EVERETT, Mass. — Everett Schools may soon be forced to lay off more than 100 staff members due to a massive budget crunch.
The school committee met Monday night to discuss how to address the issue as the city has less than two weeks to come up with the money.
"Every school in the district will be affected with personnel that will be laid off," said Kevin Shaw, assistant superintendent.
Last week, 110 school department employees were notified that they were in danger of losing their jobs due to budget concerns.
"It was the most heartbreaking day of my career," said Kimberly Auger, president of the Everett Teacher's Union. "We all came to work and we want to work with children and to be told that this may not be happening in two weeks is devastating to us."
The school department has about $26-million left in its budget for the rest of the year, which means it is about $8-million short of what's needed to fund the district through the end of the year.
A change in state aid is primarily to blame for the school department's struggle with their budget. The state gives aid to schools to feed every student considered to be economically disadvantaged.
In 2016, however, the state changed the qualifications for who gets that aid, mandating that the student or their family be enrolled in a federal or state poverty program.
The underlying issue with those qualifications is that many students in Everett come from immigrant families who don't necessarily qualify for those services.
"We lost about 2,000 students in the count overnight," said Oberski.
The ciy is working to see how much money it can come up with to supplement the budget, but the deadline to do so is Feb. 16. Even then, officials are unsure as to just how much they'll be able to supplement.
"We have other issues in the city - police, fire department, DPW, parks and other stuff we have to deal with - and sometimes you have to tighten the belt," said Tom Philbin, communications director for the City of Everett.
In a statement, the president of the Everett Teachers Association said, in part:
"We strongly urge our state and local leaders to support our students and our educators by making sure that school funding is sufficient to avoid harmful disruptions such as this."
Parents are hoping the city can come up with the money, but they're also worried about the worst-case scenario.
So far, the district has had to make smaller, less significant cuts as a result of losing their state aid, including putting a million-dollar renovation on hold at the high school.
Hundreds of parents, teachers and students gathered in the high school's library during the meeting Monday night to express the concern.
“All the first year teachers got cut and these kids rely on them because many of these first year teachers are very good," parent Caroline Ivey said.
The School Committee voted to write a letter to the city council pleading for help to prevent a drop in services.