Good evening and welcome to tonight's meeting, our first fiscal year 27 budget hearing of the Boston School Committee. I'm Chairperson Jerry Robinson. We'll begin with the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the
United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> Because this is a remote meeting, I will ask Miss Pavix to please call the role.
>> Thank you, Chair. Dr. Alkins, Miss Nor, Mr. Peralta. >> Yes. Miss Palanko Garcia, >> yes. >> Miss Garage, >> yes. >> Miss Torres, >> yes. >> Mr. Tran,
>> yes. >> Miss Robinson, >> yes. >> We have a quorum. >> Thank you, Miss Pavitz. We will begin tonight with a budget hearing. During the budget hearing, as is the president, public comment will take place after the budget presentation. We will then
transition to a brief school committee meeting where there will be another period of public comment. The agenda which provides more detail is posted at bostonpubschools.org/school committee under the fel group 12 meeting room link. Tonight's session is being
shared live on Zoom. It will be posted on the school committee web page and on YouTube. Tonight's meeting documents are posted on the committee's web page, bostonschools.orgschool committee, under the February 12th
meeting link. The meeting documents have been translated into all of the major BPS languages. Any translations that are not ready prior to the start of the meeting will be posted as soon as they are finalized. The committee is pleased
to share is sorry. The committee is pleased to offer live simultaneous interpretation in Spanish, Haitian Creole, Cape Verdian, Cantonese, Mandarin, Vietnamese, and American Sign
Language. The Zoom interpretation feature has been activated. Zoom participants should click the globe icon at the bottom of your screen to select your language preference. I want to remind everyone to speak at a slower
pace to assist our interpreters. On February 4th, Superintendent Skipper presented her preliminary fiscal year 2027 budget proposal to the committee. Tonight is an opportunity for the committee and the community to take a
deeper dive into the proposal by focusing on school budgets. During our March 4th budget hearing, the committee will take a closer look at the central budget. In a moment, we'll invite Chief Financial Officer David Bloom and budget
director Serena Lorok to share their presentation. But first, I would like to invite the superintendent to give opening remarks. >> Wonderful. Um, thank you, chair, and and good evening to our committee, uh, and also the public that's tuning in. Uh, so
last week, we presented the district's preliminary $1.71 billion budget for fiscal year 27 and marked the official start of the annual school budget process. Chief Financial Officer David Bloom provided a review of
where our budget stands today and our proposed spending plan for FY27. We're here tonight to provide you with a closer look at our budget planning for our schools. In a few minutes, Chief Bloom, budget director Serena Lorac, and
will give that presentation. Before I turn the meeting over to the team, I would like to recap last week's preliminary budget presentation and say a few words about our school specific investments in how those decisions will
affect our school communities. As we explained at the February 4th school committee meeting, the school's budget was developed over the past several months in close collaboration with our schools. The FY27 budget represents a 4.5%
increase over FY26, which is roughly $74 million thanks to the support of Mayor Michelle Woo. However, as we plan for FY27, we are confronting similar pressures to
those we faced in FY26, even with continued historic investment by the city. Like school districts around our nation and the Commonwealth, our costs are increasing at a faster rate than our revenues.
As we said in our presentation last week, four major areas are seeing a projected $86 million increase for FY27. some of which overlap with this year's overruns, including the rising costs of
health insurance, of transportation, special education related services, and collective bargaining agreements. We are balancing these costs with an enrollment decline of approximately 3,000 students over two years, which
will impact some schools more than others. Tonight, we will explain more specifically how these pressures and declining enrollment are impacting planning for our schools and classrooms. Even with these challenges, this budget
supports important new investments, including inclusive education, bilingual programming, options for students with specialized needs, including alternative programs such as Mel King South End Academy.
Shortly, the team will explain how our new funding formula, which we called, and you heard last week, reimagining school funding, will allow us to support these priorities in our schools. The formula, which will be continued to be phased in over the next two years, will
better serve our schools by guaranteeing that they receive appropriate funding to meet their instructional needs and still have the flexibility to spend additional funds to the benefit of their school communities.
We will support schools experiencing the greatest impact from the funding changes with transition funding as they adjust to the formula shift. Under the new formula, schools will fall into one of five scenarios based on
enrollment. The majority of our schools will fall into one of two categories. budget and enrollment changes are relatively small or enrollment is declining and the school is experiencing a proportionate funding decline.
