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Marty Walsh wants to close some neighborhood public schools
By Anonymous on Thu, 09/10/2015 - 4:13am
@marty_walsh: "I foresee merging some Boston schools," confirms this means "closing." #phh http://t.co/pHFbTyWHuU
— Shira T. Center (@shiracenter) September 9, 2015
Here is @chaliebakerma and @marty_walsh opening up a charter on the same day Walsh announces BPS schools will close. https://t.co/Q6ZJqdxS4W
— GoogieBaba (@GoogieBaba) September 10, 2015
.@CharlieBakerMA and @marty_walsh on hand for expansion of Boston's Codman Academy Charter School. pic.twitter.com/d7nfDKT9mv
— Alison King (@alisonkingNECN) September 9, 2015
#BPS graduates are more likely to graduate college than charter students but it is our schools that will close: https://t.co/deQH5XjD6Q
— GoogieBaba (@GoogieBaba) September 10, 2015
.@Beckabrook888 there is empirical proof charters are inferior & they do not teach all kids
— Lea M. Benson M.Ed. (@bledwine) September 10, 2015
Supt. Chang: #BPS enrollment up by 4% compared to same time last year. And enrollment is "climbing!"
— Heshan Weeramuni (@wheresmyporsche) September 9, 2015
.@GoogieBaba @marty_walsh @MassGovernor History will not judge those kindly that promote segregation & separate & unequal schools #TBATs
— Lea M. Benson M.Ed. (@bledwine) September 9, 2015
So I'm going to say this one more time. It is disruptive and possibly disastrous to the education of children to close schools. #mapoli
— GoogieBaba (@GoogieBaba) September 9, 2015
It destabilizes the child and it removes a community resource.
— GoogieBaba (@GoogieBaba) September 9, 2015
@wheresmyporsche @jshoreboston @marty_walsh @phoenixcharter @CityOfBoston I'd prefer my kid's BPS schl not have its budget slashed each yr.
— KissMyLiberalButtons (@KissMyLiberalB) September 9, 2015
Over the last 2 yrs, @marty_walsh has closed $108 million budget gap in @BostonSchools by cutting programs& resources not funding #bospoli
— RightWingWatch Fan (@RWwatchMA) September 5, 2015
Oh @marty_walsh you really don't want @BostonSchools families support do u? @GoogieBaba @kennycooks @shiracenter https://t.co/XnSexv4Kcw
— Karen Kast-McBride (@BPSNightmare) September 9, 2015
I thought when we elected @Marty_Walsh we were getting a guy who'd invest in @BostonSchools public education. I'm not feeling it. #bospoli
— RightWingWatch Fan (@RWwatchMA) September 9, 2015
@phoenixcharter I will be involved as the Mayor of the @CityOfBoston as much as I can be. Already have been in discussions. #AskMJW
— Mayor Marty Walsh (@marty_walsh)
@phoenixcharter I will be involved as the Mayor of the @CityOfBoston as much as I can be. Already have been in discussions. #AskMJW
— Mayor Marty Walsh (@marty_walsh) September 9, 2015
.@marty_walsh @phoenixcharter @cityofboston So how will you then protect the choice of #BPS parents like myself who choose BPS? #ASKMJW
— Heshan Weeramuni (@wheresmyporsche) September 9, 2015
Mayor Walsh did not answer Heshan Weeramuni.
Superintendent Chang provided a different answer to the question about Closing BPS schools when asked earlier in the day
.@GoogieBaba @marty_walsh Audit phase of Facility Master Plan will take approx 18 months. Major decisions will come afterward.
— Tommy Chang (@SuptChang) September 9, 2015
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Comments
I am not sure how I feel
I am not sure how I feel about more charter schools but I thinks it's great that he has closed $108 million dollars in the budget. I just wish he would push a 4 year term for city council seats saving over $500,000 on off mayoral election years. This was suggested in 2013 by Andrew Cousino.
If you want to save money on
If you want to save money on elections, then do something to cut down on all the special elections triggered by law to fill mid-term vacancies. http://www.cityofboston.gov/elections/results/
Giving the the mayor/governor the power to fill vacancies for seats with 2-year terms would help. For seats with longer terms, like US Senate seats, we could elect a "standby Senator" ready to take the seat whenever a sitting Senator dies or steps down. That would keep us from electing the likes of Scott Brown who win because of their novelty, and from appointing Senator-for-a-month blips like Mo Cowan. You can also cut down on primaries by changing from the two-round primary system to a single-round instant runoff system.
Why not
Do both?
This
sucks.
