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Boston schools will be colder, dirtier next fall as city tries to cut $58 million
By adamg on Thu, 02/04/2010 - 12:18pm
School Superintendent Carol Johnson yesterday called for a series of steps to meet an anticipated deficit in the school budget for next year.
Among her proposals to the School Committee last night: Lower temperatures in schools and cut back custodial services. In addition, principals and other supervisors would not get raises and each school will have to figure out how to cut between $2,900 and $322,500 from their budgets, depending on the number of students.
Even with these and related steps, though, BPS will still face a $33 million shortfall in a roughly $1 billion budget. Steps to cut this could include re-opening contract talks with school workers, trying - again - to change the school-assignment and busing system and closing schools.
Johnson says that she has to plan now for the loss of $31 million in federal stimulus funds in the fiscal year that starts in July, 2001. Also, a new state law that expands the number of charter schools means the system will lose still more money as parents pull their kids out of BPS schools and send them to charters. At the same time, fixed costs, such as health insurance, will increase $28 million even as Mayor Tom Menino is seeking an overall $8.2 million cut in the city's allotment of the school budget.
BPS will hold a series of two-hour public hearings on budget issues:
Tues, Feb. 9, 6 p.m. Harbor Middle School 11 Charles St., Dorchester.
Thurs, Feb. 25, 6 p.m. Madison Park High School 75 Malcolm X Blvd., Roxbury.
Mon, Mar. 8, 6 p.m. English High School 144 McBride St., Jamaica Plain.
Wed, Mar. 10 , 5 p.m. Winter Chambers 26 Court St, Downtown.
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Comments
If sufficient numbers of
If sufficient numbers of children are leaving the system to fill charter schools, then you should be able to lay off personnel and save on "fixed" costs. Personnel costs are always the biggest part of your budget - making cuts in thermostat settings is a perverse way to cut costs - like an unemployed person eating out in restaurants every night, and then running around the house shutting off lights to "save money."
Google economies of scale.
Google economies of scale.
Have you learned nothing in the last 16 years?
This is a very TYPICAL (text book) Menino scare tactic... all leading up to laying off teachers. Some charter schools have been a great success - many have not. The Public schools are a necessity.
Every time Menino takes away city jobs to pad the pockets of his friends it starts the same way - 'oh we have to cut this and that' (all necessities that would be outrageous to really cut) - but his only real intention is to build public outrage and force the public to believe 'their' voices (rallying against the outrage) forced his hand to cut teachers/police/fireman instead.
Boston Public schools are atrocious; police, fire, ems and public works are all in the worst shape they have ever been... and geographically Boston is mostly a run-down hell hole (East Boston, Charlestown, Allston/Brighton, Roslindale, Hyde Park, Roxbury, Dorchester, Mattapan).
How much further down can this man take us?
budget has nothing to do with it...
police, fire, ems and public works are all in the worst shape they have ever been
1)The police are incompetent, not understaffed. Look at how many of them have plenty of time to stand around at construction sites, eh?
2)The fire department union was obstructionist; firefighters are incompetent through both their own laziness and lax departmental policy. Case and point, the truck that went out of control was serviced (rarely) by a garage which was supposed to be staffed with MECHANICS, but instead was staffed by firefighters who had no training or certification in truck repair because the union demanded it. And, the driver of the ladder truck hadn't been trained in how to properly drive a vehicle with air brakes. Did he have public safety forefront in his mind and say, "Hey, I shouldn't drive this gigantic truck, I'm not trained"?
3)EMS seems to work just fine- by all accounts, they're doing a better and better job at patching up kids that keep shooting each other- the only thing keeping the homicide rate low. In fact, feels like they're the only working part of city guv'mint.
4)Public works? Can't tell ya, except that this is a city where in the summer street cleaning is so critical your car will get towed within minutes...but come winter when it's cold to sit in that street cleaning machine, why shucks, we can go 6 months without.
Details, shmetails
The police are incompetent, not understaffed. Look at how many of them have plenty of time to stand around at construction sites, eh?
You do realize those cops are off duty, right? Maybe not. Detail work is a whole controversy all by itself, but don't cite that as an example of alleged BPD incompetence - it's not like those cops are being pulled off drug investigations to stare down holes.
Ha Ha Adam. You got sucked into one of Brett's traps.
Hes a POS just being a clown on the internet because of his own falied life. It's been very clear that he has no clue what he is talking about 85% of the time.
how about busing
how about redrawing school zones like they are done in much of the country? - local school attendance instead of a funky, outdated and wasteful busing system?