The team will further illustrate the varying ways that reimagining funding will impact schools by walking through scenarios at four different schools. English High School, the Higginson K0 to2 and the Tobin K to8 school as it
transitions to a preK to6. As Chief Bloom explained last week, the overall impact of these changes on our budget is a reduction of over 500 positions in the coming fiscal year. More than a hundred of these positions
represent jobs that will not be filled or staffed that will be reassigned. There will be 265 fewer teaching positions and 161 fewer PAR positions. Of those 426 positions, 218,
so roughly a little more than half, are the result of school closures or grade reconfigurations in less than 10 schools. The reductions also include positions in the central office. This is the third year of reductions to the central office
budget and funding efficiencies in support of schools. We will review and explain these reductions at the next budget hearing focused on central office budget which will take place on Wednesday, March 4th. In addition to the
March 4th hearing, we will present our updated budget proposal based on feedback from committee and the community on Wednesday, March 18th. We will then come back to the committee to ask for your vote on the revised
proposal on Wednesday, March 25th. The budget will then be sent to the Boston City Council for their review and appropriation. For those of you looking for more information, our budget docs are publicly available on the web page um
our website bostonschools.org. You can click on the FY27 budget development under about BPS tab at the top of the homepage and that will bring you to our budget docs. I want to again acknowledge Chief Bloom, Deputy Chief
Blair, Budget Director Larok and the entire BPS finance team for their continued hard work and stewardship of this important process. So at this point, Chair, I will turn it over to Chief Bloom and the finance team for the presentation.
Thank you, um, Superintendent Skipper, and, um, thank you, uh, Chair Robinson and the rest of the members of the committee for this opportunity to present tonight. Great. Sorry, bear with me for one second. Okay.
Um, tonight's focus will be our proposals around school budgets for the FY2627 school year. Before we dive into them in detail, I will give a quick overview of our budget for those members of the public who were
not able to tune in last week. We will then dive deeper into investments and our new funding formula. Our budget director, Serena Lorac, will share some school examples and we will close with next steps. Tonight is the second of five
opportunities to engage with our budget in formal school committee sessions. After school vacation week on Wednesday, March the 4th, we'll be diving deeper into central budgets. After re receiving feedback in these first three meetings, we'll submit a revised budget proposal
and come back to this body for a final budget hearing to answer any remaining questions on March 18th. Finally, the school committee will vote on our revised proposal on March 25th. These hearings are the main public part of our process, but a lot of work goes
into getting to this point. I'll talk a little bit later about our budget development process and the work we do with schools through the fall and early winter. Of course, we have our school committee process, but then afterwards, our budget goes to city council for their review as
a part of the mayor's proposed budget for the city as a whole. Before we dive into school budgets, I'm going to share some highlevel details about our FY27 budget. The FY27 budget builds on years of
investment um by Mayor Woo and the broader community of Boston. Our FY27 proposed operating fund budget is $1.71 billion, a $74 million increase on our current year
budget. We talked a little bit last week about our um goals for this budget. In this hearing, we will focus on our reimagine school funding formula as well as investments in our priority areas.
As the superintendent mentioned, a key part of this budget situation is some in significant cost growth on top of our typical inflationary increases. Health insurance costs are rising significantly
uh primarily due to an increase in rates and costs and a little bit due to an increase in FTEEs or full-time equivalents. We have rising transportation expenses that we're seeing in our current year budget that are moving forward to next year as well as accelerating special
education costs and the next year of implementation of our collective bargaining agreements. So with that summary of what we covered last week at a high level, let's dive in a little more to the school budget process. As I mentioned earlier, our school
budget process starts all the way in October. In October, we take a snapshot of enrollment in the current year in order to work with that data with our history of enrollment data to make projections about our future year data uh
enrollment, excuse me. In early November, we give that information to school leaders to collect their feedback about anything we might have missed in our review of historical trends or about their unique school community.
Our finance team also takes that data to do an initial review of school budgets and potential scenarios for the upcoming year, including areas of investment. By early December, we are ready to share
preliminary budgets with school leaders. They review these for accuracy and questions with support from central staff and pro uh share their budget information with their school site council or governing boards for their feedback as well.
In January, our school leaders come together with a large crossf functional group of central staff for a meeting called the budget collaborative where representatives from finance HR, the office of specialized services, the office of multilingual, multicultural education, their regional school
superintendent meet with the school leader to review their student population size, specific needs, and so on. And really to confirm the required staffing for the next school year, as well as the school's plan for discretionary spending. as we're doing now, right? Our school
budgets are finalized and reviewed by the school committee in February and March. And then it's important to note that as early as April, we are already starting to doublech checkck those assumptions we made in our school budget process. um when we have assignment data from the
first round of student assignments and we have additional staffing available in reserve if something about student need has changed from what we propose to you. Those reviews start in April and go all the way through the upcoming school
year. So I mentioned a little bit about compliance in my previous um comments. Our new funding formula is based on two main things. The first is this concept of required staffing or compliance.
