The school budget hearing on May 19 was mostly what these hearings are supposed to be when nobody is trying to turn them into theater: a long, useful walk through staffing, space, salaries, and the basic fact that Everett Public Schools are trying to do too much in too little room.
That last part was the real story.
Superintendent William Hart and Assistant Superintendent of Finance Chris Barrett came in to present the FY27 school budget. There was an immediate technology snag getting the PowerPoint up, because of course there was. Anthony DiPierro said if needed they would just use the paper copies. A radical concept: read the documents in front of you. Eventually Hart started talking while the setup got sorted out.
Chair John Burley opened with eight members present. Stephanie Smith was absent, and DiPierro said he had been told she was “unable to be here due to a work obligation.”
Hart opened with the usual thank-yous, but then got into numbers and a line he clearly wanted on the record.
He said the budget had been “unanimously approved by the school committee” and endorsed by the Everett Teachers Association. He specifically named ETA President Kim Auger. He also reached back to a line Mayor Carlo Van Campen used when he was still on the council, calling the goal for Everett schools “an urban model of excellence and success.” Hart said, “that journey is well underway.”
Fine. Every superintendent has to sell the vision. The more useful part came when the discussion got away from slogans and into physical reality.
The district’s biggest argument was not abstract. It was space.
Hart pushed the need for appropriations to expand use of the old Everett High School so seventh and eighth grade can be moved out of five separate school buildings. If that happens, she said, the district would free up “approximately 12 to 13 classrooms” for things schools are supposed to have but currently squeeze into whatever corner is left.
Her wording was blunt enough to be worth quoting. “This isn’t a storytelling session, this is the truth.”
She said art is currently “in a cart” and music is “rolled down a hallway.” That tells you more than twenty pages of strategic-plan language ever could. Everett is not arguing over decorative upgrades here. It is trying to create actual rooms for actual school functions.
That matters because school budgets are usually discussed as if every line is optional. A lot of it is not. A district either has enough space to run programs properly or it starts storing basic educational services in hallways and converted closets and pretending that counts.
Michael Marchese drilled into preschool, which was one of the better exchanges of the night because it forced the administration to explain how the system is physically laid out.
Hart said there are two preschool sites: the Adams School in the Village and the Webster Extension — “WebEx” — on the first floor of the old Everett High School. She said Adams has eight classrooms and WebEx has fourteen, serving three- and four-year-olds in two levels.
Marchese asked what full-day preschool costs and whether those costs are separated by site. Hart said staffing is shown in the budget pages, though some staff are shared centrally. She listed assistant principals, administrative assistants, teachers, paraprofessionals, contracted speech and occupational therapists, and a licensed nurse at WebEx because one student requires medical support for feeding and care.
Again, the useful part was not the title list. It was the condition report. Hart said therapists are working in hallways and old storage spaces turned into quiet areas. That is not a boutique complaint. That is what an overcrowded system looks like when it is trying to keep functioning.
DiPierro asked about out-of-district tuition at the Devon School, and this was another practical exchange. He noted that when he had served on the Devon board, the school had done well bringing in tuition revenue from other districts.
Hart said Everett still receives tuition, “from the city of Chelsea in particular,” but made clear the district is reassessing that practice to make sure Everett students come first. Her line was straightforward: “I do not want to bring another child into this district and not be able to service them and do it right.” She confirmed there is at least one tuition-paying student there now.
That is a sensible answer. Revenue is nice. Failing your own students because you chased tuition money is not.
Michele Capone took the hearing into salaries and staffing, which is where budget hearings usually get more honest.
Capone noted, correctly, that this process is largely informational because “we can’t deduct from your budget. So, this is more of an informational session.” That is worth remembering every budget season when people pretend these hearings are some grand battlefield. Often they are more like public homework.
Capone asked how many people the district employs. Hart said 1,280 employees total, “some of which are covered by grants,” including 605 teachers.
On teacher pay, Hart said the next contractual increase is 3 percent for teaching staff. Barrett added that once step increases are included, the overall effect is higher — “close to… 5.7%.” Capone, looking at the pages, said many salaries appeared to rise by $5,000 to $6,000. Barrett said that was probably high and offered a “guesstimate” of “between $3,000 to $4,000.” Hart explained that lane changes for advanced degrees also push some salaries up further.
That exchange was useful precisely because nobody tried to hide the mechanics. Salary growth is not just one percentage number. It is percentage increases, steps, and credential bumps stacked together.
Capone then suggested teachers may have done better than paraprofessionals in bargaining. Hart snapped back, “Quite the opposite.”
She said Everett was “one of the first districts” to raise paraprofessional base pay and give paras 6 percent increases per year, and contrasted Everett with strike districts that made a lot of noise and, in some cases, “still didn’t get what we were able to come to an agreement with.” That was a fair shot. Public labor politics often rewards whoever yells best, not whoever actually gets the better contract.
Hart also conceded the obvious: paras still are “probably not” paid what they should be for the work they do. Barrett backed that up, saying “they’re all educators.”
One smaller but telling comment came during a discussion of school technology. Someone noted that “a child in a Chromebook doing their dibbles is very much the norm… it’s not just in Everett… I know it’s not ideal, but we make it work.” Hart answered, “That’s right. We do, we have.”
That was basically the theme of the whole night. We make it work.
And Everett does. But there was also a limit hanging over this hearing: how long the district can keep “making it work” with too little space, too many shared rooms, and services being rolled down hallways on carts. The budget is one issue. The buildings are the bigger one. If the city is serious about school quality, that is where the real decision sits.