Not until all schools offer equal programs
They tried redrawing the busing lines twice - once under Payzant and once under Johnson. The problem is that there are certain neighborhoods where most of the schools would be bad (or "underperfoming" as they call them these days); at least with busing, parents in those areas have a chance to send their kids to better schools.
In any case, unless you immediately tossed out every single bused kid, you wouldn't see significant savings for several years, because you'd still have to bus kids to their current schools.
Charters will help
Hopefully we will get charters in more neighborhoods and that will help with the busing situation (do you have to bus kids to any charter in the geographic district or can you set up zones - anybody know? Could get expensive if kids in Southie have to get bused to Hyde Park for example).
From the numbers I've seen even if you eliminated "long distance" busing tomorrow you'd only save about $25-35 million - not chicken feed but not the $70 million we spend now that many claim would be saved.
The interesting thing for me was the accounting - it's all a little convoluted and time sensitive - but I love how a $10 million decrease is headlined as a $58 million cut. It's a 1% cut and coincidentally BPS loses about 1% of its students every year - so basically it's a flat budget. Most of the world would be pretty happy with that these days.
One more question - does the teachers' current contract go through 2011 or is it up for bargaining this year - I know we are about due - but not sure the exact dates. Unfortunately my guess is the teachers get zero in the next round unless the state or the feds come up with the money - and they are more broke than the city and the mayor is not happy with how they wouldn't take the pay cut last year forcing the mayor to cut a lot of patronage to balance the budget in an election year.
1% vs. $58 million
It's not quite as simple as just subtracting $10 million from the current budget, because they have certain "fixed" costs that will increase next year no matter what they do - health insurance, contractual obligations, etc. So you wind up having to cut way more than the $10 million the mayor wants cut just to get to the $10 million. Correct me if I'm wrong - I'm a reporter, and we're notorious for being unable to comprehend math.
In any case, also correct me if I'm wrong, but if I understand last night's presentation, the mayor's 1% cut (compared to the 5% he's asking from other departments) is closer to $8 million, because BPS counts on three piles of funding - from the city ($800 million) and from grants from other government levels and from private sources ($200 million).
No your math is fine even for a reporter
Didn't you go to some elite high school in Brooklyn? ;-)
The "cut" is $8 million. The "shortfall" is $58 million which assumes we need to pay for everything next year that we did this year - plus COL raises, plus Step, health care and many other things. Bottom line - even the school department seems to be saying what I've told them at budget hearings for the past 4-5 years - there are serious inefficiencies in the system due to too many desks/schools that they can't fill plus all the empty seats on buses but still have a staff to service all those empty chairs.
It's a little tough to trust the numbers considering the mayor has come out every winter with these armageddon scenarios that never materialize for the past 7-8 years (last year was tougher than most with about $100 million cut from the state and we still seem to be more than muddling through). The city will collect $75 million in extra property, meals and hotel taxes in 2011 over the 2010 budget (possibly a lot more if Murphy's new pilot program comes through). If Patrick keeps his promise to maintain local funding and "other" revenues remain flat the schools should be able to add about $25 million to this year's budget of $817 million assuming they get their usual share of 33-34% of revenues.
This looks like the usual budget posturing for Beacon Hill. It's very interesting to go back and look at the early budget projections that scream poverty and then realize that the city eventually collects tens of millions more than they budget for every year but blow it all on DPW and public safety overtime - yet still manage to balance the budget within a few million dollars no matter how big the revenue overage or excess overtime. These games seem to have started when Romney made some midyear aid cuts after the dot com bust.
Hang in there Adam and other parents - last year was probably and hopefully an aberration. By June this will probably be a non-issue as long as the state comes through on their end. 2012 could be a different story - that depends on a lot of things like charter school adoption, collective bargaining federal money etc. but 2011 should be just fine.
Exam schools get $4000/student
Then why are they cutting the good schools too? Latin Academy is slated to lose five teachers, my kid is in two study halls a day. I agree with you that part of it is a show. But there are real effects, these cuts are truly close to the bone at that school.
Then demand efficiency
They said that last year - good point though. They always try to slam the exam schools - I think that's because they know the parents and kids will scream at those schools so they "recruit" you to their cause by claiming they will have to cut those schools more - part of the game (seems like it's disproportionately the Latin School/Latin Academy kids and parents at all the hearings).
No, not an elite school
It was your basic neighborhood high school, and I got a damn good education there, and it's kind of a shame we don't really have that in Boston.