Amid a booming economy, Boston¹s schools seem cash poor. What¹s going wrong? - The Boston Globe

[Eva Webster]

This is an interesting article for those who wonder who is right: those who argue that Boston schools are underfunded, or those who argue that at $21,000 per pupil per year — to the tune of $1.1 Billion each year — we’re spending enough.  The cost of running Boston schools is the second highest (after NYC) among large school systems in the country.

Amid a booming economy, Boston’s schools seem cash poor. What’s going wrong? - The Boston Globe

https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2019/01/26/amid-booming-economy-boston-schools-seem-cash-poor-what-going-wrong/pbTp2kUgoVf6NIYx5yOsjL/story.html

[Eva Webster]

I forgot to mention — and I learned this from one of the comments to the article — that $1.1 Billion that is spent on the school system in Boston every year amounts to 1/3 of the city’s entire budget.  There are 55,000 students, and that is about 8% of the city’s population.

It makes you wonder if perhaps it’s a blessing in disguise that we don’t have many more families with children in the city — because with that level of spending, we could actually bankrupt the city.  And I’m saying this as someone who wishes there were more middle class families in A-B.  Complicated matters…

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[Jean Powers]

We don't spend $20k per student. And the education budget also pays for charter schools and for bus transportation for every school in Boston -- public, charter, private, Catholic.

[Jean Powers]

The highest estimate for the percentage of the city budget spent on education is 44.6%. But that amount is inflated for the reasons I noted above.

[Jean Powers]

[Jean Powers]

A basic explanation of how BPS funds schools:

https://schoolyardnews.com/a-billion-in-the-bank-cuts-in-our-schools-bps-funding-explained-f306bb8f482b

[Jean Powers]

We are I believe 35th in per pupil spending in the state.
http://profiles.doe.mass.edu/statereport/ppx.aspx

We rely heavily on the state funding for poor kids, and that funding has not been increased to meet changing needs since the 90s. So the city makes up more of the deficit and we still fall behind.

[Jean Powers]

To your point about fewer kids saving us money -- that's been brought up before. It's really confusing! But basically there are three things going on.

The first is simple: what families bring to a community can't be measured in monetary terms only. Families also bring stability, creativity, safety, love, hope, and joy. In the same way pets, green space, and the arts contribute to a community, a neighborhood without children is a less joyful place.

The second is more complex: You're going to pay for public education one way or the other, and you may as well pay for it to be really good instead of really crappy. I think the easiest comparison is to group health insurance. I didn't want to use this example in my article because it makes it seem like I'm attaching some sort of personal or moral value to being young, healthy, well-off, a native speaker, or without disabilities. I'm not. But there is a difference in the amount it costs to insure some people, just like there's a difference in the cost to educate some people. At my work, we all buy into a group health insurance plan. Because there are a wide variety of participants, some of us cost almost nothing to insure, and others (like myself) cost quite a bit. But because the costs are averaged out across the entire group, we all get a relatively low rate. That's kind of how it looks in the school budgets. A school with a wide range of student need functions better socially, academically, and financially. You are going to need pretty much the same number of teachers, ESL people, therapists, occupational therapists, gym teachers, etc. You still need to pay for the building maintenance, heat, lights, water, snow removal, etc. But if the school is underenrolled, with a high special-needs population, you're paying out a lot of money for a handful of kids. If you have a bunch of typically developing kids mixed in, you have a full school with full funding, and the extra stuff you brought in for the special needs kids can be available to everyone -- for example one of the ESL teachers at our last school was also the librarian.

If you don't fill the schools, eventually they close. A closed school is traumatic for kids. It's traumatic for parents. It's traumatic for a community. It shows that the community is shrinking, not growing. It shows other families that this isn't a good place to live. And you still end up paying -- this time for transportation. Because if you close the school kids can walk to -- and the majority of students in Allston-Brighton are now in a neighborhood school -- you have to pay for them to ride the bus to a school farther away. In addition to the high cost of busing, it means that the family doesn't engage in the community to the same degree -- they don't have time. They also don't engage with the school -- it's too far away. Parent participation is one of the key determinants of success in kids -- if a parent can't get to the school, they can't participate in their child's education. So again, there are monetary costs and also non-monetary costs.

[Jean Powers]

I forgot that I said there were three things. The third point I wanted to make is about the transportation issue. BPS pays for all charter, catholic, and private school buses. I think this is insane. We have no control over their costs, nor over their schedules -- those other schools get first pick of bus schedules, before BPS.

