Senator Brownsberger has heard from many concerned parents about budget cuts to certain public schools in Boston. Budget allocations are, of course, up to the BPS, but he has worked to get more state aid for education.
This coming year, some schools are up and some are down, as this statement from the Mayor’s Government Relations Director explains:
“BPS is still using the Weighted Student Funding model, this has not changed. The BPS FY15 budget allocates $5 million more to schools through WSF compared to last year, but under this model just over half of the schools will see budget reductions and just under half will have budget increases. The key factor is corrections in our FY14 enrollment projections: Just over half of our schools are experiencing reductions in enrollment projections, driven mainly by over-projections in FY14 and corrections for FY15 based on actual enrollment trends.
I think the most helpful resource is here: http://bostonpublicschools.org/budget which shows enrollment and budget calculations for each school.”
Just a further comment on this:
I’m sympathetic. I got into politics as a young parent concerned about resources for my neighborhood school in Belmont (where per pupil expenditures are about 30% below Boston). We had a working group meeting in living rooms, trying to get our elected officials to devote more to the schools. Ultimately I ran for Selectman on that platform and my elected service has continued since then.
So, I always understand where parents are coming from when they advocate for school funding.
From where I am now, the way I can help is to try to bring more state resources generally to support municipal government — there are lots of individual programs, but it all ends up in the pot. This week we voted a local aid resolution which does materially improve on the Governor’s numbers by increasing general government aid by 3%. Not huge, but pretty good given the general squeeze we face up here.
It will help a little bit. The other thing I’ll continue to do is work hard for special education reimbursement. That helps Boston a lot.