Our nation’s founding fathers recognized that a balance of power can only be achieved by establishing distinct partitions to limit any one branch of government from overriding the core functions of another. The Boston City Charter establishes a local three pronged model of leadership as well, splitting power among the Mayor’s Office, the City Council and the Boston School Committee, a body that in recent years has been appointed by the Mayor’s Office.
Today as the flimsy House of Cards that constructs our Mayor’s Office continues to fold before our eyes, nine City Councilors chose to jump onto Mayor Walsh’s sinking ship rather than stake a claim to the great powers given to them by our City’s Charter and by the constituents across this city who elected them.
A second high ranking member of Marty Walsh’s administration was arrested this morning after he was indicted for extortion and conspiracy. Political extortion boils down to this: Someone in power says, “If you do X for me, I will do Y for you.”
As in, if you vote YES on my Budget, you will get Y for your district.
Today I watched as members of the Boston City Council were similarly manipulated into making concessions on the BPS budget, despite the fact that Boston is prospering during unprecedented levels of development and growth. Today I watched as deals made for the few led to drastic classroom level cuts for the many that will have a detrimental impact to the entire district.
This is my third year of advocating for the BPS budget and I can tell you this with 100% certainty: These budget cuts to our children’s schools will never be restored, at least not under this current mayoral administration.
Boston City Councilors, I ask you this: What does Marty Walsh hold over you that makes you willing to vote to pass budget cuts, year after year, that will hurt children in your district and in your city?
But what is worse than the opaque manipulations of political horse-trading? Ignorance. I watched as some City Councilors unabashedly displayed their complete ignorance of the BPS budgeting process by citing fictitious per pupil numbers based on over-simplified 4th grade level long division:
“And the school department! They have $1.15 billion dollars1 to educate less than 57,0002 students, which comes out to a calculation that we verified in the hearing on Monday of $20,000 per student! This is not grandstanding, this is money – financial money.”
Bill Linehan, Councilor for District 2.
Actually, it’s $18,217 if you use Councilor Linehan’s broken rationale, but if you insist on dramatically over-simplifying the equation, please don’t round UP as well. Applying simple math to complex systems indicates to me that you don’t understand the long-standing financial implications of mandated busing or the financial responsibilities of educating a district with a high concentration of English Language Learners, Special Needs students, or children living in poverty.
We can do better for our children and we can do better with our votes.
1 Total BPS budget appropriation is for FY17 $1.032B.
2 56,650 students in school year 2015-2016.
