Beverly Schools Face 'Staff Realignment' Amid Rising Costs

BEVERLY, MA — Beverly Public Schools staff realignment, resource reallocation and attrition management are being targeted for spending reductions as district cost increases outpace the increases in state aid.

Superintendent Sue Charochak's latest update to the School Committee on Wednesday night cited core costs due to inflation, special education costs and the wage increases included in the new teacher contracts following a 12-day strike last fall as those putting pressure on a budget seeing only marginal increases in revenues.

"What is happening is districts like ours — which is one of the (232) minimum-aid districts in the Commonwealth — really are getting less and less (in state Chapter 70 aid)," Charochak said, "which is causing us to rely more heavily every year on the municipal, local funding that we have.

"It's important to point out that this is not a Beverly-specific scenario where expenses are getting higher and budgets are getting harder and harder to look at. There are a lot of surrounding towns, some of which are our neighbors and some are a little farther away, that are looking at really large, large increases where they are forced to fund and make sure that they are continuing to provide that high-quality education for their students."

Charochak said that projected state aid increases amount to about $75 per student for 2026.

"We rely mostly on our residential taxes, which can only rise 2.5 percent without an override," Charochak said. "We will be remaining committed to a fiscal responsibility while ensuring that all students receive the education they deserve."

She said some shifting of staff resources is likely as the overall school population remains roughly the same, but the population within each grade varies greatly throughout the district. She said that will likely be the case at the high school where an unusually small freshman academy classes will probably result in the reduction of ELA, algebra, biology and U.S. history sections taught.

She said that the target classroom size to maximum efficiency, while maintaining education quality, is 22 to 25 students in an average high school class. She added that the district is looking to maintain many of the social-emotional health programs that were instituted amid the COVID-19 health crisis as the need persists.

"We're in a very different place in 2025 than we were even in 2019, 2018, in terms of some of the things with families that we are working with," she said. "Our goal is to have the right staffing and not too much staffing.

"We just want to have what we need to meet the needs of the students."

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