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| Photo by Kenny Jervis |
School Site Councils at BPS High Schools are rushing to re-evaluate their budget situation ahead of the Boston School Committee vote on Wednesday, a little over a week after BPS restored some of the cuts on the high school level. I’ve frantically continued my work contacting our high schools to assess the new financial landscape, and unfortunately the news is bleak. While the budget cuts at the exam schools were reduced to $96,000 at Boston Latin School (down from $705,000) and to $100,000 at Boston Latin Academy (down from $492,000), deep cuts persist at some of our most vulnerable schools. Boston Community Leadership Academy’s budget cut is still a whopping $500,000, down from $800,000. Charlestown High, home of the Diploma Plus (DP) Program, still has a $350,000 budget cut and the DP Program is still on the chopping block. Snowden International, the school where the planning of the BPS walkout began, is still slated to lose $240,000, down from $370,000. I’m awaiting updates from several other high schools that are scheduled to have their School Site Council meetings early this week.
These high school budget cuts persist because of the changes in Weighted Student Funding (WSF) for students with autism and emotional impairment. The weight for students with autism has been changed from 4.3 to 3.9, and for students on the high school level with emotional impairment, the weight has changed from 3.5 to 3.0. The changes in WSF were intended to equally distribute budget cuts. However, students with special needs tend to be concentrated within certain schools, so they are getting hit harder than schools with a higher concentration of regular ed. To state this frankly: The children at schools who have always benefited from a softer landing will continue to do so, while the students who have always had to struggle to overcome challenges must now work even harder.
Throughout this budget cycle, one thing that has bothered me is that all of these cuts to Special Education come in the wake of the recent Foundation Budget Review Commission report that Massachusetts is already drastically under-funding Special Ed. When it comes to identifying the “fat” in BPS, I would respectfully suggest that we look somewhere else.
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| Photo by Andrea Doremus Cuetara |