Best money-saving plan
Keep tearing the BPS apart until only those with no choice remain.
Or until everyone has a choice
I don't see anyone tearing apart BPS. The city has literally showered it with money and thst doesn't seem to fix the problems. At some point you hsve to start looking at other solutions.
I also think a lot of people in thst twitter thread are seriously misinformed. No child in BPS today has ever lived under an operating budget cut and that comment about enrollment being up 4% can't be true. Demographics and competition from charters have kept enrollment flat or declining for years and a turnaround like that would be dominating the headlines.
Budget cuts are real
My child's small school has endured 6 figure budget cuts every year he's been there. Pretty much everything but basic classroom instruction has been cut.
Misinformed, or just a different perspective?
A couple of comments on your second paragraph.
First, you are correct that the BPS operating budget has increased each year in recent memory (certainly for as long as I've been paying attention), and so from your perspective as a BPS outsider looking at a budget document, I get what you are saying - as you know, I look at those documents too. I also have the perspective of a parent of two kids at a BPS school, and I can tell you that when you look at things from that level there are very real budget problems in many schools. I'm guessing that most parents care far more about those staffing and other cuts than what the total school department budget looks like on paper (although as taxpayers clearly we have an interest in both). Whether or not the school department appears on paper to be receiving adequate funding is a very different thing from whether your child's school actually is. There are many, many reasons why any given school might have budget issues, only some of which can really be attributed to waste in the school department's central administration. So while you may consider those commenters to be "seriously misinformed", it may just be that they are coming at things from a different perspective and with a different set of information than you.
Second, regarding the comment about enrollment being up 4%. While you believe that figure "can't be true", parents who are paying attention will recognize that twitter handle as belonging to a co-chair of the Citywide Parent Council who also served on the superintendent's transition team. You can feel free to doubt the figure, but I'd be careful about labeling it as misinformation; Heshan may well have access to some data that hasn't yet been made public.
Crap post
My hote take - Reposting a bunch of opinion tweets reads like a crap op-Ed vs the more typical newsy type posts I value about the site. Why not just repost the tweets from relevant people (Chang and Walsh) and leave it at that?
You're missing a few anti-charter screeds...where's a tweet from Kenncooks?
really, parents aren't
really, parents aren't "relevant" to a discussion involving their kids' schools? Come on.
Ok, let's talk about parents
There are 35K charter school students in Boston. There are 45K students on the wait list. So it's pretty easy to see what parents want.
I'm impressed to see Marty stand up to the union. One of the shortest school days in the country for all the money we throw into the system. Unbelievable.
Do you have a link for those stats?
I'm not saying you are necessarily incorrect, but 35,000 + 45,000 = 80,000, which exceeds the student population figures I've seen. It's quite possible that the numbers I've seen are not counting all students in Boston, which is why I wanted to see where you got these numbers from.
My Bad
I cited statewide stats.
Boston's charter enrollment is closer to 8.5K.
Data can be found at:
http://www.doe.mass.edu/charter/finance/tuition/ (enrollment) and
http://www.doe.mass.edu/charter/enrollment/ (waitlists)
I stand by my point about the huge demand for charter seats.
Change funding mechansims NOW!!
About 57,000 students in Boston Public Schools. 8,475 attending charters.
This year, Boston is losing $15,000 for each of the 8,475 students who attend charter schools, about $104 million in all, after deducting limited state reimbursements.
Further expansion of charter schools, without some drastic changes in funding mechanisms, will further harm the 57,000 students attending traditional public schools.
As a result of the expansion of charter schools in Boston to about 17% of budget, Boston's Public Schools have been forced to cut every position they can: all levels of service, teachers, busing, supplies, mental health services, food options, have been cut.
I'd like to have a mayor who fights for the choice of 57,000 students in Boston Public Schools and the quality of their education.
sure - send them back to BPS
Where we spend close to $25k -not $15k per student.
FYI- essentially this is how they do the school budget- take total city revenue and divide by 3. That's the school budget. +/- 1 % or so works every year. Charter school budgets NEVER have one iota of impact on the Bps budget.
Well, there is at least an iota of impact...
...it just doesn't work in a way that's all that obvious unless you know how charter schools are funded, and it may be somewhat of an indirect effect. Charter school tuition is deducted from the city's chapter 70 funding by the state, so it shows up in the city budget as a revenue reduction. That impact is described in the Revenue Estimates and Analysis section of the budget. That's not the only impact, of course, because there are other things going on, not least of which is chapter 46 funding (charter tuition reimbursement). It's also worth noting that with the increase in charter school seats the total number of students at publicly-funded schools has gone up in recent years, so we should absolutely expect that the total impact of education costs to the city budget (in the form of both the BPS budget and charter school tuition deductions to chapter 70 aid) would be increasing in total.