So some of this are things that are related to state and federal law like required services for English learners or students with disabilities. Other things are district priorities or rules such as requirements around social workers. But either way, every school
gets a review and then a specific allocation to fully fund the staff required to serve students. In addition to that, schools get a per pupil allocation differentiated by need
to create their flexible spending plan. things that they are building to customize their school for their school community. I'm going to walk through some examples of these in a moment. For those of you who joined last week, I
walked through some of the materials available uh on our website that the superintendent referenced earlier in a fairly quick fashion. Tonight, I'm going to take a moment to review some of those documents in more
detail as we talk about our um funding formula. So, as the superintendent mentioned, we have a area on our website called FY2027 budget development. As the superintendent shared, it's available
through the about us page on our main website. It is also available by going to bostonchools.org/budget and clicking on this FY2027 budget development link. If you scroll down, you'll see materials
from our budget hearings. So last week's materials contains all of our main budget documents. This week we only have the supplemental material of our presentation. Section four is what we'll be reviewing
in more detail tonight. These are our school allocations. 4A is an Excel spreadsheet that shows every rule that we allocate to schools in every school. So you can see every dollar that went out.
For C is a link to every school's individual school allocation folder. So if you have a question about one school, you can find it there. Where we're going to spend a little bit more time this evening is 4B, our list of funding rules. I can explain a little
bit more about what I mean by compliance and flexible resources. So this document which is available in multiple languages on our website for anyone in the public who wants to view shows every rule in our new funding formula.
These rules come in some main sections. Um I'm not going to go through every single rule in detail tonight because there are several, but I just want to orient people to the sections and what you'll see here. So the first group is administration. The second column you see is the name of
the rule. So this is the principal rule. The rule itself is one principal for every school. And the funding use is restricted. What that means is a school cannot choose you know what I don't need a principal. I'm not going to budget for a principal. There's a restriction that
they have to use that funding to budget for a principal. So then you'll see an administration. There are also rules around secretaries and second administrators in schools with multiple sites.
We then move into a series of rules for elementary school teachers. These rules ensure that every classroom has a dedicated home room teacher regardless of the type of teacher needed as well as the specialist teachers who
are teaching those special classes like art or music or PE. Once again, these funds are restricted in that you have to have a home room teacher. You have to offer specials, right? These are not choices,
right? However, it doesn't mean there isn't some choice in the restriction. For specials, for example, while we require a certain amount of PE for every student, there's a lot of flexibility between dance or theater or music or
other art or other classes at a school. For our secondary schools, there is a different fundamental method of funding. Schools are still allocated teaching staff, but they're allocated by period
for a six period schedule to ensure that there's a sufficient staff to meet the needs of students. uh we choose an assumption of a six period schedule with teachers teaching four of the six periods because that is
the most expensive version of our high school scheduling model. Schools with other schedules may be able to build those schedules with fewer teachers, but this is the most that a school would need. There are different ratios here based on
the ratios of class size in our teacher contract and the mun is called out in particular as our only dual language high school. They have a lower class size. Um I'm going to come back in a minute to a special slide just about our resource
inclusion funding. You'll notice this is the one sort of different rule in this section in that rather than a specific assignment of teachers or pair professionals, there's a dollar amount assigned and the restriction has some
flexibility. The next section of our rules assigns pair of professionals to schools based on the needs of their classrooms. The following section provides non-instructional required staffing at
various ratios laid out by district policy or collective bargaining agreements. The final section here has to do with flexible per pupil funding. These funds, you'll notice, are marked as discretionary.
That means the school has full choice of how they spend the funding or they're marked as discretionary with guard rails. For example, supplies and materials funding is discretionary. We don't determine what types of supplies
and materials to buy, but there are guard rails in that you can't use your supply budget to buy a contracted service or to buy additional staffing. You'll notice across these rules that
some are even across schools and others are differentiated based on various determinations of student need. One final rule to note is there's a system of manual adjustments.
These manual adjustments aren't don't follow district-wide rules, but are added for particular reasons. So, for example, we have a pilot of a restorative justice program. This is not a district-wide rule, but an
allocation to three schools and is made as a manual adjustment for FY27. This section also includes transition funding as we move into our new funding formula. That number would be positive if a
school is getting additional resources to support the transition or negative if the school is having money held back so that we can ensure we have sufficient funding to support the schools in transition with negative budget
implications. And Serena's going to talk a little bit more about that in a few minutes. Um, so once again, these rules are all available on the website. And I just wanted to quickly go back and pick one school. I think given the amount of times she's
asked me questions or given me feedback on our school budgets over the last few years, I'm going to pick on the Bradley um, the principal there who does an excellent job of managing her budget and giving feedback. So she won't mind me picking her out special to show her
school's budget. So you'll see here different than what was in the rules document. This allocation one pager for a school shows the things that are particular to the school. So they have their allocation for their principal. They
only have one school building. So they have one secretary. Their enrollment has not met the threshold for a second secretary. So there's no additional allocation. They have 14 classrooms, so they have funding for 14 teachers and so on.
We want to be really clear with communities why the funding is there. So in combination with the rules document that I just shared, you can review these documents to understand a specific school. The last thing I want to share before I
complete our presentation is just one change for this year that will be different next year. Because this is the first year of our formula and this formula is fundamentally different than last year. We don't have a comparison between the
Bradley's proposed budget for next year and their current school budget. This does make review of school budgets more difficult. Going forward, this document will have two columns for budget and FTE. One that
shows the current year and one that shows the future year so that the community can see the differences going forward. Um, remember Torres, you're the first person on my screen. Can you give me a thumbs
up if the presentation is visible? Okay, thank you so much. Sorry to pick on you. You were just the first box. Um, great. So, I wanted to talk through some priority investments that are reflected in this formula.
