Cautious Optimism As Swampscott Schools Looks To Bridge Budget Impasse

SWAMPSCOTT, MA — Swampscott Superintendent Pamela Angelakis expressed cautious optimism to the School Committee — while noting "there is still work to be done" — about progress made in conversations with town leadership on the creation of a stabilization fund that would help bridge some of the budget gap between the district and the town in next year's budget.

While she refrained from revealing too many details about the proposed stabilization fund at Thursday's School Committee meeting, she praised the involvement of Select Board member MaryEllen Fletcher in helping understand the forthcoming gap that is being caused, in part, by a sharp rise in out-of-district tuition costs and led to the School Committee passing a budget that is $584,742 higher than the number the town said could be sustained.

"Make no mistake that this will not solve all of the school district's problems," Angelakis allowed. "There will be reductions. There will be efficiencies (imposed). But to understand where our asks were coming from means the world to me.

"I will be devastated if this takes a turn for the worse because the conversations and meetings that have occurred in the last week have been so positive."

The School Committee on Feb. 16 approved a budget that included a 4.41 percent increase over last year's budget — above the 2.6 percent increase that the town allotted for the schools. Angelakis and her team had created a 2.6 percent budget that she put forth on Jan. 30, but the School Committee then sent her back to restore some of the cuts from that initial budget, and she returned to the Committee with the 4.41 percent increase that she said she "believes meets the needs of all of our students."

The approved budget restored some of the proposed cuts, as well as $200,000 in technology spending that officials said once came under the town's capital improvement budget but was shifted to the schools during the COVID-19 health crisis and never reconciled.

Town Administrator Sean Fitzgerald told the Select Board earlier this month that "it's important for us just understand that we have obligations to our youngest citizens and we have ethical obligations to everybody that we balance the financial obligations of our town," and indicated the creation of the stabilization fund might be one way to address a specific line item cost — such as a surge in expenses related to special education obligations — without that expense devastating a general operating budget expected to be largely level funded each year.

The superintendent's optimism on Thursday was met with some skepticism from School Committee members who claimed that similar agreements in principle had fallen through at the last minute before town meetings in past years.

"There is just zero trust," School Committee Chair Glenn Paster said. "There is no other, clean, nice way to say it. There is zero trust. We want this to work. We need this to work. But we have heard all these words before."

School Committee member Carin Marshall said she is "not comfortable with verbal agreements" and pushed Angelakis to make sure any agreements are "buttoned down" in an unambiguous way.

"This does feel different this time around," Angelakis responded. "There are things in writing. There is a paper trail."

Paster said that even if a stabilization fund can be created to protect the district against certain unexpected overages in 2024, it still does little to offset what he said is a growing gap in the town's commitment to its schools and where it should be.

"This hole is only going to get bigger and this hole has to be discussed," he said. "There's a fundamental underfunding to education in this community. There is a fundamental underfunding of our tax rate in this community. No one wants to pay more taxes. ... But I believe there is a premium for living here. Is it right? Is it fair? I don't know. It just is and it's a fact.

"And it's all well and good to say we're going to keep yearly (property) taxes artificially low for X, Y and Z reasons. But that is coming home to roost. And it is really going to come home to roost in Fiscal 2025.

"Some difficult choices have to be made about what we envision, what the community envisions, what they want Swampscott Public Schools to look like."

(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.)