In any case, if the BPS budget were literally calculated as a third of the city's total budget no matter how big the budget is, then the BPS budget would be smaller by about a third of the charter tuition figure than it would be if there were no charters. I don't know how the city actually decides on the size of the BPS budget, but I imagine - and hope - that someone is actually looking at things like the amount that BPS has requested and the total amount that the city is spending on education, rather than just dividing by three as you imply. Without knowing that, I can't say anything more definitive about what the actual impact of charter tuition is on the BPS budget.
How are you doing that math, Stevil?
BPS 2015 school budget / number of students
$1.013B / 57k = $17,772 per student
I'd like to know what the
I'd like to know what the cost is for 1) special-needs students and 2) non-special needs students who do everything mainstream.
don't have great internet access
So can't easily pull data. However last time i checked DOE numbers there were either 52k or 54k students (thus my comment that a 4% increase in students would be widely reported as the city would need tens of millions more dollars to fund thise educations). I am including total costs. Operating costs alone are about 19.5k. The $15k reported is just regular ed. Then u have to.add in pensions retiree benefits external funds and capital costs.. add it all up and we spend almost $25k per student. Granted we can't pluck that money from the sky so actually the budget per kid would just shrink.
I've said this many times in this forum. There r many problems with BPS not all of their own making. However it is easily one of the wealthiest school districts in the country. More money is not likely to fix those problems.
translation
"Damn the actual facts and numbers, I've got my axe and I'm gonna grind it!"
Also, love the "not great internet" excuse prefacing a long number-filled reply by a frequent commentor on a popular web site. Priceless.
Attendance question
First, yes, the funding needs to be workable for both the charters and the BPS.
I'd like to know what % of the 8500 kids attending charter schools would be in the BPS if they didn't have a charter spot. If we assume that some, let's say 1/2, would opt out of BPS due to dissatisfaction with their local BPS choice, then even there BPS is going to be impacted by having to pay for the education of 4000+ additional kids. Now in my view, that's mostly a plus, budget impact aside as we should want to pay to educate the kids of the city.
Missing my point, post #1
If people want to discuss charter schools, school closures, etc... thats great. What I don't like about this specific post was that it took a news items (Walsh says schools will be closed) and then shoe horns in a bunch of tweets from anti-charter twitter users adding no real value to the post IMO. I like the somewhat neutral aspect of U-Hub in that mostly news items are posted, which then may be discussed at length by commenters. This feels like putting the comments in the article.
It's Adam's site so this is fine with him, that's the bottom line. I just didn't like it.
I agree with you
I don't always disagree with Anonymous' posts, but this tends to be his style.
To each his own, I suppose.
The style of this post is news and commentary
The style of this post is news and commentary followed by UniversalHub commentary.
Nothing about the commentary in the main post is neutral. People have strong opinions on this topic.
That said, nothing about the UniversalHub commentary is neutral either.
Needs more analysis, less talking points
That said, you did get a conversation going, so kudos to you.
opinion is not talking points
Talking points are what pols repeat on the stump to get their message out. Opinions are what what educated parents form based on their research. Boston has many well educated parents.
Here's some analysis
Point 2
There are many valid arguments against many charter schools. What bothers me is that there is no nuance or reality to many anti-charter posts.
The person bemoaning segregation has never set foot into the charter school my kid attends, unless they mean that there are very few white kids there. I suspect that's not their point.
Pretty much every parent at the charter school my kid attends is very excited to have their kid there, more than me honestly. I don't dismiss their choices and I don't try to silence their support for the school by making broad statements claiming to represent parents across the city.
Charter schools aren't for everyone but they are great for some kids. Same as Latin, same as AWC, but without the testing requirements which (gasp of shock!) filter out kids from less advantaged families. I suspect none of these brave voices for parents across the city are lining up to send their kids to English, are they?
Charter schools are corporate welfare.
Charles Pierce just did a great piece on a court decision in Washington State barring charter schools from using tax dollars.
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a37722/washington-cou...
Expect more of same. It's time to send the MBA's off to some more legit form of money grubbing than wrecking one of our great national fundamentals.
You think massively expensive
You think massively expensive and underperforming public schools aren't a form of welfare for incompetent administrators and teachers? Where the Hell is our tax money going when Boston spends more per pupil than almost any other school district and the place is still falling apart?
Privatization is for profit. Guess who pays? You do.