I mentioned I would come back to funding for inclusive education for students with disabilities. This is the unusual hybrid of our two clear categories of compliance funding and flexible
funding. So even though this funding is clearly something that is required for compliance, right? Supports for students with disabilities is a clear legal obligation. We are not funding staffing.
Instead, we are giving all of our schools a per pupil amount that we believe works for the vast majority of our schools. Schools then have the flexibility to build a budget for staffing that meets the needs of their student population in
collaboration with their school communities and their off and the office of specialized services. For some schools, this means co-eing. For some schools, this means pair of professional support. And there's a wide range of options in between.
Every school comp prepares a document called a service map that describes the needs of all the students in the building and compares those needs to the allocation of staffing to ensure there is sufficient staffing to meet the needs of students.
You will notice that there are a couple of manual adjustments in that manual adjustments section where we identified a very small number of schools that had needs above this per pupil amount and
those schools got additional resources. One other important note, we have three day school programs in BPS for students with disabilities who cannot be served in a traditional school.
The Carter School, the Melvin H. King Schools, and the Horus Man School all receive something called program budgets. rather than funding through RSF, they get allocations specifically designed to
meet the unique needs of their students because those student needs are not serviced in other schools in the district. Our next area of investment is for dual language programming. Starting with the upcoming school year,
the funding formula will guarantee paraprofessional support in all dual language classes in grades one and two. Previously, this support had only been guaranteed through kindergarten and provided as needed with class sizes over
20 in grades 1 and two. We believe this will help strategically support language acquisition through foundational literacy. We're also continuing our roll out of dual language programs. We have new um a new program opening at
the Frederick in the fall as well as well as continued roll out of programs at the Blackstone, Sarah Roberts and Mather. There are also uh some new investments in uh costs related to dual language
that are funded centrally throughme but the service and materials are experienced at the school. This includes procurement of curriculum and digital access to platforms as well as professional development planned in collaboration with the school
communities. One other note I want to make while I'm on this slide talking about bilingual education. There have been some questions about a reduction in bilingual staff reflected in our tables. I wanted to take a moment to highlight
that reduction and talk a little bit about its sources. Our budget tables show a reduction of 110 FTE full-time equivalents of bilingual teachers.
While that label says bilingual teacher, it doesn't actually mean that the teacher is bilingual. Instead, what it means is that the teacher works in a program that is primarily serving multilingual learners. As we have moved away from the old district definition of sheltered English
immersion and in line with our state's definition, some of these positions have been recoded either to general education teachers or special education teachers to more accurately reflect their work. Of the 110 teacher and positions that
have been reduced in bilingual teachers, 33 of these positions have actually just been recoded to either general education or special education. In most cases, that teacher remains in their position.
Of the remaining 77, those are positions that were reduced. The main areas of reduction are related to decline in enrollment decline in multilingual learners. We will have 30 less ESL teachers across the district.
13 of the 30 coming from our schools that are closing and 33 less teachers in Slife programs due to both declining enrollment and students exiting our Slife programs. Next, I want to talk a little bit about
alternative education. These programs have been hit as uh by our enrollment decline as a district as well. In response, we are identifying areas where we can reinvest in targeted
ways to support student needs. To do this, we are adding alternative education programs for students with emotional impairments at ABCD University High and Gregorston. We're expanding the ages served at Boston Adult Technical Academy and
Bonnet East to include 16 and 17 year olds who are underredited. And we have completed the conversion of community academy as a program instead of a school. Community Academy placements will now be temporary across two sites, working in
combination with programming at Succeed Boston to provide a full continuum of services. Finally, before I hand it over to Serena, I want to mention the work we're doing to redesign the Melvin H. King Schools.
Enrollment in these schools has seen a over 75% decline over the past decade. This has presented us with an opportunity to redesign the programming at the school. As you know, this school serves our
students in the high some of our highest need students with disabilities in a special education day setting. These are students that are not able to be served in a traditional school. As I mentioned before, the school is not funded using reimagined school funding,
but rather a program budget designed to meet the needs of their students. As we focus on being an inclusive district that serves students in highquality seats close to home, we're in need of fewer seats in this school as
more students can stay in a traditional school environment. However, the work being done at the school remains of critical importance to some of our most vulnerable students. Our budget proposal includes a redesigned budget with the capacity to serve approximately 80 students.
