Tag: school budget

  • In 7-0 vote, School Committee passes $1.73 billion budget

    The Boston School Committee on Wednesday unanimously passed a $1.73 billion budget for next school year, a more than 4.5 percent increase over this year’s spending plan, but ongoing financial pressures and declining enrollment will put between 300 and 400 jobs at risk. 

    Advocates are calling for the city to invest an additional 1 percent of its operating budget, about $48 million, to avert cuts to student services. The School Committee holds exclusive authority to revise line items in the budget. The City Council and Mayor may approve, reject or reduce the total recommended budget, but do not have the authority to revise individual items or increase the budget. 

    During a February budget presentation, Superintendent Mary Skipper said certain reductions would be necessary as costs continue to outpace revenues. She said fewer teachers would be needed because of an enrollment decline of about 3,000 students over the last two years. Other top financial pressures includee labor contracts, transportation expenses and rising health insurance costs. 

    Increased expenses have contributed to an estimated $53 million budget deficit this year, which led to a hiring freeze announced in January.

    “The budget that the city has proposed for the schools is not adequate to meet the needs of all of our members, particularly students with disabilities and multilingual learners,” said Boston Teachers Union President Erik Berg. “The restoration of any necessary services for our students is a move in the right direction. We’re seeking additional funding added into the BPS budget so they can restore some of the services that are currently [cut].”

    Those proposed cuts would primarily impact teaching and aide positions, as well as administrative roles and other support staff. Special education and bilingual faculty are to be especially affected.

    Mary Stenson, a school nurse at the Melvin H. King South End Academy Elementary School — a specialized school for students with increased social and emotional needs — said she has seen the effects of reductions first-hand, adding parents who have students with similar needs should find these cuts “alarming.” 

    “People see our students as ‘bad kids,’ but they just need their emotional needs met. Bigger schools can’t meet their needs,” Stenson said. “Listen to educators. Take it from the people in the buildings.” 

    Formerly known as the McKinley schools, the Melvin H. King Academy offers speech therapy, physical therapy and dental and vision care, among other services. Julie Cass, a paraprofessional, said it’s not uncommon to need multiple staff members to address the behavioral needs of one student. Reducing special education staff in favor of inclusion models could create unsafe environments for other students and staff, she said.

    “We do intense and effective work. Some kids can coast by, our kids can’t coast,” Cass said. “Many students come in with low self-esteem. They get to find out how smart they are.”

    Sumaya Sheike, a fifth-year educator at Dr. William H. Henderson Inclusion School in Dorchester, said cuts will “hurt” her students and may make the work of remaining staff more difficult.

    “There are a lot of steps to go through before eliminating student-facing roles,” Sheike said. “You can’t talk about the successes of BPS without the faults.”

    For Simel Rodriguez, who has a fifth grader at Blackstone Elementary in the South End with both behavioral and multilingual needs, cuts to special education services could mean losing communication with her daughter. 

    Rodriguez’s daughter has an IEP — an Individualized Education Program — and benefits from speech therapy and additional support in math and reading. 

    “All students, regardless of diverse needs, need this staff,” said Rodriguez, translated from Spanish. “By cutting these things, you limit all learners.”

    Rodriguez was one of dozens of parents, union members and advocates who rallied outside City Hall before the City Council budget hearing Tuesday, to call on the Council and Mayor Michelle Wu to prevent service cuts. In an overflowing chamber, Boston Public Schools students presented legislators with letters of intent tied to flowers and many more gave oral testimony.

    Ahead of the 7-0 vote on Wednesday, School Committee members discussed the allocation of transitional funds for schools that will close, improvements for future budget seasons and the role of public comment in amending the budget.  

    “I’m sure there are things we are doing in our schools because we’ve always done them, that may or may not give us the outcomes that we’re looking for,” said School Committee Chair Jeri Robinson, calling for an audit of the BPS central office and at the school level. “It’s time to do some self-reflection. Student outcomes don’t change until adult behaviors do.”

    The budget now goes to the City Council and Wu for final approval.

  • Tracking Wellesley Select Board’s plan to split town, school budgets

    The Wellesley Select Board recently came to consensus about splitting the school budget from the town’s overall spending plan, ending a decades-long practice of consolidating Wellesley’s municipal finances into a single budget. 

