Weekly Transcript Round-up for 07/17/26
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Weekly Transcript Round-up for 07/17/26Leadership shake-ups at BPS; BTU & BPS in conflict over how to spend new state funding; A look at City's answers to BPI's 10 Q’s on school construction
There was a lot of Boston-related policy action this week, most of it outside City Hall:
Before getting into those 3 issues, there were 2 other policy stories to pay attention to: First up, an important housing story. It might be the other side of the country, but San Francisco took action with important echoes in Boston this week, voting to lower the number of income-restricted housing units that must be included in new developments from 15% to 5%, with developments under 24 units exempt entirely. This action in San Francisco follows similar action taken locally: on June 25 Chelsea’s Council voted to lower its requirements from the previous 15% to a scale for developments under 50 units, and a 10% requirements on 50+ unit developments. Just as in Chelsea, the decision in San Francisco was driven by the lack of new real estate development - read more in Mission Local:
Next up is more local: a grim new report about academic performance in Massachusetts, and a national story about how voters don’t seem moved by all the bad news about student achievement. Here is what you need to know about the report:
Chalkbeat has an article about data pointing to voters’ indifference to academic performance in both national and local politics, writing:
BPS LEADERSHIP SHAKE-UP Mayor Wu’s City Hall team went through a leadership shake-up last fall and winter as she won re-election and started her 2nd term, and now with the start of summer Superintendent Skipper is going through her own leadership shake-up, with 3 major recent staff changes, including 2 this week. These leadership changes come as Skipper enters her first summer on a new contract that extends her tenure as Superintendent to June 2030, and roughly coincide with amid an enormous number of layoffs at BPS that will lead to the first net drop in headcount at the district of Mayor Wu’s term. BPS also faces a number of other issues, including the first deficit in decades, a $48M gap that severe mid-year budget cuts alone weren’t able to close, requiring a special Council vote for $23M, along with declining enrollment and student academic performance that has seen little recovery from COVID-era learning loss.  The leadership shake-up started 2 weeks ago, when BPS Communications Chief Chris McKinnon announced that he was being elevated to Chief of Staff. At the same time the previous Chief of Staff Yusufi Vali - who was only appointed to the position back in May 2025 - updated his LinkedIn, showing that he had left that post, and was now “Senior Advisor on Policy and External Affairs” at BPS. Then on Wednesday, July 15, came news - via a LinkedIn post - that Megan Costello was leaving her position as a Senior Advisor in the Superintendent’s office. While there has been no public reporting or administration announcement that Vali was given Costello’s job, his new position appears very similar to the role that she played in BPS. Also on Wednesday was news via a more traditional method - the vote of an elected body - that BPS Regional Superintendent Tommy Welch was being offered the position of Salem Superintendent. Welch has been looking for a Superintendent role for the last several years: he was a finalist for BPS Superintendent alongside Mary Skipper back in 2022. Welch’s exit is a blow for BPS, especially because he takes a lot of institutional knowledge with him after serving under 6 Superintendents, since he was first recruited to join the district as a Regional Superintendent by then-Superintendent Tommy Chang back in 2015. In his next job, Welch is filling big shoes after Salem’s last Superintendent was elevated to Massachusetts Education Secretary. BPS AND BTU HAVE DIFFERENT IDEAS ABOUT HOW TO SPEND NEW STATE AID On Wednesday Governor Healey filed legislation that would use revenue from the “Millionaires Tax” to send about $100M, or about $112 per student, to school districts across Massachusetts - read more from the Governor’s press release, Boston Globe, WBGH, and SHNS. If this legislation is approved, Boston would get about $5M. How that money will be spent is not clear: that is because the Boston Teachers Union and Boston Public Schools leadership seem to disagree. BTU President Erik Berg was a featured speaker at Governor Healey’s event inside the State House on Wednesday announcing the legislation, and he was clear about what he thought the money would be used for: “This funding will help restore some of the educators that have been cut.”  Listening to Berg’s speech and then reading BPS CFP Bloom’s comments in the Boston Globe, it appears there is some conflict:
At least part of the disconnect seems to be over how much money the layoffs at BPS are saving the City. BTU appears to believe the layoffs are saving far less money than Mayor Wu’s administration does. Back in March BTU produced an analysis of BPS budget that estimated the City was saving $48M in its FY27 budget - p. 2-3. That number is only ⅔ of the savings that City Hall says the recent layoffs - which only result in about 395 people leaving the district - will achieve. This is what the Boston Herald reported last week:
