Marblehead Must Slash 34 Positions To Hit Budget Mark: Superintendent

MARBLEHEAD, MA — The stark cuts anticipated for Marblehead Public Schools to make the reductions necessary to meet the town target for a Fiscal 2024 budget — barring a tax override — were presented Thursday night with Superintendent John Buckey telling the School Committee that 34 positions (rounded up from 33.62) will have to be cut along with corresponding programs.

The reductions would represent about 5 percent of all staff. About half of the reductions would come from retirements and not filling currently vacant positions but the remainder will have to come from existing staff.

"As a new Committee member, and relatively new to town, this is insanity talking about a reduction in force from potentially 33 people in the school district," School Committee member Thomas Mathers said. "For somebody who doesn't have children in the school system, and having served in (the Masconomet Regional School District) for three years, I have never seen anything like this."

The so-called "800 budget" — an $800,000, or $1.8 percent, increase over last year's budget — would include about $4 million in reductions from the initial proposed budget through not adding positions, not filling currently vacant positions and supply reductions, as well as the need to cut an additional $643,651.

"These people also represent programs and services," Buckey said. "Not only will we lose 33.62 people we are also losing programs and direct services to children. Less inclusion. Less support. Less tutors. And, in some instances, the elimination of a program."

Buckey told the Committee the cuts could add four to six students per class at most schools.

School Committee Chair Sarah Fox said the next step will be to build a tax override proposal that will help make up the gap. The town is expected to ask for a general override to make up for what Town Administrator Thatcher Kezer called a growing structural deficit at his State of the Town presentation on Feb. 1.

"I am very impressed with the professionalism that's been used to get us to this number," Fox said. "The next step is to build a number that we move forward with for an override because we have to give another option to the town.

"This option, in my mind, is unbearable."

Fox said the override option has to be one that restores core services but also has to be "politically viable" as something that could pass an override vote where the last attempt did not.

Marblehead's less successful general override vote came in 2005.

"I have never seen a position like this where we've had to make these drastic cuts," Fox said. "I cannot emphasize the support we are pleading for from our community to support education in Marblehead."

After a $3.1 million general school budget override failed a townwide vote by about a two-to-one margin last year, the School Committee and administrators are faced with the reality that while both the town and schools will move forward, either in unison or separately, on an override request this year to meet the growing structural deficit, the budget proposals cannot "assume the will of the voters" and must include one budget — the one presented on Thursday night — that only spends available resources.

Another key issue is the override vote will not take place until the annual town election in June so that some staff will be told they are not guaranteed a position next year even if the town passes the override and restores the funding for those positions.

Buckey said when considering the program cuts he needed to avoid ongoing curriculum programs such as the $110,000 third-year implementation of a math program already well underway or behavioral counselors whose roles have become increasingly critical in the return from the COVID-19 pandemic shutdowns.

"We have heard regularly about the need for more counselors and support personnel," Buckey said. "We know that with students who are struggling if we cannot provide them services within the district, we are going to have to find an outplacement, which is significantly more expensive in addition to not being able to maintain students in their home school district."

(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.)