For the nearly two years that John McDonough has served as Interim Superintendent for the Boston Public Schools, the rising costs that have consistently outpaced revenues have kept him focused on two questions: How big will the budget gap become, and what has to get cut?
Last year, busing for 8th graders was cut and dozens of positions at the school department’s Court Street central office were cut to close a $100 million budget gap. This year, as he prepares to hand the reigns over to new School Superintendent Tommy Chang, McDonough has proposed closing five school buildings to close a budget gap estimated at $42 to $51 million. And a controversial proposal to cut school bus service for 7th graders that was pulled back after public outcry last year is back again in McDonough’s latest budget proposal that he released in February.
As in past years, students, parents and education advocates are pushing back on the proposed cuts. But McDonough says painful budget cuts will remain a part of the yearly budget cycle until city officials, parents and civic leaders are able to re-think how the city pays for public education.
At the root of the problem, McDonough says, is a structural imbalance that sees costs increasing faster than revenues.
“In its simplest formulaic expression, it means the cost of doing business year-to-year increases at a rate that exceeds expectations for growth in revenue,” he said in a meeting with reporters last week. “That means that there are fundamental issues that need to be looked at in order to change that dynamic.”
McDonough points to four cost-drivers: salaries, which take up 80 percent of the budget; transportation, which uses an additional ten percent; food services; and what McDonough says is an excessive number of school buildings for the system.
“We continue to be a district that serves 57,000 students at 128 different physical locations,” he said. “Until we are able to find a way to have a very thoughtful discussion about what that means, we will continue to spend our resources in maintaining and supporting students in spaces in a way that is much more costly, both in terms of facilities and in terms of the number of employees that are required to provide services.”
McDonough says BPS officials did an analysis of similarly-sized school districts across the country – districts with between 50,000 and 70,000 students – and found that on average, they have just 72 school buildings.
McDonough acknowledges that Boston has greater population density – and more traffic – than other cities with similar populations.
“We as a city like smallness,” he said. “But in each one of those buildings, you have an administrative structure. You have a support structure. You have a facility-based cost – all of which contribute to the overall cost of doing business in this district.”
Declining state aid
On the revenue side, state Senator Sonia Chang-Diaz has held a series of meetings – the latest one on Monday – on the state’s Chapter 70 aid for school districts. While state aid made up nearly a third of Boston school budget in the 1990s, it has slipped down to just over 10 percent in the current year.
In 2002, the state channeled more than $9 billion (in 2014 dollars) in Chapter 70 aid for cities’ and towns’ K-12 education, according to an analysis by the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center. Last year, the state spent $7.5 billion on Chapter 70 aid.
“There is an extremely loud chorus saying that the Chapter 70 budget hasn’t kept up with the realities of the 21st century,” Chang-Diaz told the Banner in a phone interview.
Last week, Governor Baker revealed his budget proposal, which included an increase of 2.4 percent in Chapter 70 aid over current funding levels. But this first step may not be enough to reverse what advocates say has been a long pattern of underfunding, especially as costs grow across the board. Chang-Diaz said school districts across the state have been hit by the growing costs of employee health insurance, special education services, new education technologies and the costs of wrap-around services for high-needs students.
McDonough adds to that list the financial hit that BPS has taken from the 31 charter schools in the city. Under state law, BPS must pay the charters $17,000 – the average per-pupil expenditure for the district – for every Boston student they enroll. While the state is required to reimburse the district for a portion of the funds the district pays to the charter schools, it has not consistently done so.
Mary Battenfeld, an activist with the Boston group Quality Education for Every Student, says the bigger issue is in the steady loss of Chapter 70 funds.
“Boston doesn’t get enough state aid,” she said. “But closing schools is not the solution.”
School closings
The closures McDonough is proposing this year include two alternative schools that have helped students in danger of dropping out to make it to graduation. But one school, Middle School Academy, educates just 28 students at a cost of $55,000 per pupil. And at Community Academy, per-pupil spending is $34,000 per student. McDonough said the students from those schools will receive similar instruction in other schools.
“We are not withdrawing our commitment to either the intensity or quality of support for those students,” he said. “Where we find ourselves at with both Middle School Academy and Community Academy is that the models we have built are not sustainable. This is not a conversation about withdrawing support for students. It’s about how to best support them in a way that we will be able to predictably support over time.”
Ultimately, the city officials, parents and education activists will have to make tough choices. McDonough, who hasn’t decided what he will do after he steps down as interim superintendent, may not be part of that conversation. But he says he wants to see it happen.
“These are long term, systemic issues,” he said.” And in order to be successful in addressing them, the new superintendent, all of us, need that space where we welcome people in to problem solve with us. Let’s not just provide to the community our best thinking about what solutions should be. Let’s engage them in a process where we can share information that frames the problem that we want to solve and engages them in a way where they are problem solving with us. You need more than an annual budget cycle in order to get that work done.”