While this requires less positions and funding than the school has, still represents a significant investment of 36 instructional staff, 12 social workers, and many more administrative and support staff for a total of 67 staff supporting the e uh up to 80
students working in the redesign program. This program will focus on improved literacy growth as well as CTE programming and attendance. Longer term, BPS is committed to improving the physical environment of
the Mel King schools and creating a broader spectrum of therapeutic environment. I'll now hand it over to our budget director, Serena Lorac, to talk a little bit more about the examples of schools that are using our reimagined school
funding for. >> Thank you, David. So, um, if we go to the next slide, we've spoken about five scenarios. So under the new formula, schools fall into one of these five scenarios reflecting
how enrollment and student needs are changing at each school. Many of our schools are more of a in a straightforward situation where enrollment and budgets are changing roughly proportionately and schools are adjusting their staffing to match the needs of their student populations.
However, some scenarios are a little bit more complex. In scenario B, for example, schools may have stable or increasing enrollment but are seeing budget decreases because they previously received a hold harmless funding or a special program agreement.
And so as we move to the new form uh funding formula, those schools are being asked to align with the new reimagine school funding rules. Uh another example or another scenario in um scenario D, schools are seeing
increased funding because the new uh funding formula fully funds required compliance positions that were not previously covered. And so the largest number of schools are experiencing relatively small or straightforward adjustments.
Today we're going to really focus more on um examples for scenarios A, B, and C. Over the past several years, we intentionally did not reduce school budgets in line with enrollment declines. Specifically,
under the former um weighted student funding system, we provided soft landings for schools experiencing enrollment declines to ensure those declines were consistent over time before making major adjustments. Later during the pandemic, we also
provided hold harmless funding to maintain stability for students and school communities. Uh anticipating that some students may return with the new re-imagined school funding system. We are returning to a
formuladriven approach. However, we are not making that transition abruptly and spreading it out over a few years because this is a new funding formula. It'll take um a few years to fully implement it across the district. And so
during that transition, our priority is to ensure that no single school experiences changes that are overly disruptive to the student experience. We know that from past experience that that is best practice. As a result, schools that are mostly
impacted by funding changes will receive temporary transition funding. At the same time, we know our resources are finite and we need to ensure that all schools are funded to meet student needs. So, some schools with increased funding will have a portion of that
increase held back temporarily to support the overall transition. This allows us to provide transition funding to schools facing deeper cuts due to enrollment declines so we can move to the new formula in a more stable
and equitable way over the next few years. It's important to note that these adjustments are designed to be short-term and will phase out over the next two years as the new formula is fully implemented. So next, let's take a
look at three examples that show how the new formula works at specific schools in different scenarios. Scenario A, we're looking at English 7 through 12. So this slide shows how transition funding is being held
um sorry, it's um how transition funding is being used to support schools that are experiencing enrollment declines under the new formula. Using English as an example, they're projected to decline by about 13%.
So under the formula alone, the school's budget would have decreased by about 10% or roughly 1.5 million. After working with the school leader, the school community, and our central teams, we are proposing a smaller
reduction. The school will receive about 230,000 in transition funding which reduces the impact of the change. This transition support allows the school to maintain additional capacity
during the adjustment period, including space for students who may enroll later on as part of the long-term facilities transition. Most of the reductions still reflect the lower enrollment and the uh changing
student needs, but the transition funding helps make those adjustments more gradual and manageable. This example shows how we're using transition supports to protect the student experience while we move toward
full implementation of the new funding formula. We're now going to go into our second example where this slide highlights scenario B. A school's enrollment increasing but the budget is decreasing.
At the Higginson, enrollment is projected to rise slightly from this year to next year. However, under the new formula, the school's budget is proposed to decrease by about 7%. The primary reason for this is the end
of the specialized hold harmless funding that the school received in prior years. That funding was based on historical conditions and not the school's current student population. Today, the number of students with
disabilities and multilingual learners at the school has declined, which means fewer specialized positions are required to meet student needs. As a result, the proposed budget reflects the school's current enrollment and service requirements, including modest
reductions in teaching and power teacher empower professional positions. This example shows how under the funding formula, budgets are aligned more closely with the actual student needs even in cases where enrollment may be
slightly increasing. Our final example, scenario C. This is where enrollment is declining but the budget is increasing. And we'll look at the Tobin where their enrollment
is projected to decrease as the school transitions to preK through 6 as part of the grade reconfiguration. However, the school's budget is proposed to increase by about 10% under the new funding formula.
This increase is driven by higher levels of student need, particularly an increase in students with disabilities and inclusive settings as well as adjustments to ensure more equitable discretionary funding. This reflects the
core goal of the funding formula, directing funding proportionately to student need rather than just enrollment. At the same time, not all of the new funding is being released immediately because we are managing a district-wide
transition. A portion of the increase is being held back temporarily to support schools facing deeper reductions. That funding will be returned over the next two years if the school needs remains consistent.
