FY27 BUDGET SEASON: Preview $1.7B Boston Public School Budget hearings today & tomorrow
tahir h
FY27 BUDGET SEASON: Preview $1.7B Boston Public School Budget hearings today & tomorrow3 hearings set for Boston Public Schools' FY27 Budget; BSC Chair Robinson's audit call looms; What are Boston's school building plans? PLUS more numbers & questions
The Council is holding 3 hearings on Boston Public Schools’ $1.7B budget today and tomorrow:
Before getting into the numbers there are 4 issues to keep an eye on at the BPS hearings: Will BPS address School Committee Chair Jeri Robinson’s call for an audit? At the same March 25 Boston School Committee meeting where BPS FY27 budget was unanimously approved, Chair Robinson appeared to break with Mayor Wu and Superintendent Skipper on how BPS is performing - she is Speaker 0 & starts at the 2:04:43 mark:
This call for an audit was echoed by former Boston School Committee member Brandon Cardet-Hernandez in an op-ed published in the Boston Globe this week titled “It’s time for courage, not comfort, in fixing Boston Public Schools” where he wrote:
Cardet-Hernandez was appointed to the School Committee by Mayor Wu in 2022 and was outspoken about the issues facing the district: in March 2023 Globe columnist Marcela Garcia dubbed him “”Boston’s bold school committee member.” It seems like he was too outspoken: Wu opted not to re-appoint him to a 2nd term. Cardet-Hernandez’s experience shows that Robinson’s stand takes real courage. It remains to be seen if it has an impact. Where is the discussion of BPS Capital Budget or the Long-Term Facilities Plan in these budget hearings? There are 21 agenda topics listed for the 3 BPS budget hearings, from “Student Supports” to “Mergers and Closures,” but not listed is BPS Capital Budget or the district’s Long-Term Facilities Plan. That is concerning, because this year’s Capital Budget saw major changes:
A large chunk of that 50% growth is just one capital project: “Implementation of Long-Term Facilities Plan at Several Schools.” That project has grown more than 5x from a total cost of $124M in last year’s FY26-FY30 Capital Budget to $665M in this year’s FY27-FY31 Capital Budget. There is little detail on this project either in the Capital Budget or in the district’s “Long-Term Facilities Plan” website.  The FY27 version is on the left, and the FY26 version is on the right. With major changes in BPS’ Capital Budget and the City spending tens of millions on school buildings that severely constrain the district’s decision-making, all while providing no detail on the long-term facilities plan. With Boston is in the midst of a fiscal crisis, that cannot continue. LEARN HOW STATE AID CONSTRAINS SCHOOL CLOSURE DECISIONS
Why did Boston wait so long to file an application with the state’s new school building program for Mel King Academy? This year’s proposal is rushed and last minute: the deadline to submit projects to the state’s new school building program is Friday, April 17, but this application was not delivered to the Council until last week, and only delivered to the School Committee on Wednesday. In recent Council hearings both BPS CFO David Bloom and Public Facilities Department Senior Project Manager Brian McLaughlin said they didn’t know if Boston would submit an application. Compare that to the timeline last year: formal application for the Madison Park Vocational Technical High School was sent to the Council on February 12, 2025, but the conversation had begun even earlier. In a January 2025 Council hearing, Deputy Policy Chief Tali Robbins said conversations had started in November 2024 about submitting Madison Park to the state’s program. The other applications to this program submitted by the Wu administration were also delivered to the Council far in advance of the deadline:
Is Boston planning on building any new schools without state aid? At the January 2025 hearing about Madison Park being submitted to the state’s new school building program, Operation Cabinet Chief Dion Irish said the City had originally planned to building Madison Park outside the MSBA process - he is Speaker 31 and starts at the 2:33:46 mark in the transcript:
