The Lynnfield School Committee and interim Superintendent Tom Geary recently met to discuss the district’s fiscal year 2025 budget and recommended a 5.5% budget increase, for a total budget of $31,302,455 with $350,000 in capital requests.

Both Committee Chair Kate DePrizio and Geary emphasized that the budget being presented “is a work in progress” that they have only had a month to work on. They said the entire budget process usually takes several months.

The principals of Lynnfield’s four public schools were invited to speak about their budget requests before the School Committee presented its own recommendations.

One of the requests made by Lynnfield High School Principal Patricia Puglisi was for money to maintain the school’s existing staff to increase the number of elective classes and reduce the number of study halls that students are enrolled in.

“One thing that we saw, looking at the program and studies in the fall, was that there really was a lack of elective programs at the high school,” Puglisi said. “There are students enrolled in two or three study halls today at the high school, which really should not go beyond one study hall a day.”

Puglisi also requested funding for a health teacher to help the school meet the Department of Education’s expanding health-class standards, a civics teacher, a stipend for the Special Services Department head, and a STEM teacher to “really allow students to have that authentic application of their experiences that they’re coming out of in their computer programming, math, and science classes.”

“I’m going to be honest, I was a little shocked when I first came to Lynnfield High School that we don’t have a robotics team,” Puglisi said.

For Lynnfield Middle School, two of Principal Stephen Ralston’s requests were funds for a board-certified behavior analyst (BCBA) and an adjustment counselor to deal with reported increases in both the frequency and duration of behaviors that need intervention.

“We’ve had, not just here but across other districts as well, a tremendous increase in behaviors that necessitate interventions by school psychologists, counselors, school adjustment counselors, special ed liaisons, classroom teachers,” Ralston said. “And we have two right now in the district that are kind of shared between the four buildings, but I believe it really would be essential to have a dedicated BCBA at the middle school.”

DePrizio asked Ralston to elaborate more on the behavioral challenges he has seen, which are part of why he requested additional support for the Differentiated Learning Program (DLP).

“When we have heightened behaviors, and they may be intense and duration is prolonged, then that’s pulling that many resources away from other students who would, under normal, normal circumstances, be able to access those,” Ralston said. 

Ralston clarified that his comments about students displaying behaviors were not restricted to students who are part of the DLP, but included those in other programs and students who are not in any program at all.

DePrizio added that the way the district deals with behavioral intervention has “completely become a hemorrhaging situation.” 

“It pools all of our resources to one place, and that leaves no resources then in the places that they need to be for students to have access to,” DePrizio said. “We keep redirecting resources but to no end, so it becomes not only that certain students are impacted, all students are impacted.”

Huckleberry Hill Elementary School Principal Melissa Wyland requested a first grade teacher position to keep class sizes small. She also asked for a part-time elementary clinical supervisor.

“At Huckleberry Hill, we’ve seen an increased number of students with behavioral mental-health challenges, as well as students in crisis who are experiencing or have experienced trauma,” Wyland said. “So that person would support our program, teachers, paraprofessionals, classroom teachers, it will help us when we are having students that are having challenges.”

Regarding the DLP, DePrizio asked the principals to elaborate on the loss of learning experienced by students, mentioning an occasion when a school wing had to be evacuated, impacting other classes. 

“We do have times when I have to remove other students from a classroom due to a child being unsafe,” Wyland said. “When that happens, we obviously get the kids out for their own safety, but also the safety and privacy of the student in crisis. We try to de-escalate the situation as quickly as we can, and have the students returned to the classroom. However, you can imagine when they return to the classroom, we also have to take time to process what they saw and to provide them an opportunity to discuss their feelings, and then to slowly get back into curriculum. So this is something that we’re seeing more of, and it’s happening more often.”

Summer Street Elementary School Principal Karen Cronin requested two kindergarten teachers, two kindergarten paraprofessionals, and a first grade teacher to expand the number of classrooms at the school.

“Our incoming kindergarten numbers, the enrollment right now is that there’s 92 students, which is not a static number, and that number will change and probably rise,” Cronin said. “And as a former teacher, I will always advocate for a lower student to teacher ratio.”

It was then the School Committee’s turn to present its budget recommendations.

The committee agreed with several of the principals’ requests, including two kindergarten teachers, two kindergarten paraprofessionals, and a first grade teacher at Summer Street; a first grade teacher at Huckleberry Hill; and additional interventionist support at the two elementary schools and Lynnfield Middle School. The committee also recommended adding a BCBA for the district, a part-time clinical supervisor for the elementary schools, a stipend for the Lynnfield High School Special Services department head, and a partnership with the New England Center for Children’s differentiated learning programs for the middle school and elementary schools. 

The committee did recommend some budget reductions as well, including the elimination of the high school’s media center specialist position, a special education teacher position at the middle school, and stipends for athletics game support staff and faculty manager stipends for Lynnfield High. It also recommended the reduction of five administrative positions.

Some recommended capital requests included the reupholstering of all seats in the high school’s auditorium, and Chromebooks, laptops, and other materials for the technology department, pending an audit.