Privatization is a scam. The guy who runs DFER has his MBA from Tuck (that's Dartmouth business school.) He had no experience as an educator other than going to school. DFER is a lobbying organization funded by hedge fund managers that do quite well in the charter school business. Their pitch to new investors-- large net worth only thank you-- is that they can double their money in 5 years (...including federal tax credits, of course.) Charter schools are income inequality on steroids.
Different state, different laws
The opinion piece you put forward concerns a different state with different laws. It is simply irrelevant to charter schools in Boston.
Could you explain why you think charter schools are "corporate welfare"? I mean, that's a catchy phrase, but are you aware that charter schools not only must be non-profit, but also must regularly be re-certified by the state? Actual facts here: http://www.doe.mass.edu/lawsregs/603cmr1.html?section=all
The idea that charter schools are making "MBAs" rich would be laughable except for the point that the arguments on this topic are so far divorced from actual facts.
It may become a national case.
Pierce wrote the thing. He lives here and served it up as a trend example he favored.
Charter schools are a right wing and libertarian shibboleth, but the option for fixing what exists has its fans.
MBA's mainly rig these things because they are a kind of service biz model that emphasizes cost control.
If people want them and take no tax dollars, fine, but that takes away the whole incentive.
As for the greedy teachers riff, Reagan called from the beyond and wants his cliche back on the shelf with the Cadillac welfare queens. It's specious too, since avarice can be found in every career form. One person's "I'm worth more" is some other goob's "no you're worth less"
Just go get yer nose back to the grindstone and grub your money and stop telling whole classes of strangers what they are 'worth'.
"It destabilizes the child"
So isn't playing musical chairs via busing! Chang was brought in to make changes, now people are shocked changes might be made.
Nah
Kids do just fine on a school bus.
(No subject)
1974 called
They want their photo back.
Busing today is not the busing your parents went through.
(No subject)
Were you shipped across the city as a kid
I was, it sucked! I had to catch a 6am bus to be at school by 7:20 from 4th-8th grade.
Me? No
However, our daughter has to be in school across town by 7:30 (or maybe it's 7:40) every morning, so I do feel your pain, since we have to be up early right along with her.
but but
I get posts here with my morning coffee at 5:30-6am because of that (and I appreciate that!)
Adorable!
City kids cry about taking a bus across town. I grew up in the country. I got on the bus at 6:25 and arrived at my school 25 miles away at 8:20. Suck it up.
Anddddddd
Why did you move to the city?
Well was there
a school 3 blocks from your house that you couldn't attend and you were forced to go to the other 25 mi away? Apples to Oranges!
Also i bet your country school was a lot better than any BPS middle school, had less funding, better athletic programs, updated school materials and so on...
A country school was better
A country school was better than BPS? You have to be kidding, right? BPS is friggin awesome, while my school system eventually got no-child-left-behind-ed right out of its accreditation.
closing schools in the neighborhood Marty?
I can't believe all the tax dollars spend to improve our schools and renovations that we now have to be disappointed again with this outragious talk about closing schools in the BPS system.
Its a known fact children didn't do well in over crowded classes, so now when and where will these students be relocated. Its a shame how this generation steals from the children. 1St it was retirement now education. Does anyone in charge have any morals or dignity?
The ongoing saga...
..of ONE TERM MAYOR MARTY WALSH.
What a bum.
BPS is still too big
In the 70s and 80s there were around 100,000 students in the system. Now there are around 50,000. They've closed some schools, but there are still too many schools. There are empty classrooms in these buildings because we don't have the kids anymore. Enrollment is about half of what it was 30 - 40 years ago, but we still have far too many buildings. The famed "White Flight" started ages ago and the people moving into the city today often don't have kids. If they do, they send them to charters or private schools if they can manage it. We need to close some schools simply because we have way more square footage than we can use. The hard part is that no one wants to be the one that gets shuttered.
Incorrect statement regarding historical enrollment
It's true that in 1970 BPS enrollment was 96,696. But by 1980, after the huge white-flight of the mid 70s, enrollment was down to 67,954. And that's only a 16% difference from this year's number. So a 33% drop in less than a decade and then a decrease only half as big over the next 35 years.
I can't find any historical stats on the number of schools citywide, but here in Rosi, we lost a high school in 76, a middle school in the 80s and at least four elementary schools since 1980. That's pretty much a halving from the 70s.
I've never been in a BPS school with empty classrooms, as you claim exists (and imply is common). Can you name a school where this is the case? Because everything you've written sounds like it's pooya.
We didn't lose the high school
It got replaced by a new high school over by the drive-in and dump on the Parkway.