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If Boston school budgets are cut, high schools will get hit harder than elementary schools, officials say

Boston school officials today formally introduced a proposed budget that would cut central services such as nurses and force high schools to do things like drop AP courses and librarians, but leave elementary schools largely unscathed. And they urged students and parents to lobby the state legislature to help increase state aid.

At a School Committee meeting, Eleanor Laurans, BPS executive director of school finance, said she and her staff estimate BPS will have to cut $30 million from its budget for the fiscal year that starts July 1, despite extra money promised by Mayor Walsh, because school costs - from salaries to CharlieCards for middle and high school students - are increasing even more. The $1.03-billion budget proposal is the largest in BPS history.

The budget is not yet set - school officials and city councilors plan a series of meetings over the next two months to discuss school spending.

Laurans said she and her staff rejected the idea of a single across-the-board percentage cut for all schools to help make up the budget hole.

She said elementary schools simply have less room to cut, because their budgets are already relatively close to minimum "compliance" budgets, that is, budgets that pay for programs that are mandated by the state or federal governments.

In contrast, high schools have numerous programs not mandated by higher levels of government, from guidance services and AP classes to athletics.

Some 30 students, parents and teachers attended the meeting to urge the committee to ask for more money from Mayor Walsh, in a city that is seeing record construction that will bring in new tax revenue - and that feels the need to throw $25 million in tax breaks at General Electric.

Students and teachers from the Boston Community Leadership Academy in Hyde Park in particular warned that the school just would not be the same without all the AP classes it now offers - and with a library that might have to close without a librarian.

Laurans said her staff has found $8 million in "efficiencies" that can be pruned from the budget - including money that would have gone to pay community organizations for providing services in schools and money that will be saved through tighter management of school-bus expenses.

But, she continued, BPS needs to cut another $30 million to balance its budget.

Roughly $20 million would come from slashing services BPS provides centrally to schools; the rest from schools.

Laurans acknowledged BPS now seems to have these deficits to make up every year, and said that this year, administrators will begin looking at cracking the nut of more fundamental changes to save money over the long term - such as changing the system's current school-assignment and transportation policies.

School Committee Chairman Michael O'Neill expressed particular ire that BPS is facing a $1.3-million increase - some 23% - in the cost of the roughly 21,000 CharlieCards it now buys from the MBTA. T officials have said that the cost of passes are not limited by the state law that bars it from raising basic fares by more than 10%.

The proposed budget does include some new programs - including a $4 million allocation to add 200 to 300 new K1 seats.

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I can see the headlines now, millions in overtime for T unions and no books for the poor children in the Boston Public Schools. Someone should do a study on how much ridership the T looses in the afternoon because adults are terrified to ride the trains when all hell breaks loose when thousands of troublesome teens take over the T.

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could also be morgollons or chemtrails too.

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If you're an adult, and value your sanity, you must avoid using the MBTA anywhere public HS kids in Boston get out. Forest Hills sucks in particular, pretty much from 1PM onward up to (?). I see lots of HS kids at times when you'd assume they'd still be in school.

The ironic part is most of them shouldn't even be bused across town, they could attend schools close to their homes, and a lot of the terrible congestion and problems on the street and on the MBTA would be alleviated.

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Hi anon! Adult here, who places reasonable value on his sanity, and frequently rides the T after work. The T is full of high school kids in the afternoon! Much like has been the case since the dawn of time, teenagers are not the somber observers of authority that they will become once they are a decade older. Some of them do wacky things, like cut their hair in ways you don't like, and speak in dialects you don't approve of. We, the aforementioned grown-ups on the train cars, thus bear the responsibility of rolling our eyes and pretending like we weren't doing exactly the same thing [5/10/15/20] years ago.

Also, shout-out to my fellow white guys in here! That's some pretty sweet dog-whistling you've got going on, guys. You never made one explicit reference to race, but everybody managed to pick up on what you're implying. Soldier on, brave defenders of the oppressed.

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You responded to my other post. Erik, I remember well my teenage years (in the city, not suburbs), and my attitude, various hairstyles, music, etc. that I liked. I remember well riding public transit here and in NYC. I don't need you to educate me about either, or what it's like to be a teenager.

I also think you're projecting. I made zero, nada, reference to so-called race, and neither did I imply it. If you think I did, you're the the one with the racist thoughts, maybe sub-conscious,maybe not. Erik, I'm white and grew up in majority non-white neighborhoods and went to school with MANY non-white kids. I've lived in 'diverse' places all my life. I've never actually even lived in a small town, rural area, or even suburb, only large cities. So, what I'm saying is, I don't need you, my fellow white man, to lecture me about that, either.

I showed this to a friend and co-worker of mine, a black guy, and he got a good laugh. If you think I was mean spirited, you should hear the stuff he says about this very subject.

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As long as we're not talking about race, though, let's not talk about how the conductors on a particular afternoon Needham Line train make sure to keep one car set aside for all the West Roxbury kids heading home from BLS, to keep them away from all the other riders.

