The Boston School Committee was expected to vote Wednesday on a billion-dollar Boston Public Schools budget that would nonetheless cut funding to 49 schools and redirect funds to others.
For the fiscal year 2018, the board proposed a 29 percent increase for the school department, up to $1.081 billion with collective bargaining agreements. But school-by-school funding overall would drop by one percent – about $4.3 million – with some of the schools facing reductions of up to 21 percent of investment since the 2017 appropriations. Other schools will see increases of up to 22 percent, according to BPS data.
Students feel that the process is “on replay, seeing the same budget cuts and school closings over and over again” said Fania Joseph, president of the Boston Student Advisory Council, when she testified at a March 15 school committee meeting.
Joseph is a senior at Dorchester Academy, which is facing a loss of about $100,000 in the proposed budget. “At the end of the day, nothing matters if we’re not coming together to build a foundation,” she said. “Education’s a fundamental right.”
Funding for individual school budgets depends on formulas accounting for total enrollment and student demographics. Schools serving higher proportions of low-income or special needs student would have budgets weighted more heavily to provide those resources.
Under the proposal, the Mattahunt Elementary School, which will be shuttered and quickly re-opened as an early education center, would see a reduction in funding of more than $6 million. In its place, the early education center would receive about $3.9 million.
The John W. McCormack Middle School on Columbia Point, now going on 10 years without a librarian, is facing some of the highest cuts by dollar amount – about $1.01 million, a full 21 percent of its budget. Allocations to Madison Park High School in Roxbury would decrease by $1.3 million.
Adina Schecter, literacy coach at the McCormack school and the neighboring Dever Elementary School, spoke at the committee meeting on March 15 about the student growth rate at the McCormack, saying it is “one critical measure of our students’ success.” The school has sustained an average student growth rate higher than the district average for the past three years, she said. Compared with the growth rate in Massachusetts as a whole, “we are the only school to exceed the state’s average growth in both [English language arts and math] subjects three years running,” she said.
“We believe that other schools would really benefit from learning how we are achieving this growth, and that now is not the time to strip us of over $1 million of resources to continue to share what we know with other schools and maybe even the country,” Schecter testified.
The Dever school budget would be reduced by 15 percent, or a $650,000 loss for the bilingual, Level 5 school, which serves predominantly Hispanic (64 percent), English Language Learner (53 percent), high needs (89 percent), and economically disadvantaged (79 percent) students, according to state data.
The Jeremiah E. Burke High School in Grove Hall, which as of 20-14 is no longer classified as a Level 4 school, is looking at an 8 percent cut in funding, or more than $350,000.
Citywide Parent Council (CPC) member Kristin Johnson wrote on her blog, “A Political Education,” that “the losses are staggering.” The Burke will lose four positions, she said, including a librarian, an English teacher, a math teacher, and a paraprofessional.
With 30 of the 49 schools facing cuts classified as Levels 3, 4, and 5 under the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE), Johnson worries about a downward spiral at underfunded, minimally resourced schools.
“Because these cuts are related to a decline in enrollment in a choice-based system, a correlation must be drawn between a school’s DESE level and their desirability to BPS families,” she wrote. “We must consider supplemental funding interventions for schools in which higher DESE levels have a detrimental impact on funding as a result.”
Most schools are floating between gaining or losing up to 5 percent of their budgets. Some Dorchester schools are making more substantial gains, including a 12 percent increase at the Henderson campuses and 11 percent at Lee Academy. Receiving the biggest boost by percentage – 22 percent – the P. A. Shaw Elementary School in Mattapan is slated to receive an additional $404,405.
