The Boston School Committee voted 5-2 to advance the fiscal year 2025 $1.5 billion BPS budget proposal Wednesday night.
The FY 2025 budget has been heralded by BPS leadership as a “transitional” and “transformational” year. It marks the end of millions in federal COVID-era ESSER funding, the launch of a sweeping inclusive education plan, and initial steps away from the district’s long-held per-pupil funding model to a more targeted “value-based” funding mechanism.
“If we truly want to improve student outcomes, and I know this is central to our district and this committee, we must carefully and deliberately build the foundation of a district that meets the unique needs of every student in every school, no matter how they learn, what language they speak, or what neighborhood they call home,” said Superintendent Mary Skipper on Wednesday. “Creating an equitable, fiscally sound budget is one of our biggest responsibilities as a school district and as a superintendent, and I’m proud of the budget.”
Skipper noted that the city’s $81 million investment in the budget — a 45% increase — puts the district in a better position than other city’s “facing much tougher budgets” in the wake of ESSER and allows for the support of school maintenance and priority investments like inclusive education, universal pre-K and early college and career programs.
Despite funding offset from the city, the budget also includes a controversial swath of staffing and programming cuts called out by parents and educators through the process.
Committee members Brandon Cardet-Hernandez and Stephen Alkins voted against the budget, citing concerns about the budget falling short of “bold” or “aggressive transformative change” the district needs but said they continue to be “allies” as the budget’s initiatives move forward.
Others, including members Rafaela Polanco Garcia and Quoc Tran, emphasized “serious concerns” and the need for oversight as the new inclusion plan rolls out, particularly for multilingual learners.
“To be very frank, I see regurgitation of ideas and projects and initiatives I have seen in the past that failed, but who knows, the current climate of the society may alter these plans and may make them better — I don’t know,” said Tran. … “I will take a position of observing, watching and carefully analyzing everything that you put forward. So for that, I move forward with your budget.”
Parents, educators and school community members have also been critical of the inclusive education plan, along with program and staffing cuts and transparency and outreach throughout the budget process itself.
School budget breakdowns showed a net staffing loss of about 480 positions, or 4% of district-funded positions. Well over half of the 119 schools in BPS will lose staff.
The largest staffing losses within administrators with about 90 positions cut; bilingual education and instructional aides with about 210 positions cut; and bilingual, kindergarten, general education and specialist teachers with nearly 340 positions cut. Other jobs including support, food service and part-time positions also saw net losses.
Supporting inclusive education plans, the budget adds about 220 special education teachers and 140 special education aides.
The Boston Teachers Union released a statement on the budget Thursday, stating cuts that take “needed service, opportunity, or support away from our students is a serious concern to our union.”
“We urge full transparency on any positions impacted by proposed cuts, and will continue advocating for robust funding of our schools at the federal and state levels in addition to the municipal funding currently filling those gaps,” the BTU said.
Several librarians and allies showed up at Wednesday’s meeting to call out the FY 2025 budget proposal’s departure from the 2021 Library Services Strategic Plan, which aimed to provide all BPS students with library services by 2026.
“I understand that budget lines made it difficult to continue to fund programs, but the strategic vision was not through deliberate intention and drawn up through deliberate intention to make our schools a place where students felt represented not only by the books that we maintain in the library’s collection, but by the people servicing them,” said Joseph Lee School librarian Emmanuel Oppong-Yeboah.
Skipper said the budget team aimed to not reduce any library positions and “add what we could.” The budget adds funding for about four librarian positions — after the Tynan and Manning Schools each received one in the final budget draft — and cuts about funding for about 12 library aide.
“My team and I appreciate the importance of libraries and librarian paras, and I just really want to stress this: they hold a special place in the lives of our students, and they’re such a resource for our staff,” said Skipper. “We’re deeply committed to continuing our investment from the strategic library plan over the next several years as we get beyond the ESSER cliff.”