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Newton schools look at layoffs
By adamg on Wed, 03/09/2022 - 11:51am
Newton School Superintendent David Fleishman today warned parents that he's looking at layoffs for the coming school year, partly because of declining enrollment but mainly because of increased costs for insurance, busing and special education, on top of a budget this year already stretched by Covid-19, both through extra use of city-funded health plans and the need to hire more substitutes, and a decline in revenue from renting out school facilities.
Given the current budget parameters, we expect the district will need to reduce 50-60 staff positions, in addition to the approximately 12-14 positions we will reduce as a result of declining enrollment.
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Comments
Maybe
Don't build $200M high schools (that cost is 10 years old too at the nadir of construction costs around here for the past 25 years).
Newton saying they need to tighten the budget is like a Russian oligarch saying they might cut back to one helicopter on the megayacht for the summer instead of the usual two.
That's actually true!
I just read an article in the NYTimes about a 459 foot $700 million yacht floating around, owner unknown. The captain made this comment about hiring crew:
You can't make this stuff up.
There's a loud group in
There's a loud group in Newton that claims they couldn't possibly afford to house more families because of schools etc ... Enrollment is declining because they refuse to take on their fair share of affordable housing and families have to move to other cities and towns.
The fact that they still have to deal with 40B is evidence of this.
Newton isn't the only one but they do stand out because of their proximity to Boston , the Green line etc.
So let some family friendly developments open and you won't need to lay off teachers. You'll also be able to house your own families instead of forcing them into neighboring towns to eat up the limited supply of family friendly not million dollar housing
Not how it works
Newton spends $19,863.76 per student. All but the largest houses pay less than that in taxes.
So a $450k condo with 1 student is net loss to the town. A $2M single family with 1 student is revenue neutral. Even better if the family in the $2M house sends their kid to private school.
If a dense developments attract a lot of families, they aren't beneficial to the town strictly from a taxation/expense standpoint.
What the town should want is to add a whole lot of senior housing.
There's probably more to it than that
Dog, I appreciate your detailed post. I'm guessing that it's not quite as black and white. If they have declining enrollment, some of those teachers are probably underutilized. Thus, if you add some amount of new kids, the same number of teachers will be teaching a larger group and thus the expenditure per student will drop. I don't think it's necessary that every new kid comes from a high tax house to help the situation.
How do the rest of us pay for
How do the rest of us pay for it?
You don't just use local taxes, there's always other money coming in too.
How do you think communities that don't have five million dollar homes pay for their schools???
Municipal finance is way more complicated than you make it out to be.
Declining enrollment isn't the core reason
Positions are being cut because the budget is tight. Nearly 90% of the budget is personnel so there aren't a lot of other places to meaningfully cut expenses.
Bringing in "family friendly developments" doesn't fix the problem unless each unit of housing brings in more tax money for the schools than cost to educate the kids living in said housing. "Luxury" 1-bedroom apartments would do a lot more in that regard by attracting residents with no kids to educate.
55+, too
That's why towns like 55+ developments, too - no kids.
Doesn't always work out that
Doesn't always work out that way. If things continue in my life to go the way they are going with my husband's 3 year old grandson, we will be 55+ with a kid.
Like in Needham?
That certainly explains why Needham greenlit those two very large developments on 2nd St. I don't imagine they are very family oriented...
There are plenty of students
There are plenty of students who want to enroll in Newton schools, they just don’t live in Newton.
The borders for school districts (and housing authorities) should not be coextensive with municipal boarders. I know that’s never going to change, but still.
If that happened
Boston would have to shut down our school system.
It would be a part of a bigger…
…regional school system.
If you prefer having more
If you prefer having more government activity run at the county level than at the city/town level, then you're better off living in a different state. In Massachusetts the only meaningful thing counties do is run the courts. I don't know any other state that works like MA.
Connecticut
Their county governments were all abolished in 1959.
Running the schools on a county level wouldn't fix the problem here since lumping in Boston with Chelsea, Revere, and Winthrop wouldn't result in significantly better schools being available. It'd probably be good for Winthrop property values if you could live there and still have your kids be eligible for Boston Latin.
But yeah regional school districts (outside of smaller communities which have voluntarily banded together) are never, ever going to happen here.