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And you know this how?
The school system is in shambles, it started with the busing, The intelligentsia wont admit it ,and duck, dodge and deflect the result with all sorts of smooth talking and typing. But it still is a shit storm.The numbers speak for themselves , there is no need to twist or posture them. It didnt work, period , for any color of the rainbow.

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I remember taking the 16 home from high school. It was a mess. A bunch of hormonal animals carrying on like they were never in public.

Then the bus stopped at Andrew, all the Quincy, Braintree, and Weymouth kids got off, and we had peace (and very few classmates) the rest of the way home.

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Yes indeed , W. Each stop on the MTA had its own idiosyncrasy. An added feature to every ride was the stations that the parochial school girls passed through on their way to a higher education from the Good Sisters. Every station had its feel as the gateway to foreign neighborhoods , Egelston El had a double of them, one being the gateway to White Stadium and that neighborhood, and also for the disembarkment for the boys that went to Blue Hill ave and Mattapan buses.But it was what it was , Caveat ascensor !

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Geez Louise! Can everything not be attached to race these days? This is why BPS is in crap: not enough self-esteem in students (I would know because I unfortunately was one of them); thus performance/attendance is bad, thus reflects bad on teachers and schools, and then funding gets cut.

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The BPS gets its budget from the city mostly, from real estate taxes mostly.

the MBTA does not draw from that same pool of funding.

Therefore, linking disruptive high school aged kids on the MBTA to the specific issue of budget shortfalls of the BPS is looney tunes.

Not saying teens on the T aren't an issue in some areas, not saying there are or aren't budget problems with either the MBTA or BPS, just pointing out that the pools of funding are not linked.

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people that don't know the difference between loses and looses.

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If it's the biggest budget in history, by definition there isn't a budget cut to BPS per se. There's a $30m operational shortfall, but that's because $30m more is being used by other, non-cuttable parts of the budget (salaries, SPED costs apparently, etc...)

Remember the time when Mayor Walsh said he wasn't sure there was a funding issue? Seems like only last week.

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To give a little bit more detail about what's going on in the high schools, one of the big changes is that the weighted student funding formula previously assumed that high schools would have 6 periods a day, and that each teacher would teach during 4 of those periods and use the other two periods for their other job responsibilities. In this budget proposal, the formula is changed to assume that there are 7 periods, with each teacher in the classroom for 5 of them.

The result is pretty grim for the high schools. Schools with steady enrollments are seeing their WSF allocations going down by hundreds of thousands of dollars. Schools that are losing students are taking absolutely enormous cuts - for example, Madison Park is projected to have its enrollment decline by 5% and its budget go down 10.56%, or about $1.3M.

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An adult making $80K a year to work 8 months out of the year now has to work 5 - 45 min periods. Someone call OSHA!

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Teachers work far more than 8 months of the year now - try 11 months with training and preps - and they tend to work 60-70 hours a week.

Get a clue, darling. Or go back to school.

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At least, that's what I thought I heard last night, that it's a turnaround school now and so it's budget is still under discussion.

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Yeah, turnaround alright. That really worked out. Should have kept Boston Trade.

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I had a conflict last night and couldn't attend. I was just looking at the WSF information on the BPS web site. I wouldn't be surprised at all if that's the case.

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Rather than fund Boston schools cost increases we're funding about half of them while adding new services.

There are two big policy pieces that were not addressed in debate, including 25% increase in the number of sections high schools teachers lead daily. There was no discussion of the reasoning, debate on the merit, or impact on issues such as lesson planning. It's likely that this change is driven by cost and is not pursued because of benefits it delivers to students.

The other piece is the allocation which is significant and will force principals to fire teachers. We're squeezing resources out of our high schools rather than matching budget to cost. I'm not convinced there is a lot of excess that exists to be squeezed.

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A few weeks ago BPS announces they need $63 million more to level fund the schools.
Sky is falling.

The city proposes $13 million in additional funding - gap = $50 million.
Sky still falling.

BPS says gap is now $38 million (anyone know where the $12 million went?)
So sky raining upon us (actually is today)

Then they say they have $8 million in savings they are currently working on so gap = $30 million PLUS they can save $20 million on "centrally administered services" translated as Walsh is forcing Dudley nee Court Street to finally get real about its bloated central service staff. Gap down to $10 million.
Sky still falling, and we are taking it out on the kids (it's like what they do with other things - money under every seat cushion - but they tell you they are cutting the Parks budget because people will rally and fund it themselves because we love us our parks).

Next step - the city will probably find a few million extra for the schools. Plus the school closure plan will probably eliminate 2-4 schools this fall - with lots more to follow over the next 5 years - saving the rest of the money. Politicians are heroes - yay. I see this performance every year.

However, every January they will rally kids to stand up and cry at the school committee meetings to beg for more money. Not for the kids - but for the adults.

Note - in their recent release even the school powers aren't blaming the city which has been EXTREMELY generous for the last several years. They are blaming flat state spending and encouraging parents and students to lobby Beacon Hill for more money. I think the kids need a lesson in idioms. Beacon Hill will teach them all about "blood from a stone".

MACBETH
It will have blood, they say. Blood will have blood.
Stones have been known to move, and trees to speak.

