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India Glenn Nearly 100 educators, parents, and students gathered outside City Hall on May Day to protest cuts to Boston Public Schools (BPS) funding and demand protections for immigrant communities. Although the budget includes a $73 million increase in funding, the proposed BPS budget fails to keep pace with rising costs and threatens to scrap nearly 400 BPS positions. “We are here today because our members are facing a projected budget that contains deep cuts to important student services, paraprofessionals, social-education classrooms, social-emotional supports for students and other critical services,” Eric Berg, the President of Boston Teachers Union (BTU) told the Flipside. Berg called on the mayor and city to provide a supplemental appropriation to offset what he described as devastating cuts. Delegations from BTU, Boston Student Advisory Council (BSAC), and Youth Justice and Power Union (YJPU) brought three concrete demands: a $25 million supplemental appropriation, centralized employee healthcare, and $6 million for youth employment programs. Amira Dani is a middle school educator at English High whose position is set to be cut in the upcoming year. “We live in a really wealthy city, in a really wealthy state,” she said in her opening remarks. “The resources are there and there’s no excuse to not offer students a world class education. In fact, that’s what our mayor promised — and that’s what our students deserve.” Last month, the Boston School Committee voted unanimously to pass a $1.7 billion budget that included cuts to paraprofessionals, ESL instructors and administrative positions. Rally attendees accused the School Committee of disproportionately cutting student-facing roles essential to providing all students with an equitable and effective education. The proposed budget arrives after the School Committee voted 6-1 last December to close three schools, all located within Dorchester and Hyde Park. The move prompted concerns from educators, teachers and students about underinvestment in already disenfranchised and underrepresented communities. Madison Kronheim, an Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) teacher at Joseph Lee Elementary School described the lack of responsiveness from the School Committee as disheartening. “When we go to the School Committee meetings, it just feels like it’s falling on deaf ears,” Kronheim said. “The budget passed unanimously — it’s tough when we are being told ‘we support the students’ [and that] ‘we hear you’ [while the School Committee] votes against what students need.” Three delegations composed of students and BTU members planned to visit all the city councilors and mayor to present their demands. Some members were unable to meet with any city officials, while others were only able to meet with at-large Councilor Julia Mejia. A later delegation sent into City Hall after the initial rally had an open meeting with several councilors, although the Flipside was unable to confirm all of the councilors who were present. Councilor Ed Flynn framed enrollment problems in a longer timeline. “We’ve had enrollment decline for many years now, and what we need to focus on is ensuring every student that comes into our schools receives a good education in a safe environment,” he said. Though increased BPS funding remained the rally’s central demand, immigration was never far from the conversation. “Imagine being a young person trying to learn, at the same time you’re worried that your mom or your dad or your uncle may not come home that night,” Berg said. “Imagine trying to learn if one of your parents has been deported… It has a real devastating effect on our kids, on their ability to learn, and on our schools.” Councilor Mejia echoed that concern. “Coming to this country is traumatic enough,” she told the Flipside. “I really appreciate our allies stepping up and advocating more fiercely for the protection [of] and support for English language learners, and the young people who are carrying backpacks full of trauma.” Kat Ramos, a member of the Better Budget Alliance (BBA) and Communications Working Group (CWG), stressed that support for immigrant communities is a budget priority for residents. “Groups that have traditionally gotten grant funding to help bringimmigrants legal representation, can’t do that anymore,” Ramos said. “We are advocating for that budget to be reinstated, so that those community groups can continue to do that work.” A student and member of the BSAC, Hala Ananzeh expressed worry over the city’s ability to support English as Second Language (ESL) learners amidst cuts to support staff. Ananzeh reflected on how her lack of English proficiency discouraged her from attending middle school to underscore the importance of appropriate budget allocation. “It is really frustrating knowing that the Boston Police Department’s budget is going to increase,” Ananzeh explained. “If we invested in young people by providing job support and safe spaces, I feel like that would help prevent problems. Right now, the mayor is focusing more on the enforcement and not the prevention.” BPS’s budget dwarfs BPD’s $484.5 million, but police overtime expenditures have hovered around $100 million for the past two fiscal years compared to the $23 million expenditures for Youth Employment and Opportunity (YEO). The current proposal, which cuts all funding for school year jobs for youth, reduces YEO’s operating budget to $17 million, the lowest it has been in the past three fiscal years. High school senior Ella Simone expressed similar worry about how all students, not just immigrant students, could find belonging without the presence of valued teachers. “They are not thinking about the teachers who are making safe spaces for the children who have finally found a teacher who can accommodate [their] needs,” Simone said. “We need to make sure that our community is doing well. Right now, we’re lacking a lot of the resources that we know [the City] has, they just need to be allocated in the right places.” Superintendent Mary Skipper has attributed cuts to factors beyond the control of the city such as increases in healthcare and snow removal costs. Her defense of the cuts has further outraged constituents, even as she argued that cuts are necessary to consolidate available resources. Boston is already short roughly $50 million of the revenue needed to fund this year’s budget. “As you have heard me say many times at this point, outside pressures, many of which are beyond the district’s and the city’s control, have made it necessary for us to make tough financial decisions,” she said in response to backlash surrounding the budget. However, parents, students, educators, and community activists remained unconvinced that BPS budget cuts are beyond the city’s control. “David Bloom and Superintendent Mary Skipper — they say that these budget cuts aren’t going to affect students, but that’s just not true,” Dani asserted. “When students lose trusted adults in their communities, that’s harm to them. It is unacceptable that the city is balancing their budget by harming the student experience, especially for our immigrants who are already dealing with so much.” Sarah Assefa, a BPS parent and organizing director at the Center for Economic Democracy (CED), revealed that multiple teachers and paraprofessionals at her son’s school are set to lose their positions in the upcoming school year. “Every evening, when I am working, he is with the [paraprofessionals] in afterschool,” Assefa said. “I need that time, and I want him to be in good hands. It’s a tragedy that they are cutting support for our students and working parents.” Assefa highlighted the role of educators in her life to amplify a common frustration among attendees that the city has money but will not invest it in schools. “I heard people, like Councilor Mejia, saying the money is there. And so, if the money is there, let’s use it,” Assefa said. “What is more precious in our society than our children, our future. They deserve the best.” May Day commemorates the labor movement’s historic fight for the eight-hour workday—a history Dani invoked to close her remarks. “We are not just remembering the history of May Day today,” Dani reminded attendees. “We are actually making history right here.”
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