So this example shows both part of the transition, the formula directly um directing more resources to schools with greater needs and the district pacing some of those increases to ensure a stable and equitable implementation
across all schools. So to close, we want to briefly walk through the remaining steps in the FY27 budget process. Earlier this month, we prep uh presented the overall proposed budget to the school committee. Tonight's hearing has
uh is focusing specifically on school budgets, the process, the formula, and key investments at the school level. In early March, we will return to pres uh present the central office budget in more detail. Later in March, the
committee will hold the final budget review hearing. And on March 25th, the school committee is scheduled to vote on the FY27 budget. Throughout this process, we always encourage families, staff, and community members to review
the materials on the district website that David shared earlier and continue sharing feedback. And with that, that concludes the overview of the FY27 school budgets. We appreciate the engagement for the school
committee and our community throughout this process. And with that, I'd like to return it back to the chair um for the committee questions. >> Oops. Thank you. I don't know what happened to my camera, but I will try to fix it.
Oh, there it goes. Sorry. Um, thank you for the presentation and because this is a budget hearing, I want to pause here and open up to questions from the committee. >> Dr. Alkins. >> Uh um thank you for the presentation.
Um and this I I appreciate the granular level that we're getting to see and um I think the comparison a little bit at least with how you're looking at enrollment um from year to year. Um, so
I just have a a couple of uh questions. Um, and uh, Chief Bluma, you noted it earlier that the way in which discretionary spending will be able to happen um, is at the individual school
level. And so um, you noted that this is being done in collaboration with the school leader, but also the the school community. So, I'm actually kind of curious at as to how individual schools are doing this. I understand it's done through school site council in some
places, but I am particularly curious on those schools that we know may not have as active school site council. So, I'm wondering how community input was gathered at um the individual school level. >> Um yes, really appreciate that question.
the the community engagement process is a key part of the budget review process at schools and and as you as you name school site council is the main method that's uh we have designed to gather that feedback. Some schools will also be
engaging with family council uh directly for feedback or a PTA. Um I was actually just at the Curies meeting last night. Um and so schools have their own sort of supplemental structures for that, but we
really are reliant on uh well functioning school site councils. So we work in collaboration with the office of family and community advancement to help get those councils set up and and from the finance perspective we provide training about the budget and the budget
process including specifically this review of discretionary funding uh which is a key part of the school site council process u by our contract with the uh Boston teachers union um the school site council actually has the decision-making authority
over um discretionary funding including a choice of partners, right? And so it really is a key part of the process and and thank you. Um and shifting um just a little bit um you
know as we're talking about um the transition supports that schools will be able to receive is there a more finite period of transition of what the transition supports are? Uh I was just trying to understand that a little bit more. M so
the vast majority of our transition supports will will end up being for one year um because there is a usually there is a specific reason why that support is being given. So for example um the
Frederick school is getting transition support as they merge to keep a second family liaison for one year. So, as the communities come together, both sets of families um have a a a voice they're familiar with in the process, while they
do need to go back to one liaison over time, we wanted to make sure that in that year of merger, they're getting that transition support. Ultimately, of course, they could decide to keep it with their discretionary funding, but we wanted to give them that transition support for one year. um at the English
which was the example Serena shared earlier. It's also for one year but in that case it's because we have some uncertainty around their enrollment projections because of the long-term facilities plan. The English is often a
highly chosen school and so we will know more next fall. either their enrollment will be higher than we expected, in which case their funding formula will go up and offset the need for transition funding, or their enrollment will stay
as we projected, in which case they'll need to finish adjusting their budget to the new level. But in that case, it's only one year because we just need to get to the fall to know what's happening with that school. And so each situation
is slightly different. Um the Henderson is getting some related to their transition to 912. Um once again that's one year for that reason. Um but the vast majority will be one year. The only cases where there might then be a second
year are cases where the enrollment decline is both significant and persistent. Um, so a school that's seeing a really significant decline and then a continued decline for FY28 may be eligible for a second year, but
even then I think it's going to be a pretty tight bar for that second year because we believe deeply in the equity of this system and we don't want to establish a culture of sort of supplemental funding. But that being said, if there is a
really specific need for a second year, we have said we we are definitely going to review that when we have that data next fall. Thank you. And I mean something that I think would also just be helpful for like the public because I think you do a
decent job going through the individual scenarios. Um uh but something I think that would be beneficial is to to show how this would have been just mathematically how this would be
different um with a weighted student like formula um in comparison or just just right alongside what reimagined school funding unlike formula would would do or what it's how it's changing
um in in that sense would that or would that not necessarily be a good perspective from >> I mean it certainly is something we could look at. I think and we we did we did really consider it as we were thinking about the implementation this
year. I think ultimately the reason we decided against it is that it had been so long since we had actually run the formula for real that it it it would feel sort of
um off. And then the other thing we were a little bit concerned about was just like a little bit of uh confusion about what was happening, right? because we haven't run the actual formula and what communities have seen the last couple
years is this sort of whole harmless funding level, they would then effectively have like three different things they were looking at. And so we we decided for the slightly simpler approach, but I think to your point, it was something that we were we were very much on the fence about all fall as we
were deciding how to roll this out. >> No, thank you. That's that's that's certainly helpful context and I think it's, you know, just always in the spirit of just trying to make sure our families understand it as like as clearly as possible like what the the
benefit is and um for for it. Um and then sort of my last question which is really around trying to understand and reconcile I'm thinking of a situation like
having multilingual um educators um in ensuring that every school has a sufficient amount of multilingual educators. And so when we talk about compliance, it seems to me that there
there are just multiple scenarios unless schools are able to accomplish um staffing through the discretionary funding that they might not be in compliance with say something like the
Garity rule. Um so just could you just elaborate a little bit on that for me? Yeah. >> I mean, I think this is one of our key areas of focus um around it's um
it's both a combination of what are the positions you have and what's the budget you have and then how do you use it. So, one of the things our um office of human capital is really focused on is even though a position may not be coded
as a bilingual position, it might just be a, you know, a third grade teacher, we know there's a huge value in hiring a bilingual staff member into that role, right? Because you're going to be working with students and families who
who speak another language. And so our school communities, our hiring committees with support from HR are definitely working to try and make sure we're hiring a diverse range of staff into all positions in the district. Um,
and I know every year there are sort of uh areas of priority where our HR team is looking really deeply to try and ensure we're hiring um uh staff who who reflect the students we serve.
