Feb 2 2022 · Last Night @ School Committee Recap · Ep. 48
What happens at each Boston School Committee meeting has big implications for our students and our city. In “Last Night @ School Committee,” Jill Shah and Ross Wilson recap the highlights of each meeting, provide commentary and context, and shine a light on the decisions our leaders are making.
Last night’s meeting kicked off the Fiscal Year 2023 budget process for Boston Public Schools. Over the coming weeks, there will be public hearings on the draft budget proposal unveiled last night, culminating in a vote in March by the School Committee and subsequent consideration by the City Council and Mayor Wu. The meeting began with the Superintendent’s Report, where the Superintendent addressed a recent Boston Globe report highlighting discrepancies in BPS data that suggest the district has overstated its graduation rate for five of the last seven years. The Superintendent downplayed the significance of this data, while School Committee members asked pointed questions about transparency and trust.
The meeting continued with public comment, in which parents and students from the P.A. Shaw Elementary School continued advocating for the promised expansion of the school, followed by the nominations of School Committee member Rafaela Polanco Garcia and Roxanne Harvey, Chair of the Boston Special Education Parent Advisory Council (SpEdPAC), to the English Language Learner’s Task Force.
The Superintendent then presented the preliminary budget to the School Committee. After discussion of MassCore implementation, academic outcomes, and a “quality guarantee” for all students, the Superintendent and her team answered questions from members of the School Committee, who pressed her on why the budget does not factor in enrollment declines and how the budget addresses the needs of current – and not just future – students.
The School Committee will hold several public budget hearings over the next few weeks (dates below) and will vote on the final budget on March 23. The next committee meeting will take place on Tuesday, February 15 at 5pm.
Here are some of the questions that we think are worth asking:
What is BPS doing with the 17.8 percent increase in the Central Office budget?
How will the district deal with the perfect storm of loss of ESSER funds in two years and the dramatic decrease in enrollment for at least the next 10 years?
Will another audit of the BPS graduation data be performed? What will the district do going forward to ensure they are collecting accurate data and keeping up with any students they’ve lost?
How will the district regain the trust of families in Boston?
Ways to Engage and Resources:
Listen in and consider testifying at the upcoming budget hearings:
February 10th, 5pm
March 1st, 5pm
March 16th, 5pm
Advocate to the School Committee members to increase their accountability of the Superintendent and her team.
Chair Jeri Robinson: grobinson@bostonpublicschools.org
Vice Chair Michael O’Neill: moneill2@bostonpublicschools.org
Quoc Tran: qtran2@bostonpublicschools.org
Lorena Lopera: llopera@bostonpublicschools.org
Rafaela Polanco Garcia: rpolancogarcia@bostonpublicschools.org
New Member Dr. Stephen Alkins, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging Officer and Co-chair of the DEI Council at TERC
New Member Brandon Cardet-Hernandez, Executive Director of the Ivy Street School