Swampscott School Committee mulls social-distance change
Leigh Blander / Correspondent
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The School Committee is discussing possibly changing the distancing rule in Swampscott schools from six feet to three feet – to bring more students back into classrooms.
“This is such a year of loss,” said School Committee Chair Amy O’Connor at a Feb. 10 public meeting. “The completely dulled experience that everyone’s having; we did not imagine this was going to be a year in the making. Everyone’s exasperated and parents of the younger kids are really burnt out.”
School Committee member Ted Delano added, “I had a conversation with a parent today and they were describing their daughter’s academic progress as dying on the vine and that to me is a lot.”
Swampscott officials propose $31.3M budget for fiscal year 2022
Leigh Blander / Correspondent
A proposed FY 2022 budget for Swampscott schools totals $31.3 million, a 3.18% increase over this year. Not surprisingly, COVID-19 and the economic downturn are affecting the numbers.
“Obviously, the pandemic has impacted local revenues and could still cause some unanticipated expenditures both for the schools and the town over the next five months as we navigate the end of FY ‘21. There’s a challenging fiscal outlook for several years ahead as we start to recover from this,” said Schools Finance Dir. Martha Sybert, who presented the budget at a recent School Committee meeting.