Thank you. And is Pelano Garcia? Thank you, Madame Chair. Thank you for the presentation. Um for fundamental Yeah,
I'm I'm not hearing the slide number 14 says that it supports the uh formula. So what it says slide number 14 that the financial uh formula guarantees the hiring of par profofessionals for the
educational purposes. >> For the accusition of language considering the basic and fundamental literacy So the question is if this particular formula guarantees the instruction in the native language because
it is not very clear to me the way it is conveyed or it applies only for the accusition of the English itself. >> Yes. So, um I'll do my best with this one and superintendent may take over for me. Um but in these schools
we're adding the paraprofessionals to provide additional support but the expectation in all of our dual language CLA um schools is that academic instruction is happening in both English and the partner language. So, in all of
these programs, there's a division of I think it's uh I'm not get the percentages right of the day, but a certain percent of the day is would be in Spanish uh or Haitian Creole or Vietnamese or so on and then the rest of
the day would be in English. Um but both lang is academic instruction is happening in both languages. >> Yeah. And I would I would just add to that that um the the hiring for these positions um memo Palanka Garcia are
going to to be with the eye of um making sure they are multilingual and in whatever the primary language is of that dual language. Yes. It is very important that is a conversation that we've been having for a long time the instruction in the
native language because Right. >> We we'll be talking about the uh need and the importance of the implementation of the native language at home for the purpose of the students not losing the native language.
Because you have to consider that if we are talking about equitable literacy not seeing clearly that this part is being included that is where my question is coming from. Mhm. >> Second question I would like to ask
>> it is regarding the alternative education. It sounds to me very interesting the way it's proposed but at the same time it preoccupies me. What is concerning to me? It says well the guarantees of m multilingualism the
uh what is very concerning to me is that the uh students that need that language acquisition are not properly channeled accordingly. You have to consider different factors here that um traditional multilingual students have a lower graduation rates.
We have to consider the frustration that this causes and sometimes they're not instructed in their own language. educational a little bit concerning to me because uh somehow we are challenging them or directing them into a or indirectly into
a an alternative education the way I see it. So the hope is so the hope is that the resources that are being provided to that they don't have to go through alternative education that the resources being provided can guarantee better results in that
particular population. Uh-huh. >> Um, so 100% I think uh we have been adding the newcomer programs into the high schools now for the last several years. Um so that is um
the first line is that we're developing that across the high schools. We have particular schools like Boston International Binka which is uh in its mission to serve our newcomer and multilingual students. Uh and they do an
excellent job. Um and what we noticed was that there are students sometimes over age. They may be 16, 17, 18 who come in, they are uh a ninth grader.
They want to work. they need different schedule um or they may have um failed uh you know a year or two and they're disengaged. We have been trying to build up for those students the ability to reach back
out and to wrap arms around them and to give them additional options as we re-engage them in schools like um Boston Adult Tech. Um so B is very specifically
18 and older but um we built a lot of resources up in B and with everything going on federally we are just not seeing the enrollment there. So in conversation and collaboration with the leader and the staff, we are now going
to open it up for those 16 and 17 year olds who might need to have a different kind of schedule to work or they might be interested in a particular career area that B does. So it's not for a lot
of students, but it's expanding the age back. But if you are a multilingual learner at the high school level, all of our high schools should be serving you with the intent to graduate you. And for students that that for a variety of
reasons doesn't happen for, that's where alternative education or something like Binka can be really helpful to giving them a diploma. Not lowering standards, increasing options. All right. So,
thank you so much. >> That is very helpful. Thank you very much, >> Miss Torres. >> You're muted still. Thank you, chair, and thank you for all of us uh that were listening to this presentation. Uh I know that David um
Chief David talked about the uh formula, the new formula and how it's being used and uh trying to support all principles and everyone to use it in the best way. But one of the questions I have is about
um today I was some of the community members that I know talked to me about the um shifting of students from the trai transitional um language into specific and then taking out that off of uh the priority
of Boston public school and taking the shelter English and they were wondering you know like how and every all kids that are multilingual or need that second language uh support we put into general
ed with ESL teachers for one of my question is uh what process instructors are in place to ensure that this fund are spent specifically on the district's priority of inclusive
programs and bilingual programming to support all these kids that really need Yeah. Um so I think for that in particular we rely on our close partnership with the
office of multilingual and multicultural education who have um two types of liaison who work with each school. one is supporting instructional program design and the other is supporting like
compliance and sort of uh ensuring that students schedules and things are meeting the minutes that kids need. And so schools have that sort of one two of support from the office on creating that design.