I think it's fair for charter schools to get state-funded bus transportation. They are considered by the state to be public schools. But charters are not district schools -- they enroll students from outside of Boston. And they bus kids across the city, unlike most BPS buses. So why isn't that money coming out at the state level? Why does it come out of BPS?

And for tuition schools to get a handout from our city for bus transportation is disgusting. The argument that was made for this arrangment was that they are somehow doing us a favor by taking the burden off of our school system, so we owe them bus transportation. One city councilor -- I believe Tobin -- said that we should get down on our knees and thank them for it. (I bet he got down on his knees for them a few times too.) But that's not how public funds should work -- you don't get a prize for opting out of the public system. These are not kids who are unable to be educated in public schools -- their families have opted out. That's like saying that the MBTA is not good enough for me, so I want the city to pay for me to take an Uber -- or a limousine -- to work and back every day.  It's an insult and a disgrace and I can't believe it's the law. But that has to be changed at the state level.

Also -- BPS kids who live less than two miles away are not entitled to bus transportation, nor to a Tpass (for 7th grade and up). Can you imagine a four-year-old walking two miles to school in 12 degree weather, or during the storms we had in 2015? And another two miles back, in the dark? What this means for our high schools is that most kids opt for a school two miles or more from home, in order to get a t-pass. Most BPS high schoolers work, some to help support their own families, and they need that pass. If we want to make Brighton High a place where neighborhood kids want to go, we need to give free t-passes to all kids 7-12th grade.

But I don't think the Mayor wants to make Brighton High into a desirable school. I think he wants to starve it out of existence and close it. I think he wants to do the same to the Winship and to the Jackson Mann. Because it's not hard to fix this problem. It's not a mystery. Stop badmouthing our schools and warning people away. Stop letting them fall apart and then saying "oh the school has fallen apart without us noticing and now we have to close it!" Stop starving our schools of resources and then acting surprised when our test scores don't measure up. Stop intentionally hurting public education in the city that created public education. And stop pretending you're saving our schools by closing them. It's not working any more. We're not buying it.

[Jean Powers]

I've put a  lot of faith in Walsh over the years but I simply cannot any more. He didn't create this problem but he certainly hasn't done anything to fix it.

I'm disgusted by his treatment of our schools. Putting an interim superintendent in to close schools without warning. She didn't even bother to attend the Build BPS meeting for Allston-Brighton. They don't care about us. It's up to us to make them care.

Here's a few examples of how we're not spending too much money on public education in Boston.

A diseased rat running OUT of the Jackson Mann during morning drop off:

Outdoor area, unusable because of debris from the park and from the people who sleep here overnight

They're not allowed to use one of the two play structures in this "playground" any more because of broken glass:

This is the other play structure

Galen is helping the gym teacher with his bike program because there's no play equipment. None.

My daughter LOVES the Jackson Mann. She loves her teachers, the staff, the principal. She has a great group of friends. She's challenged. But when I ask her about her day she gets sad and says "I just wish we had a playground. There's nothing to play on. We just stand around at recess." She's ten years old. There aren't many years left for her to be a kid and feel that joy of playing. It kills me that our city doesn't care about the kids at this school. It kills me.

[Jean Powers]

And let's not forget the other playground, the one used by the younger grades. It's getting replaced -- but not by the city. It's getting replaced thanks to the generosity of Boston College, and the hard work of Rosie Hanlon and her team. The city doesn't care if our kids play in a flooded trash pit. They just. Don't. Care.

[Jean Powers]

And what's the big deal about some leaf piles, right? Why can't the kids or parents just clean it up?

This is why:

https://boston.cbslocal.com/2015/11/25/boston-kindergartner-stuck-with-needle-at-school/?fbclid=IwAR0uCNe1egs3bGlp_xS13MldqtmhmYbWttESRkxTIwItl3UhlFDW1qqx07o

Boston Kindergartner Stuck With Needle At School

Meanwhile, in Cambridge:

[Jean Powers]

Eva -- this rant is not directed towards you, of course. I'm very grateful to you for bringing this topic up for discussion.

It is incredibly frustrating for us public school parents to see how things are portrayed in the press. Nothing against the reporters, and the guy who wrote this is one of the more thoughtful ones. But I have learned that the narrative is usually shaped by those with the money to pay for their side of things getting represented. Who will speak for the schools, and for the kids who deserve and are entitled to an education? It's up to us. Nobody else is coming to help us.

Because our city kids deserve a public education just as much as kids in Concord. The article on that school was jarring to me. It made me cry. It made me feel like I'm failing my kids. There's nothing about kids in Concord that makes them more deserving of an education than kids in Boston. It's gross that one school sends home ipads and another is killing rats in the kindergarten with a shovel.