“This budget was crafted in a time of fiscal constraint,” Young said back in April when the school committee recommended reorganization of the city school system’s central administration, eliminating administrative support jobs and cutting teaching aides in the elementary grades.

Young said he hoped these cutbacks would have a streamlining effect, creating positions that require higher skill levels and greater efficiency. Young also said he hoped budget tightening would shed light on the larger-than-average spending of Cambridge per student. (Cambridge spends approximately $25,000 per student per year, about $10,000 more than Boston or Newton.)

The School Committee’s budget decisions have relied largely on widening the pool of early retirement candidates, in hopes of reducing the number of actual staff cuts.

“That was a very difficult but prudent decision to not have to deal with budget constraints,” says Committee member Marc McGovern. “[But] it’s never easy when you’re talking about peoples’ livelihoods.”

“There are a lot of folks that are in unions and there is a certain process you have to go through before downsizing,” Fantini adds.

Members of the School Committee have tried to look on the bright side, but according to Tauber, “when it comes to talk about the budget [next fiscal year], it’s going to be tough again.”

Additionally, some uncertainty within the School Committee itself—such as this year’s prolonged mayoral election—has added to the Committee’s troubles. Some Committee members also take issue with the superintendent selection process and the two-year term Committee members serve, complaining about the too-rapid turnover within the governance.

“Members who voted for the Superintendent, they are no longer on the school committee,” Fantini says. “He [now] doesn’t have the majority of the School Committee that can say they voted for him.”

“We had to get everyone up to speed; after two years, there are three new members,” Fantini adds.

“It wouldn’t be out of line to look at what makes us a more effective body as opposed to the most political,” McGovern says.

It took the Cambridge City Council seven tries to elect a mayor, and for those two months the School Committee operated with a missing member and without its chair.

But Maher expresses faith in at least the existing mayor-Committee relationship.

“The system that we have has been in place for over 70 years,” he says. “When you’re living through it, it probably seems longer than it is.”

—Staff writer Rediet T. Abebe can be reached at rtesfaye@college.harvard.edu.