If laying off 395 people is saving $75M, then $5M is not going to save many jobs. Based on Bloom’s comments, it might not save any jobs at all. Looming over this debate is the reality that Boston’s fiscal crisis - a $70M deficit in FY26 and record low growth in FY27 - is only going to get worse, as City revenue growth continues to slow thanks to the lack of new development, historically high office and lab vacancy rates, and other issues. DID BPI’S 10 QUESTIONS GET ANSWERED? BPI had 10 questions for Wednesday’s hearing about approving spending to plan 6 school construction projects: the first tranche of money for the new Madison Park High School and 5 school repairs projects. Only 4 got asked, and 1 was only partially answered, leaving 5 questions not asked or answered. 1. Can the City provide a list of all the contracts that were awarded as part of that earlier effort to rebuild Madison Park and the total amount paid out for those contracts? Flynn asked this question, but there wasn’t an answer. Instead, Public Facilities Director Carlton Jones told Flynn - he is Speaker 1 & starts at the 28:18 mark:
Flynn requested the Chair get that information from the City, so look for that in the coming weeks. 2. Following up the previous question: how much, if any, of the work product produced from those contractors can be used in the new MSBA school building process? According to Director Jones, some of the work done in the previous effort will be useful, telling the Council that “we made changes relative to the program of the school.” However, he said the OPM and designer work will need to be redone. Exactly what educational programming was produced from the previous effort isn’t immediately clear from the public presentations BPI has reviewed and is something to look for in the information that Councilor Flynn requested. 3. Has the City published a list of all the documentation it has submitted to the MSBA as part of the “Invitation to Eligibility Period”? BPS Chief of Capital Planning Del Stanislaus told the Council in her presentation at the start of the meeting - she starts at the 17:01 mark:
Here is how that list of accomplishments stacks up against the 9 requirements listed on the MSBA’s “Invitation into Eligibility Period” website:
No Councilor followed up on this to ask what the status of the 3 un-reported requirements was, or where the forms and reports that had been submitted could be viewed. None of those reports appears to be on the City’s Madison Park project website. 4. How does the City square MSBA’s process with Planning Chief Shen’s claim a rebuilt Madison Park will use P-3? This question was not asked or answered. 5. The Capital Budget calls for just $100M to be spent at Madison Park in the FY27-FY31, Capital Budget but the City’s share of costs will be in the hundreds of millions of dollars: when is a more realistic cost of building the new Madison Park going to be included in the City’s Capital Budget? Councilor Flynn asked a question about the Capital Budget and got an interesting answer from Director Jones - he starts at the 38:45 mark:
This answer doesn’t address the gap between the amount of money budgeted in the latest capital budget - $100M - and the estimated cost of the project, which is $700M, and could be higher based on the enormous cost escalation seen in urban high school construction over the last few years. For more, check out BPI’s executive director’s testimony about this issue:  6. When is a plan for the O’Bryant going to be announced? The short answer is: there is no plan. That was the very clear answer from BPS Capital Planning Chief Stanislaus to questions from both Councilors Flynn and Culpepper about the O’Bryant:
This means that Wu is sticking to her guns on the plan she laid out to the Boston Globe Editorial Board back in 2024, and reported in a March 2024 column by Joan Vennochi:
7. Can City officials tell the Council how long they believe buildings that go through ARP are ineligible for non-educational uses or to be sold? This question was not asked or answered. 8. Following up question #8: Based on City Hall’s understanding of the MSBA’s rules, how many school buildings are ineligible to be sold or used for non-education purposes because they went through ARP? This question was not asked or answered. 9. Following up question #8: the building that was the Dever Elementary School is a real world example of this ARP question because it got a new roof in 2016 through the program. Does the City believe that the district could sell off the now-empty school building? This question was not asked or answered. 10. According to the “Long-Term Facilities Plan” on the district’s website, as of 2024 BPS had 64 schools that were built before 1940: were any of the 6 schools in Dockets #1311 and #1312 built prior to 1940? This question was not asked or answered. 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.
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