The City Council Finance Committee approved the city’s fiscal year 2025 education budget of $94,577,540 at its meeting on Thursday.
This meeting was a continuation of their meeting on Tuesday, during which the committee reviewed the city’s proposed fiscal year 2025 budget of $197,352,196.
Superintendent Josh Vadala, presented the proposed FY25 education budget of $94,577,540, which is a $1,477,869 increase from the FY24 education budget, to the council. This budget was approved by the School Committee at their meeting on June 3.
After presenting the overview of what the money in the proposed budget will be used for, why there is an increase in the budget, and what financial reductions are taking place to balance the budget, Vadala answered questions from the councilors.
Councilor Thomas Rossignoll asked questions regarding different positions being cut.
“My main goal when I look at cuts is to make sure services aren’t being lost,” he said. “I just want to make sure services are not being changed, modified, altered, reduced.”
Vadala said the budget is tight, but the School Committee plans to maintain or enhance the current services being offered by using revolving accounts and grant funding.
Among his questions, Councilor Jon Turco said, “I’m not confident that we’re going to be in a better position next fiscal year than we are this fiscal year and I honestly don’t believe that there’s any way that you don’t come to us for supplementary (funding) with numbers as they are.”
Turco, to Rossignoll’s point, asked Vadala to clarify the “top heavy” administration in Peabody Public Schools.
“I think that there’s a little bit of a misunderstanding around the number of administrators that we have in this district,” Vadala said. “There are less administrators today than the day I was hired. … We have repurposed positions and made them more useful.”
He added the district only uses 3% of salaries in the budget to pay administrators, which is the lowest amount among the districts in the North Shore.
Chronic absenteeism, which is defined as a student being absent greater than 10% of the year, was down from 45% to 20% across the district, Vadala said. He attributed much of this to repurposing administrative positions and hiring administrators from within the district.
“More kids are coming to school because we have these positions that are designed to support kids, support teachers, (and) to bring kids in,” Vadala said.
Councilor Thomas Gould asked Vadala to provide the ethnic breakdown of the population of students in the district.
The ethnic breakdown of the district’s student population is 5.2% African-American, 2.2% Asian, 25.9% Hispanic, 0.3% Native American, 63.5% Caucasian, and 2.8% are multi-racial non-Hispanic, according to Vadala.
He added there are approximately 80 migrant students in the district, most of whom are in the elementary schools, and they are expecting a higher number this upcoming school year.
“I would agree with my colleagues that I kind of fully expect the School Committee to come back for a supplemental budget this year,” Councilor Stephanie Peach said. “I think everything costs more than we think it’s going to and I agree with Councilor Turco that if we’re cutting things out of city services, education is not the place to start.”
Peach asked Vadala about different sources of funding for the education budget, specifically access to revolving accounts.
Vadala said any fee-generating program, such as athletics, has a revolving account because the program brings in fees, which then have to be spent on that program. He said they are utilizing funding from revolving accounts to pay for salaries when it is allowed, such as making funding available to pay a teacher’s salary by using money from the athletics revolving account to pay coaches’ salaries.
To conclude the question period, Rossignoll said, he finds it “fundamentally flawed” that the City Council has the “opportunity” to directly ask the superintendent and School Committee questions about how the public’s money is being spent in the education budget, but they do not get the same “oversight” with the proposed budget of nearly $6 million for Essex North Shore Agricultural and Technical School.
The motion to approve Mayor Ted Bettencourt FY25 budget for the Peabody Public Schools for $94,577,540 passed unanimously.
The motion to approve the vocational assessment from the Essex Tech Vocational School in the amount of $5,973,521 passed unanimously.
