When the Lynn School Committee voted unanimously to approve the FY27 school budget last week, it culminated a five-month process that began less than a month after Molly Cohen was named superintendent.
Cohen and her team faced a daunting task in closing a $7 million deficit. Not only were they able to meet that challenge, but they did so without one educator currently teaching in Lynn Public Schools losing their job.
There were signs from the beginning that this would be a challenging budget season for LPS, and they were confirmed early this year when the City got some hard numbers from the state – hard as in firm, and hard as in difficult.
A 500-student drop in enrollment from last year resulted in the multi-million-dollar shortfall. That’s when Cohen and her team went to work. They committed to a thorough, transparent, thoughtful process, and they delivered.
The first version of the budget Cohen presented called for the elimination of an eighth-grade music position at Lynn Tech and a librarian at English and Classical.
Those cuts were strongly opposed by those who spoke at the March 26 School Committee meeting. Those positions were restored in the revised budget Cohen presented on April 9, due to the closing of a computer-aided design and drafting position at Tech and additional funding provided by the City, redirected from a capital improvements line.
In the final version of the budget, there is a position for every educator currently teaching in LPS. It might not be the same job, but it’s a job nonetheless. In the context of closing a $7 million gap, that is impressive.
Lynn is one of many districts across the state facing a severe shortfall, and some of the others did not fare nearly as well, through no fault of their own. In Marblehead, 22 positions were eliminated. In Lexington, the number is closer to 65. These are trying times for superintendents and school committees.
That makes what LPS was able to pull off even more noteworthy: to balance this budget with virtually no jobs lost. Cohen and her team – which includes deputy superintendents Ellen Fritz, Julie Louf, and Lori Gallivan, Business Administrator Kevin McHugh, Human Resources Manager April Reed, and Special Education Administrator Christine Colella – get a straight A for constructing a budget that acknowledges the fiscal reality, while never wavering on their promise to put students first in all decisions.
While McHugh is a veteran of many budget cycles and Cohen had input as a deputy, this was her first go around as the superintendent, and her three deputies have all been in their current positions less than a year. Nevertheless, they approached this formidable challenge with professionalism and expertise, all while listening to stakeholders.
There is hardly a reason to celebrate when faced with this type of financial predicament, yet it could have been much worse. The fact that it wasn’t is a credit to Cohen, who is six months into the 20-month contract she was given when she was promoted from deputy superintendent last October.
Perhaps it is time to make that a more permanent arrangement.
