Split Vote Approves Danvers School Committee Budget Request For 2024

DANVERS, MA — A late push to add more than a half-million dollars to the Danvers School Department budget request for 2024 that would have been earmarked for special education staffing and programs fell short in a split vote of the Danvers School Committee on Monday night.

There was a spirited discussion and public comment session surrounding the request to add $525,000 in special education funds to what was already a 4.79 percent increase over last year's budget. Several parents came to the School Committee meeting on Tuesday and shared frustrations about the lack of adequate staffing and the wide age range of students grouped together in the town's special education learning centers.

School Committee members Gabe Lopes and Joshua Kepnes voted in favor of adding the money to the request — which would have pushed the school budget to $49,583,819, nearly a $3 million increase over Fiscal Year 2023 — but School Committee members Alice Campbell, Eric Crane and Robin Doherty voted against the additional funding after Interim Superintendent Mary Wermers assured that the town administration had worked with the School Department in good faith on the original number and that she was exploring the use of grants and other resources to supplement special education funding.

"I think it would be, for better or worse, a large mistake to try and (ask for that big of an increase)," Crane said. "As much as I would love to have the resources, it just is not practical at this point in time. ... I can't vote for a budget request that would be a non-starter (with the Select Board) so I am going to vote for this (4.79 percent increase) request."

The $48,858,819 budget approved on Monday is the one that will go to the Select Board during Saturday's townwide budget public hearing.

Both Campbell and Doherty said their votes were based on following the recommendation of Wermers and her staff that the budget request was a fiscally responsible one that allows the district to serve the needs of Danvers students.

"If the administration and our business manager are saying that the proposed budget can work," Doherty said, "and town hall has really helped us out, then I don't know if (Fiscal Year 2025) is the year to ask for (additional funding) if the school district can do what it needs to do (in 2024).

"It sounds like they already have a plan as far as reallocating the funds. We've gotten more money from the state (than expected)."

Wermers had included that $525,000 funding in a presentation to the School Committee last month as being part of $725,000 that she had cut out of her original budget outline, with an additional $200,000 in cuts that include public relations funding and money for a redesigned district website.

Lopes indicated that the push to add the money was to send a message to the town that more special education funding was needed in the schools and that Saturday's budget forum would be a good place to have that public debate even if the Select Board did not ultimately decide to back the higher number.

"We don't know going in what will be approved and what will be taken away," Lopes said. "And that takes us back to the fundamental point of asking for exactly what we want. We're not making up a number. It's a number that's highlighted in the budget deck. There are opportunities to put that money there. So I'm still struggling with the notion of not doing it.

"This is not saying that we don't appreciate all that the town does, and their cooperation, and support, and everything that's there (in the 4.79 percent budget request). I am still struggling with why we don't put it in there.

"They may say 'no.' They might say 'yes.' These are elected officials. Let the community have their say in what kind of funding the school can get."

Crane said he was concerned that going over the 4.79 percent budget would force other departments in town to have to cut their budgets to make the $525,000 figure since it all comes out of the same revenue pie — barring a town tax override vote to provide additional resources — and that ultimately it would not have a legitimate chance of surviving town Finance Committee review.

"If we go in and ask for (a 6.5 percent increase) it's going to make it difficult in terms of the budget hearings," Crane said. "We are not going to get (6.5 percent) under any circumstance."

(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)