Staffing cuts are coming to Boston schools as federal aid dries up

The Boston School Committee approved a $1.52 billion budget 5-2 Wednesday night that will cut hundreds of positions across the district. 

The budget marks an increase in funding for the district, which has seen a general decline in enrollment in the past decade. But the cuts come as pandemic-era federal funding is set to end in September.

Superintendent Mary Skipper called the approved budget “one of the most difficult in a decade,” as it anticipates the end of the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund, or ESSER. ESSER added $170 million to BPS’s budget last year and funded more than 670 positions.

Now, BPS is headed toward an “ESSER cliff,” Skipper said. With an investment of more than $80 million from the City of Boston, BPS will be able to maintain 322 of the ESSER-funded positions. BPS’s Interim Chief Financial Officer David Bloom wrote in a memo that the other positions were temporary or vacant.

Despite the cuts, BPS’s general fund saw a 6 percent increase, which comes from Mayor Michelle Wu’s investment.

“I want to thank the mayor in the city for continuing to make historic investments so we can change and improve the way we’re serving students,” Skipper said. “Many other districts in our state and nation are facing much tougher budgets because they don’t have the same support we have here.”

School committee members submitted questions about the budget, which the district’s budget team answered and returned last week. There, they said transportation will see a net increase of about $7 million.

Right-sizing BPS: “We cannot continue to support so many under-enrolled schools”

The school committee spent Wednesday’s meeting lauding increased support for students with disabilities and multilingual students. Other members also voiced a need to continue to “right size” the BPS system by consolidating classes and making decisions about under-enrolled schools.

The budget passed, with five votes for and two votes against from members Stephen Alkins and Brandon Cardet-Hernandez. 

“We’re still in this place where we’re not able to give kids what they need, because we are not doing the hard thing of right-sizing the system with urgency,” Cardet-Hernandez said. “…We still have empty buildings and are unable to move around the adults that we have so kids have high quality teachers in their classroom.”

The committee voted to approve an elementary school merger last year, and this year’s budget will also consolidate dozens of classrooms and reconfigure grades.

School Committee Vice Chair Michael O’Neill, who voted yes, voiced similar concerns about buildings while acknowledging a positive step with consolidating classrooms this budget cycle.

“We cannot continue to support so many under-enrolled schools,” O’Neill said. “I think the superintendent fully understands that. I see changes in this budget alone.”