    Town Meeting member Michael Tobin proposed the separation at this past spring’s Annual Town Meeting. “This motion is a necessary step,” he said, “toward responsible governance and fiscal transparency.”  

    While some Town Meeting members look forward to more accessible and digestible information about Wellesley’s budgets when Annual Town Meeting begins on March 3, others in town are wary of possible repercussions. 

    The FY26 school budget is $94,035,026, just over 44% of the town’s overall spending plan.

    Town Meeting members for years have been forced to wait until after all town department and School Committee presentations to debate and vote on the entire budget, a process that can take more than one session.

    The school budget is often presented last. If a department item is an issue, a Town Meeting member would need to recall it and refresh the group’s memory.

    Tobin said a dedicated motion for school finances would help members stay organized and lead to better debates. “I expect and hope we’re gonna have better conversations and debates in Town Meetings,” he said, “It’ll be richer conversation … and I think it’s gonna lead to a better outcome.” 

    Katherine Babson proposed the omnibus budget at Town Meeting in 1986. She initially opposed splitting the budget, but describes herself as “agnostic” about the change. She said she would fight any effort to break down the budget further.

    Before 1986,Town Meeting members reviewed as many as 80 separate articles for individual departments. “It went on forever,” Babson said, and in the end, when the voting body got to the last few articles, no one was listening.  

    School Committee Chair Niki Ofenloch and former chair Linda Chow attempted to safeguard the omnibus budget’s original intent. 

    They argued that the omnibus budget has continued to provide a clear representation of school costs. Chow said the School Committee worked hard to sift through and vet the school system’s 426-page budget.

    “We talk a lot about … ‘One Wellesley’ and wanting to approach things with a whole community focus,” said Ofenloch, “and I think that dividing the motions … siloes the schools from the rest of the town.”

    Chow said splitting the budgets may have severe, unintended consequences when uncertainty around school funding continues to swirl. “What message is the Select Board sending by creating this separation?” she asked. 

    During a Sept. 30 meeting about preparation for the 2027 fiscal year, the board confirmed it would be moving forward with the split. Select Board Chair Marjorie Freiman said Town Meeting members wanted “more clarity on how the [school’s] numbers are derived” and to “fully and fairly reflect the cost of schools.” 

    The change may create logistical problems, Chow said. What would happen, for example, if one budget passes and the other doesn’t?

    “If there’s cuts, for some reason, there’s dates … built into the contract by which we need to notify staff members,” she said. “And if we don’t have a balanced budget by any of those dates … in theory, then we don’t have any money past June 30 by which to pay our staff.” 

    Select Board members presented four options for handling unbalanced budgets: requiring the School Committee to prepare a list of potential cuts, drawing on free cash reserves, voting down the town budget, or overriding it.

    Vice Chair Tom Ulfelder told the board the School Committee needs to actively participate in developing the budget from the beginning.

    Many people don’t understand the “extraordinary complexity of educating children in the public school system in Massachusetts today,” Ulfelder said, so they cannot comprehend why the costs are increasing while enrollment is decreasing. 

    Some members of the community still view school as simply reading, writing, and arithmetic, he said. “It’s not just the requirements under special education,” he said, “but it’s the impact of COVID, it’s the social emotional learning, it’s the impact of so many factors that are affecting these children in their safe and healthy development.”

    Wellesley’s foray into splitting the budgets has attracted attention from other regional elected officials. Natick Select Board Chair Bruce Evans said he’ll be monitoring the change. Most Massachusetts municipalities use combined budgets. 

    Evans said there’s a fine line between information overload and the concise information that people are looking for, and Natick is still finding the balance. “I’ll be curious to see how it plays out,” he said.

    Babson, the architect of the combined budget in Wellesley, suggested the revised approach to finances may make it easier for new Town Meeting members.“Older Town Meeting members have been through it a million times,” she said, “while new Town Meeting members might not know … when to say or how to express their questions.”  

    Transparency in the budgeting process, she said, is a reasonable desire. “Maybe we need to do a better job of educating everybody.”