving account rather than the operating budget. As a result, he said, a necessary math-teacher position with a salary of around $70,000 could be funded. All members of the School Committee voted unanimously to approve the suggestion.
Dr. Vadala also said that a possible amendment to Chapter 70 funds by the state Senate, which would open up more funding opportunities, would not be possible. However, he said it is possible that funding from other sources could open up soon, paving the way for the reading-teacher and school-counselor positions, with salaries totaling $152,00, to be funded, which members of the School Committee voted unanimously to support.
School Committee members also voted unanimously to support transferring $143,000 from the Early Childhood Revolving Account to fund the second-grade teaching position at the Brown School and an ELL teacher at the Carroll School. This involves risking an increase in tuition.
At one point in the meeting, School Committee member Jarrod Hochman said that he will not support reducing positions at the schools until administrative roles at the central office are looked into.
“Someone deemed them necessary to put in,” Hochman said after a motion was put forward by Committee member Joseph Amico to eliminate the business-teacher position at Veterans Memorial High School. “I’ve talked at prior meetings about some administrators that I thought we should be taking up, and perhaps some redundancies that we have within administrative roles and some tightening of belts that can take place in administrative roles.”
Except for Hochman, all committee members voted to support Amico’s motion.
School Committee member Beverley Griffin Dunne also put forward a motion that her fellow members supported to to eliminate the paraprofessional position at the South School, the two co-teaching positions at the Higgins, and the ELL teacher at the high school. She argued that the positions were unfilled to begin with, and that eliminating them would still allow the district to maintain the same level of service it had been providing previously.
“Even though I don’t like cutting the teachers that were proposed for new programs or new positions, that’s the only way to keep going in the direction that we’ve been doing for the past couple of years,” Griffin Dunne said.
After the series of reductions, a decrease of around $487,000 for health insurance and workers’ compensation, and Bettencourt’s agreement to add $250,000 in contributions from the city, school officials met a budget target of around $94 million.
The School Committee is expected to vote on the agreed-upon number on Monday.
