SAUGUS — The School Committee on Thursday reviewed a proposed $32.8 million fiscal year 2024 budget submitted by Superintendent Erin McMahon, representing a $2.5 million increase from the previous year’s budget.
The budget was crafted with an eye toward McMahon’s “moonshot” goal of moving the town’s schools from the bottom 10 percent of MCAS scores statewide to the top 10 percent by 2027. McMahon told the committee that the four key priorities reflected in the budget are educator compensation, boosting English language learner (ELL) staff to reflect the town’s changing demographics, creating a “robust program of study” across all three schools, and transportation.
“We’re proposing a budget today that is consistent with the vision of the town,” she said, citing a survey done to craft the town’s strategic plan in which a majority of respondents identified high-quality schools and educational opportunities as a top priority.
The largest area of increase in the annual budget, McMahon said, is in level service funding, with nearly $1 million needing to be accounted for between contractual obligations, a statewide increase in out-of-district tuition and transportation contract increases. The rest of the increase was attributed to the four priorities that district officials crafted the budget around, with educator pay topping the list.
The median salary for teachers in Saugus sits at $78,350, compared to $85,014 across the North Shore, McMahon said, citing the Department of Secondary Education.
“We must attract and retain high-quality teachers, and it needs to start now,” she said.
McMahon then moved to a discussion of the second budget priority: the need to staff the town’s schools to adapt to the changing demographics of students. Twenty-seven percent of Saugus students speak English as a second language, McMahon said — a jump of more than 10 percent from 2017, when 16 percent spoke English as a second language.
As a result, the district intends to hire four ELL teachers, one for each school level, and improve communication services for families.
Parents and students have told school officials that they “want a more rigorous curriculum,” McMahon said, citing robotics and the fine arts as two areas where feedback has indicated a demand for additional rigor. Those areas are consistent with the STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts and math) focus for students in second through 12th grade.
A more “robust program of studies” would attract students to Saugus Public Schools and enable greater retention of students, McMahon said, identifying solutions for each school building. At the Veterans Early Learning Center, where enrollment is expected to increase by 11.27 percent next year, that means additional staff, with currently just one administrator, one school adjustment counselor, and no librarian at the school.
At the Belmonte STEAM Academy, McMahon said students have asked for additional enrichment opportunities like robotics, band and chorus, and teachers have asked for a mathematics coach to “support them in teaching new standards in a curriculum adopted prior to the pandemic.”
At Saugus Middle/High School, district officials are in the process of “ushering in a new era of excellence in the Saugus Public Schools,” McMahon wrote in a budget letter submitted to the committee.
“The middle/high school is transforming into an early college high school, one of five state-wide ‘wall-to-wall’ programs, that will allow all Saugus High School students to earn one year of college credit while earning their high school diploma,” the letter reads.
Transportation woes have plagued the district for the entirety of the school year, with Saugus being unable to meet demand for bus rides to school. Currently, 135 students are on the waitlist for seats on school buses. As a result, McMahon proposed that the district acquire an additional bus specifically to serve students at the middle/high School.
McMahon said the $2.5 million increase represented a “conservative” request, with district officials confident that Saugus would receive at least another $3.1 million in funding through Chapter 70 and the Student Opportunity Act. The district received that amount of funding from the state last year, with the money being placed in a Student Support Reserve Fund crafted by Town Manager Scott Crabtree and approved at a Special Town Meeting in October.
“We’re being very, very conservative right now,” McMahon said.
School Committee Chair Vincent Serino said he would like to see Saugus hire an additional teacher on each grade level to better support current staff, which he said is stretched thin. He added that it was his belief that requesting just one additional bus was “short-sighted,” as the district may need more to accommodate all the students on the waitlist, particularly given the fact that roughly 55 students can fit on one bus.
McMahon said the budget represented the district’s goal to “provide an environment where students can grow and learn and feel a sense of belonging in their community.”
Ultimately, she said, the Saugus Public Schools want to “raise whole children.”