'Enough Is Enough': Swampscott School Budget Battle Brewing

SWAMPSCOTT, MA — A school budget battle appears to once again be brewing in Swampscott after the School Committee on Thursday night voted unanimously to support a 4.79 percent budget increase that School Committee Chair Glenn Paster said includes "nowhere else to go" to reduce expenses to reach the town's recommended target of a 3.25 percent increase.

The gap could set up another showdown amid annual clashes on the school budget that have come down to last-minute deals with the town administrator and even a fight on town meeting floor last spring.

The School Committee budget approved on Thursday was for $33,919,609.

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"In years past, I have felt and others have said that there have been some on the town side who have talked about a superintendent budget and a school committee budget," Paster said. "To the town community, there is no superintendent budget, there is no school committee budget, there is one budget this year."

That budget not only exceeds the town-prescribed increase of 3.25 percent but exceeds to an even greater level the town policy — exercised for several years under former Town Administrator Sean Fitzgerald — that all budgets must adhere to the guideline of a 2 percent increase, plus new growth (typically under 1 percent), for town departments each year.

The school budget accounts for about 68 percent of the town budget annually.

But School Committee members have long argued that sticking to those modest increases has actually meant a decrease in services as costs and educational mandates rise, especially now that the schools no longer have access to any federal COVID-era (ESSER) funds.

Superintendent Pamela Angelakis, who is retiring at the end of the school year after more than a decade, gave an impassioned pushback on the annual process Thursday night after often acting as a facilitator to reach a compromise between the town and School Committee in years past.

"For 11 years, we have been put through this same ringer," Angelakis said during Thursday's virtual meeting. "I appreciate all the people who do support us. But for the past 11 years, where you've had a stable superintendent, the questions that come in and the suggestions that are made (from people) without an education degree feel like there's no trust in the superintendent who is leading this district when we know that a superintendent's shelf life is two to three years.

"There's no trust. There is a little bit of a lack of respect for the professionals who are making these decisions. And I've got to tell you that I've had it. It's 11 years of this. Every year we've demonstrated our transparency and some of the questions that came in during the last couple of weeks were definitely questions trying to 'get us' on something. ...

"We are more transparent than ever. And the more transparent we are the more we get prodded. Quite frankly, I'm done. I'm done with this and I'll say what I want to say. If it means it needs to go to town meeting floor then I'm on town meeting floor.

"Enough is enough."

The Select Board had long-sought a "budget summit" this year to try to head off the annual conflict with Select Board Chair MaryEllen Fletcher telling that Board that she'd been told the School Committee had expressed "reservations about it" when pressed on why that summit never occurred.

The School Committee has long-bristled at those types of negotiations amounting to members being told to "meet a number" each year rather than the town figuring out how to accommodate the number the School Committee says it needs to run the schools.

Fitzgerald, however, had argued that, while individual one-time exceptions could be negotiated to meet certain costs, containing the overall increase of department budgets to 2 percent plus new growth was the best way to reduce the tax burden on residents after years of previous escalations — which has included maintaining an excess tax levy space between what the town charges residents in property taxes and what it could charge under Proposition 2 1/2.

School Committee member Carin Marshall countered during Thursday's meeting that strategy masks the actual costs of running the schools since the agreements cover the added costs for one year but force the schools to fight for that same money over and over again.

"Our job is to make sure our students get what they need," School Committee member Amy O'Connor said. "Frankly, when the town raises money (through taxes) for being a town, what do they do? They take care of the roads, they take care of the infrastructure, they take care of the schools. I am tired of hearing people say: 'Back in my day, the schools were rated as X, Y and Z.'

"There's a correlation between net school spending and school rankings. It's real. So if we're content to be in the bottom with our net school spending then I think we need to be content to be in the bottom, period."

(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.)