Members of the public pushed back against the proposed Boston Public School budget during public testimony at a city council hearing last week. The Monday night hearing centered on BPS’ efforts to serve special education students and English language learners — and its continued ability to do so under the proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2018. Parent and community activists made it clear they believe the budget will only widen equity gaps.
When is an increase a cut?
Under the FY18 proposal, the overall BPS budget will increase by a few percentage points. Critics of the budget say that the increase is too small to keep up with needs or compensate for years of slim funding.
One of those dissenting voices is Mary Battenfeld, a BPS parent and member of the parent group Quality Education for Every Student.
“An increase doesn’t necessarily mean an increase,” Battenfeld told BPS officials. “You put us in a hole last year and we haven’t been able to climb out.”
Battenfeld has a child at Boston Arts Academy, which has a larger budget this year than the previous one. Regardless, the school is slated to lose one of its two Advanced Placement classes unless BAA receives a grant bringing financial support from outside, she said.
Across the district system, student needs have risen, Battenfeld said, noting that there are 7,000 more English language learner students now than a decade ago.
Need for nursing services also may be rising. During the hearing, City Councilor Ayanna Pressley said she was told anecdotally by school nurses that the number of students with complex medical challenges is increasing. The driver appears to be families immigrating to the U.S. for its quality hospitals. Karla Estrada, deputy superintendent of student support services, special education, English language learning and socioemotional learning, said BPS officials have noted such a trend. Estrada confirmed that while every school has a nursing presence, the nurse is not always at the school for the entire day, and said that in general, any change that would improve a school’s ability to respond quickly to medical needs is helpful.
Carolyn Kain, chair of the Boston Special Education Parent Advisory Council (SpedPac) said that students without disabilities are more likely to leave standard BPS schools to attend exam schools or non-BPS options such as charter schools. As such, as BPS’ student population ages up, it increasingly comprises students with special needs.
During the hearing, Cindie Neilson, interim assistant superintendent of special education at BPS, noted that students with disabilities make up 19.5 percent of the BPS student population.
Assessing a budget
Last year, the city decreased the per-pupil funding allocated to students with autism and socioemotional needs. As a result, student-to-teacher ratios increased, with many schools bumping up the size of these classes by one student. That per-pupil cut was not restored this year.
Battenfeld said that parents have noted the strain of greater class sizes, while Kain noted that even this increased class size is below the maximum limit set by the state.
Kain also said that per-pupil funding is not the full picture. Under the weighted student formula, schools receive an amount of money to educate a child based on their grade level and disability type. Individually, students also may be provided with certain services specific to their needs, such as speech therapy, occupational therapy and music therapy. Those services are separately funded outside of the per-pupil allocations.
“A child with special needs gets a base amount, but the critical thing about BPS is they then fund those support services separately,” Kain said.
BPS officials say the district provided an additional one-time $300,000 to the special education department to help should unanticipated needs arise due to the weighted student formula reduction. Neilson said that funding was used to supply paraprofessionals for students in inclusion classrooms. Other uses of the fund included providing resource room teachers, social worker coordinators and substitutes.
Estrada also cautioned against focusing too deeply on the special education budget, stating that it does not represent the full package of supports offered to children. For instance, students impacted by trauma may be aided through collaborations with or referrals to external community resources.
“Special education is one piece of it, not the full support BPS provides,” Estrada said.
Others said budget shortcomings were evident outside of special education as well.
Jessica Tang, organizing director and president-to-be of the Boston Teachers Union, said she recalled a situation in which a student found she did not have the four years of foreign language required by a college because her high school had not offered them. Tang charged that district policies have exacerbated funding issues, and that BPS officials need not hunt for efficiencies and areas to trim but instead should proactively identify new sources of revenue so as to stop deficits being an annual occurrence.
“The budget is not adequate,” Tang said.
Parent Kristin Johnson said the extent to which teachers rely on outside fundraising to afford supplies indicates the size of the gap between budgets and needs. She said there have been years of deficits and the cumulative impact is being felt.
“Whether the reductions are due to budget changes or fluctuations in enrollment, costs do not go away. They’re either shifted elsewhere or result in detrimental impacts to classroom learning,” Johnson said.
DonorsChoose.org is an online fundraising site for public school teachers. According to Johnson, between fiscal year 2013 and fiscal year 2016, donations made through the site to Boston public schools increased six-fold, from $77,000 to $500,000, suggesting teachers are increasingly relying on outside fundraising. Even this increased level of donations does not seem to be filling budget gaps. In fiscal year 2016, BPS teachers asked for more than $1 million in donations to afford supplies, but only 49 percent of projects received funding. While 520 projects were funded, bringing in approximately $495,000, another 450 projects totaling $520,000 were not.
Disparate impact
Johnson noted that the Donors Choose donations tend to be concentrated in affluent neighborhoods, suggesting that budget strain exacerbates existing wealth gaps, with those with fewer means less able to donate to nearby schools.
Charting online donations by ZIP codes, Johnson found that the most Donors Choose contributions were collected in higher-income neighborhoods such as the Back Bay, South End and Downtown. There, local schools received what amounted to an extra $77 to $123 per pupil in donations. However, schools such as Madison Park, Fenway High and the O’Bryant received on average only an extra $3.81 per student, and schools such as the Tobin, Mission Hill and Chittick received no donations via the site.
“Austerity budgets year after year mean schools teaching affluent children will be more adequately supported, while schools teaching black, Latino and low-income [students get less],” Johnson said.
In an April blog post, Johnson noted that the schools most hit by budget cuts due to declining enrollment serve populations that disproportionately comprise low-income and minority students and students with disabilities. For instance, 60 percent of schools receiving these cuts have a greater share of student with disabilities than district-average, and 72 percent have more students regarded as high needs.
Battenfeld suggested that cuts hitting special education students harder counts as disparate impact and could be legally problematic.
Compared to demographics of the overall BPS population, the population of students with disabilities is disproportionately black. BPS officials state that while 34.8 percent of BPS students are black, 40.7 percent of those with disabilities are black. Black students also comprise 48 percent of students whose disability is emotional impairment.
Pre-K: Not universal yet
Early education is one measure expected to help close equity gaps and BPS superintendent Tommy Chang has announced plans to roll out universal pre-kindergarten. The BuildBPS facilities master plan needs to respond to one problem, Estrada pointed out: There is insufficient space in some parts of Roxbury and Mattapan to site new pre-K seats. Colin Rose, assistant superintendent of opportunity and achievement gaps, said as well that some slots for pre-K, which is not mandatory, go unused in areas such as Grove Hall. Rose said that families may be more encouraged to enroll their children if the schools make using pre-K more convenient, such as by offering before- and after-school care for working parents otherwise unable to easily make drop-off and pick-up times, or offering wraparound services.
