Boston’s schools superintendent, bracing for a continued decline in enrollment in the new year, warned the School Committee last month that the further loss in student numbers will impact the district’s budget as well.
Mary Skipper and her financial team addressed the projected student loss — estimated at roughly 1,300—during a presentation at the committee’s Dec. 17 meeting. Coupled with a decline recorded last year, the district is likely to see its student population diminished by roughly 3,000 students over a two-year period.
In November, BPS recorded a record low 46,824 enrolled students, down 1,700 from 2024-25, with much of that attributed to “migrant” or “newcomer” students not returning to school. The next school term is expected to follow suit, part of a nationwide decline of the school-age population.
“We’re preparing for a difficult and challenging budget season,” Skipper told the committee. “Our budget challenges are due to several factors, including significant cost increases related to historically high health care premium increases, collective bargaining agreements, rising transportation and special education costs, and this year’s enrollment decline of approximately 1,700 students and next year’s anticipated decrease of an additional 1,300 students.”
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The BPS budget for Fiscal Year 2026, approved last March, is $1.58 billion.
“As we look forward into Fiscal Year 2027, we’re facing a more difficult budget season,” said BPS Chief Financial Officer David Bloom during the meeting. “Our period of more stable enrollment has ended…Those reductions are primarily due to smaller cohort sizes moving through the system and federal immigration policies.”
Fewer students mean less funding from the state, which is calculated based on enrollment on Oct. 1 each year. But district costs keep rising for health care premiums, salaries, and bus monitors. Two years ago, cost overruns were met with remaining federal pandemic funds, but this year the district “no longer has a safety net by way of Covid relief dollars,” said Deputy CFO Blair Dawkins.
That means the district is tasked with covering this year’s cost overruns, and budgeting for deficits next year.
The rise in costs is already being felt at the school level as school principal and headmasters began working out their budgets late last month with cuts and financial maneuvering necessary at most every school.
Their budgets will come back to the administration in late January and the public budget process will begin in February, Skipper said.
In preparation, Skipper, Bloom, and Dawkins have outlined a budgeting strategy called Reimagining School Funding (RSF), which is a departure from the student-weighted budgeting that has existed for years.
The new approach is a “rules-based” formula that looks to fund schools equitably even if they don’t have high enrollment numbers.
Beyond that, Bloom said, they are looking to make several cuts to the central office staff in the coming year to piggyback on cuts already made there in the current budget year. The idea is to mitigate any loss of “student-facing” positions, they said.
“This year we pushed especially hard, knowing the challenges ahead of us, and asked our teams to complete a detailed budget analysis for review by senior leadership,” said Bloom. “The superintendent has given us a clear vision to focus on student- and family-facing positions and preserving those, and a reduction in more internal-facing positions.”
The finance team has already identified $12.5 million in those “true reductions” at the central office, as well as $16.5 million in savings on operational efficiencies and transportation. “That represents about a 4 percent reduction overall,” said Bloom.
The School Committee is expected to begin budget deliberations during its February meetings.
