The Saugus Union School District governing board Tuesday night approved the district’s local control and accountability plan, also known as LCAP, and adopted a budget for the next school year.
The LCAP is a three-year plan describing the district’s annual goals and specific actions to address state and local priorities to support outcomes for all students and student groups. The LCAP must also describe how the district plans to help improve or increase services for low-income students, English learners, and foster youth, also known as “unduplicated students.”
This next school year, the district will begin its second year of the LCAP goals that were set in the previous school year. Those goals were:
- Implement instructional programs and services that allow all students to achieve while closing the achievement gap in the core academic areas.
- Provide instructional opportunities necessary to ensure English learner academic achievement and their appropriate acquisition of English.
- Create school environments that are responsive to student and educational partners’ social-emotional learning needs to increase their engagement and connectedness to learning and school.
- Engage parents in the school community and decision-making process to create a core instructional program appropriate for the basic conditions of learning necessary for all students.
- Provide opportunities for staff and students to see themselves represented in schools, understand the contributions all people make to the world, and respect those differences when learning in school.
For this next school year, based off feedback from educational partners and reviewing data from the previous school year, the district will be expanding a few actions to help achieve the goals, said Edwin Clement, assistant superintendent of education services, during the June 3 meeting.
To help engage more parents in the school community, the district will be looking to expand the family and communications liaison team to help increase outreach, facilitate workshops, translation support for the Dual Language Immersion program and connecting with English Learners and Spanish-speaking students.
The district also said they will be looking to increase services in its program specialist area such as focusing on muti-tiered support systems, increasing engagement with unduplicated students and students with disabilities, and look to give the best practices to staff to support them.
According to the overview attached to the agenda item, for the 2024-25 school year, the district budgeted to spend about $8 million to improve or increase services for high needs students but actually spent around $7.1 million for services.
In the overview, it reads the reason the district spent under what was initially budgeted was due to staffing challenges.
“We were not able to fill all the anticipated positions until mid-year and thus could not fully expend the funds originally allocated to these actions. Due to the staffing shortages with substitute teachers, professional development for our teachers required a different model without the use of substitute release time. SUSD adjusted processes and procedures to maintain services to high needs students,” reads the overview.
For the upcoming school year, the district adopted a budget that projects the district to spend $144.96 million, according to the budget draft attached to the agenda item. Of that amount, $122.2 million is tied to actions and services in the LCAP and $22.7 million is not included in the LCAP.
The overview adds that the district is expecting to receive $7.3 million based on the enrollment of low-income students, English learners, and foster youth and plans to spend $9.4 million toward improving or increasing services for these students.
Board member Matt Watson made a motion to approve district’s LCAP plan, and board member Chris Trunkey seconded the motion. The motion passed 4-0. Board member Anna Griese was absent from the meeting.
Watson also made a motion to approve and adopt the district’s budget, and Trunkey seconded the motion. The motion passed 4-0.
