School department seeks input on BuildBPS

Makeeba McCreary, managing director and senior advisor of external affairs for BPS, answers an audience question during a presentation at the Murphy School in Dorchester as BPS Operations Chief John Hanlon, Superintendent Tommy Chang and 7News reporter Byron Barnett look on.

A year ago city officials seemed poised to close schools following the release of a hastily-prepared audit that found an excess of seats in the city’s stock of 125 buildings.

The audit report, which the city commissioned from the firm McKinsey and Company, sparked controversy among parent activists who were furious at the suggestion that 20 to 50 BPS school buildings could be closed. School department officials quickly distanced themselves from the report.

Last week, as city officials made a public presentation of BuildBPS, a planning process for facilities improvements to the city’s school buildings, they cited a shortage of space in the city’s schools for the kinds of classrooms students will need for 21st century learning.

“We want flexible facilities,” said Superintendent Tommy Chang, describing the district’s need for new space. “We want space that allows students to perform. We want more light.”

Space concerns

The district is at the beginning of its planning process and has no concrete details on what will get built or where. Chang said the district has the capacity for 69,100 students in buildings as they are currently being used, but that the capacity of the current buildings will drop to 55,500 if classrooms are reconfigured to fit new methods of teaching and learning.

Chang joined other city and school department officials to discuss the BuildBPS planning process at the Richard J. Murphy school in Dorchester last week. School officials, parents and representatives of community groups gathered in the school’s auditorium to listen to Chang’s presentation. After, he and the other department officials responded to questions audience members had written on cards.

BPS Operations Chief John Hanlon laid out the premise for the BuildBPS process to the parents in the room, noting that 65 percent of school buildings in Boston were built before World War II, that teaching and learning have changed over the decades and that school buildings need to accommodate those changes.

“BuildBPS aims to do that,” he said.

Chang explained that classrooms need to be more flexible, to allow students to move from one activity to another, rather than sitting in neat rows as in 19th century school rooms.

Under BuildBPS, the city will expand school in areas where the land around them permits and construct new buildings as needed. BPS official have conducted an assessment of the schools currently in the city which determined that three-quarters of existing elementary schools do not have adequate space.

Chang said the department envisions the city’s new high schools being sited close to industries and cultural institutions that will enable students to have access to hands-on learning.

“We want our young people to be learning outside the classroom as well as inside,” he said.

The grand vision of the BuildBPS process did not draw as many questions as the day-to-day realities students face in school currently.

One of the first questions facilitator Byron Barnett read was, “When will all students receive free M7 MBTA bus passes?” Currently, students in grades 7 through 12 are eligible for the passes only if they live more than 1.9 miles from the school they attend. For students who live within the 1.9 mile so-called walk-zone, the discounted bus passes can still be a hardship, critics contend.

“Right now we don’t have plans to go district-wide with M7 passes,” Hanlon answered. “It’s something we’re looking at regularly.”

“We’re exploring the potential to change the distances,” added Makeeba McCreary, managing director and senior advisor of external affairs for BPS.

When a parent asked how current students would be affected by renovations to schools or the construction of new buildings, Hanlon said the new buildings are still years away.

“A new building could take five years,” he said. “Other projects depend on the extent of the renovations.”

Hanlon said students in buildings undergoing significant reconstruction would be relocated to other facilities.

Another parent asked what plans BPS officials have to increase the number of early childhood seats.

Education Chief Rahn Dorsey responded that the city is working to increase the number of early education seats in BPS and in community-based nonprofit and private providers.

“There are areas where we need more seats,” Dorsey said. “Our goal is to make sure all four year olds are in high-quality pre-k programs.”

Asked what the department would do to address the issue of 7:30 a.m. start times for high schools, Hanlon said bus schedules remain a challenge.

“If we were to move everybody to an 8:30 start time, we would be effectively tripling the size of our bus fleet,” Hanlon said, adding that the change would put a strain on traffic.

Budget hearings

The April 24 BuildBPS meeting came the same day as the first of a series of Boston City Council hearings on the annual school budget. During the latter meeting, held at City Hall earlier in the day, Chang gave a broad outline of the fiscal year 2018 budget, which he said will be the largest budget ever for the schools. School budgets, like most city departments, generally increase year-by-year to keep pace with the rising costs of labor, health care, goods and services.

While Chang referred to the proposed $1.060 billion budget as a $40 million increase over last year’s budget, City Councilor Tito Jackson noted that $20 million within that figure is set aside for collective bargaining with unions representing BPS workers, and that when funding for new programs such as expanded early learning and extended school day expansion are subtracted, the budget contains only a $9 million increase in funding.

Jackson argued that the school department’s accounting of its annual budget gives the false impression of hefty increases because the costs of employee benefits are included in the budget, which is not the case with other city departments.

“Why are benefits calculated in the budget?” he questioned.

While Jackson argued that 49 schools are receiving cuts to their budget, Chang noted that “nearly 80 percent” of BPS students will be attending schools with budget increases.