Irish went on to explain that because of the unique challenges at Madison Park, the City needed to submit the project to the state’s program, but left open that Boston would build other schools on its own. Given the pace of new school building through the state’s program, Boston has to build schools on its own in order to make a real dent in the enormous backlog. Here is what BPS wrote about its school buildings in the so-called “Long-Term Facilities Plan” in 2024:
Unfortunately, at the hearing about the Mel King application just this past Wednesday Delavern Stanislaus, BPS Chief of Capital Planning, struck a different tone than Chief Irish did last year, and described a City with little appetite for building new schools without state aid - she is Speaker 2 & starts at the 30:29 mark:
In this FY27 budget hearing preview, BPI will include:
PREPARE FOR BOSTON PUBLIC SCHOOLS FY27 BUDGET HEARINGS There are 3 BPS budget hearings scheduled:
WHERE DO I FIND IT IN THE FY27 BUDGET BOOK? BPS is in a number of different sections of the FY27 Budget Book:
BPS also produced its own FY27 Budget Book. This was created at District 4 Councilor Brian Worrell’s request when he chaired the Council’s Ways & Means Committee in 2024-2025, and his successor District 6 Councilor Ben Weber asked that BPS continue to produce a Budget Book in FY27. FY27 vs FY26 BY THE NUMBERS The top line number for BPS’ FY27 Operating Budget is - find this on p. 418:
The FY26 budget number is the total amount appropriated for FY26, but BPS has done a number of new appropriations over the course of the fiscal year. Last spring, the Council approved an FY26 budget of $1,580,061,477, meaning BPS has appropriated an additional $58.2M since July 1, 2025. The top line number for BPS’ FY27-31 Capital Budget is - find this on p. 120:
That number is misleading however:
FROM THE MAYOR’S LETTER Mayor Wu discussed BPS in her FY27 Budget letter, and also wrote a whole letter just for BPS’ FY27 Budget. First in Wu’s general FY27 Budget letter, where she mentioned BPS in a section on healthcare before devoting 5 paragraphs at the end of the letter:
The most interesting section in those 5 paragraphs was a defense of the BPS layoffs by arguing the budget was growing, a theme that she returned to in FY27 Budget Presentation back on April 8:
The Mayor’s BPS budget letter (p. 172-173) seems to suggest that the issues that drove the $53M deficit in FY26 at BPS - healthcare, transportation, special education, and salary & benefits - are not under control. She writes:
Understanding what BPS has changed to ensure these issues do not result in another deficit next spring is an important part of these hearings. WHAT BPI IS WATCHING FOR In addition to the 4 issues at the top of this preview, there are 3 more issues BPI will be looking for. How has BPS dealt with cost increases from recently settled contract? For example, last year BPS produced an estimate that the contract settled with the Boston Teachers Union in April 2025 would cost $86.2M in FY27 - about the same amount that BPS FY27 budget increased - and that was not the only settled contract estimated to increase costs at BPS.
In particular, BPI is interested in:
On that second questions, most of the BPS staffers being let go are teachers and paraprofessionals who were covered by the BTU contract, so laying them off presumably saves the district some of that $86.2M. What caused BPS to increase spending on health insurance $14M on March 25, almost 2 months after BPS released its FY27 budget on February 4? The day that the Boston School Committee was scheduled to vote on BPS FY27 budget, the budget was being increased $16M: $2M for a recently settled contract and $14M for increased health insurance costs. There was no explanation at the meeting beyond this from Superintendent Skipper - she is Speaker 8 & starts at the 1:30:30 mark:
The answer to the question may shed light on why another trend is happening: BPS’ health insurance costs grew significantly more the City’s health insurance costs overall. How much of the $88M increase in BPS FY27 budget goes into classrooms? Mayor Wu’s defense of BPS budget increase implies that the $41M that is not health insurance spending is going to classrooms, but that doesn’t appear to be true based on BPS’ FY27 Budget Book. Here is what it lays out in a section titled “Major Cost Drivers” on p.16:
Boston Policy Institute, Inc is working to improve the public conversation - help us by following BPI on YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
© 2026 Boston Policy Institute, Inc |