The stones may move - but they won't bleed.

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It's interesting to see where the money is actually coming and going. I'm sure that when you get a 1.3% increase to your budget ($13.5M), having your health insurance and Medicare costs go up by 7.5% and 7.9% respectively ($7M & $618K) is unwelcome, to say the least. And when you're spending 40% of your budget on teacher salaries, having the average salary go up by 1.9% (just dividing total salary by FTEs to get this number) probably cuts into the budget quite a bit, too. Were the district to retain all of its teachers, my quick math suggests that would add nearly $8M to the budget. So just between teacher salaries and healthcare, $13.5M is already not enough to level fund the schools. Instead we end up with teacher FTEs going down 2.1% - almost certainly faster than enrollment is declining.

Still, it's interesting to see that at a high level, spending categorized as "Central" is going up 1.6% and spending categorized as "Schools" is going down 2.1%. I haven't had much time to look through it closely, but I'm sure that a huge chunk of the $9.5M increase in central spending is due to health care. I assume that the $8.7M increase in the "Strategy" subcategory is due to things like hiring reforms, but I guess I don't know for sure. It is interesting to note that the Superintendent's department's funding is going down a whopping $2.8M, or 47.8%. It looks like the new superintendent is willing to walk the walk when it comes to savings in his own department.

The big takeaway, though, is the huge year over year cuts in spending in the schools themselves:

Elementary Schools: down $2.4M, 1.8%
Middle Schools: down $3.0M, 10.4%
High Schools: down $8.4M, 6.8%
Exam Schools: down $1.4M, 4.1%

Those aren't reductions from level service costs, those are actual reductions from FY16 figures. What's happening to the school budgets this year is absolutely not OK.

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I would argue BPS is already flush with cash - you may not. But the ALLOCATION of the money is definitely a problem. Budget for the classroom first and then worry about central services, busing and everything else.

That's truly amazing - they are claiming $20 million in savings in central services leaving a shortfall they are putting on the schools of $10 million. Yet not only are the cutting the $10 million in NEW spending needed - looks like you are saying they are cutting ANOTHER $15 million from the schools. Which means despite the "savings" in central staffing - as you note - the central services budget is STILL going up - and all this despite a likely windfall of millions in transportation costs due to lower gas prices (which of course you need to be careful about if prices spike).

Still - they are shameless.

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They're claiming that they're making $13M in reductions to school budgets from the "maintenance" budget, which I interpret as being the funding necessary to maintain level services, including cost increases. The proposed budget shows that the total being sent to schools is declining by about $11.5M from FY16 levels. So I guess they are claiming that of the $38M in cost increases in the maintenance budget, only $1.5M is in the school budgets. I suspect part of the reason that they are saying that the maintenance budget increased so little is because of the WSF formula changes. It's questionable to say that a formula change that suggests that a school can educate the same number of students with less funding is really a fair way to calculate level service funding, though.

Big caveat: I really haven't had time to dig in here and could easily be misinterpreting things.

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Every year they add new programs requiring new spending, and then complain that someone doesn't give them enough money. This is very simple - you don't have to cut the budget if you don't add spending in the first place.

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UGH!!!!

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Spending per pupil in BPS is close to $19k a year, but the State average is closer to $14k per pupil per year. About half of the BPS funding comes property tax and other half comes from State aid (State taxes). Based on these numbers the BPS budget seems very generous. I would be reluctant to increase it further.

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Ask GE to give back their tax breaks and agree to fund the shortfall.

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The city promised $1 million a year for 20 years. It's something, but that will only fund 10% of the gap. As you know, I am philosophically opposed to these kinds of deals. However, the pragmatic side of me had to stand up and take notice at the press coverage the GE deal got. If you are the CEO of a large company in a place like CA where taxes are very high, IL where debt is skyrocketing (and they will come knocking on your door to pay for it) or NJ where the entire state is on the verge of falling into one of those petroleum cesspools on the side of the turnpike - you had to sit up and take notice. GE? Boston? Hmmmmm..... Verrrrrry interesting. Reasonable income tax rate (on a percentage basis), access to tech centers, access to great medical facilities, constant stream of young local employees, large investment capital hub, easy access to the airport, great schools, ocean, mountains, great cultural attractions, history etc. If I'm thinking of pulling up company roots for certain kinds of companies - Boston just jumped to top of mind.

Philosophically you are right. Pragmatically, the city got way more than it's money's worth in PR. Wouldn't surprise me if we closed a few more deals with some of the same things that attracted GE - and hopefully at little or no cost the next time around.

(I think at the state level it was $120 million in infrastructure improvements - so as long as we spend it on worthwhile projects - I vote for the railcar connector to Southie - not the Northern Avenue bridge - could be a good bet. I don't know all the details - but did the state actually give GE breaks - I thought it was just capital investments to make the location more amenable to corporate life around their offices?)

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Swirls . Is that meant to be some sort of innuendo ?

A Modest Proposal

For Preventing The Children of Poor People in Ireland
From Being Aburden to Their Parents or Country, and
For Making Them Beneficial to The Public

By Jonathan Swift (1729)

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