SAUGUS — Superintendent Michael Hashem presented the FY27 budget to the School Committee Thursday night, showing a 7.81% increase from FY26.
“This budget reflects our ongoing priorities. What ended up happening and what we tried to do is: We had the district improvement plan, we have the five-year strategic plan, we have all the DESE rules and regulations that we have to follow, and we tried to prioritize all of that. What our goal is overall is to design a budget and a structure that supports equitable high-quality outcomes for all learners, while trying to be mindful of fiscal responsibility,” Hashem said.
Other priorities of this budget were workforce development and leadership, safe, supportive, inclusive school environments, family and community engagement, and operation and resource optimization.
“We start with the budget that we have right now. We’re living in FY26, and we look at where we are, where we want to go, what we need to change, what we need to add, what efficiencies we could make, and that’s sort of the give and take from everybody,” he said.
Hashem went over the historical trends of the budget, staffing, and students from FY16 to FY26.
“If you look at the full time teaching staff in FY16, it was 406 people; in FY21, it was 365, and in FY26, this year, it’s 333. So, our staff has gone down. Our enrollment is basically the same. It did take a dip the post-COVID year, but it’s as high as it’s been,” Hashem said.
The current enrollment is 2,734 students for FY26, compared to 2,668 in FY16.
In the graph presented, Hashem also included categories from DESE, which are considered students with high needs, including English learners, first language not English, low income, and students with disabilities.
“Our numbers are high, and they’re escalating at a rapid pace,” Hashem said.
He showed that looking at each DESE category one by one highlighted the increase in change. Overall, there was a drastic change in the number of students classified by DESE as students with high needs going from 39.6% in FY16 to 68.5% in FY26.
The proposed budget for FY27 is $37,485,066. It sees an increase of $2,716,531.
“The major budget drivers are the collective bargaining agreements, the out-of-district placements…, transportation costs, student growth and increased diversity, and then basically our requirements,” Hashem said.
He explained that the out-of-district placement costs are something that every district has seen “go through the roof.” He also noted that the programmatic and regulatory requirements must be addressed regardless of if the school has the funds.
In the salary category, collective bargaining agreements cost $1,768,931; non-unit staff costs $63,937; and turnover savings from requirements are $87,284.
“We’re not saving a lot on money from people retiring and then getting new teachers. That is not currently the trend,” Hashem said.
Out-of-district placements saw an increase of $567,800 for the FY27 budget. Special Education transportation will cost $189,539, and regular education transportation will cost $15,885.
“These are the big cost elements that have made our level service budget increase,” he said. “The level service increase was $2,520,741. And that’s 7.25%, bringing us to $37,289,276,” he said.
The additional requests for FY27, which would meet the regulatory requirements, are needing an additional special education teacher at the middle school an additional paraprofessional at the Belmonte STEAM Academy, a partial restoration of noon-aides at the Veterans Early Learning Center, restoration of STEAM at the Belmonte (a Belmonte STEAM Elective teacher), and an increase in supply needs at Saugus Middle High School.
“What we tried to do in the past… and I wasn’t really here at the beginning of this, when the ESSER (Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund) funding came and COVID hit, there was money. And some school systems took them and just hired staff… and when the money dried up, they didn’t have the money to maintain the staff,” he said.
Hashem, who gave credit to the administration involved at the time, explained that Saugus got the curriculum and instructional resources needed out of the ESSER funds, making it possible to develop programs in math, English, and science at all levels.
“We took advantage of that funding (and) used it for an initiative that then the state pretty much now mandates. So we have to be doing that implementation now. But we got a lot of the costs already addressed like the training, the planning, all the implementation stuff is already set, and that was done by the team before me,” he said.