when it comes then into budget season, they are making re they're doing reviews based on need and making adjustments to that and and we they actually uh as they're called keeps an actual tracker of every school's plan
um going into the year. So they they make a plan in budget season. This is how we're going to be using these funds to support our multilingual learners. And then actually goes to every school in the fall and make sure it's happening. And if it's not happening, we have a follow-up conversation with the
school to figure out why. Maybe needs changed and if they changed, they might need additional resources and we have reserves for that, right? But is in constant review and support ideally as a supportive partner first but as an
accountability partner as needed to ensure that these funds are used um in the best interest of the students in the school. My second question is around uh I know do that you talked about um schools that
reach out to uh to know what to do. So I was wondering who supports the schools and the principles and anybody who's planning to make to ensure that these fundings are allocated to meet the needs of all students, general ed students,
>> students with disability and multilingual learners and that the discussions around the resources needed to be effective. >> Yeah. Um uh soup, I'll I'll take this from my perspective, but you might want to add more. From my perspective, this
is the real benefit of the regional model we've shifted to. So, every school has a dedicated crossf functional team led by a school superintendent. That school superintendent, I think on average, supports only 13 schools and
they are looking across all these different areas of program design to make sure that the school is making the most of their resources. They're also then deploying their liaison from different offices in targeted ways to support different things. One school
might not need any help with multilingual education. They've got it down, right? They have a really strong instructional team. Another school might have newer teachers and need more support. And so then when it comes to our budget meetings, the school superintendent is almost a co-f facilitator. They're in
every meeting and they're the one who's really helping the school navigate this complicated situation of I've got my the needs of my students. I've got the availability of my staff. I've got the required compliance rules and policies
of the district and there that school superintendent is the sort of hub of making sure the school gets what they need and uses it in the best way possible to meet the needs of students. >> Okay. And my last question is around uh >> member Torres, can I just add in just a
couple things to that. So um I think that is certainly the main layer um of the support to start, but I think in a a budget like this and a in a process like this, the reality is there's going to be things that even the regional soup needs
additional support or the liaison need additional support. I think David and his team have done an excellent job with making availability so that as kinds of questions come up, we can determine is this a pattern that we have to address across a group of schools or is this
singleton issues and then it gets escalated as it needs to. Sometimes that may be to the chief of a particular department like multilingual learn like or special education. Sometimes that's to uh above um the budget liaison to Serena or to David. But this has really
been a problem-solving 100% hands-on from everybody knowing that there were some difficult decisions that really needed to be made at the school side and to your very point that the school would have the resources it needed to serve every student. So I
think this has actually been a beautiful example where the regional model is the first level but then it goes up and sometimes that's you know sometimes that's also my getting involved in something to understand if something is more of a pattern and then we have a decision point we need to make. So at
this point it's the the decisions, the conversations, the creative thinking about different situations have been at all levels of the organization in support of the principles and the communities. >> Thank you.
My last question is about I know that we uh a lot of teachers and par profofessionals uh need to be looking for jobs or will be looking for jobs and uh they were and last time we talked about some of them will be reassigned
and I was wondering what is the procedure and method for rehiring all these teachers or do they have to go through the process of you know like applying for the jobs when they see um being interviewed by the principal who's going to hire them and um doing a
mini lesson to see if it's they fit the uh criteria for that school and what they looking for. >> So I I'll start with that David if if you want to chime in but it's funny you say that member Torres because um one of the things we've been doing in the
schools that are closing is actually having principles that have vacancies go to those schools and observe teachers actually doing lessons, right? like as a way to make that match. Um I think this is, you know, this is um human capital's full on board. They're doing lots of
meetings with the school leaders. They're looking at the pattern across the district of the different areas and where we're seeing particular groups of teachers forming or particular amounts of paris. Um sometimes that may be a seniority with a placement. Sometimes
that may be that there's openings and um the principal's running a process and we're making sure that principles are talking with each other. So if you have great provisionals that because the positions not there, they're going to lose. We want to make sure those great
provisionals are kept in the system. That means lots of conversation among principles in the regional networks to talk about hey such and such wonderful teacher a wonderful parah I don't have a space this year but that would you know he or she would be wonderful to come on
board it's really that intentionality you know we said from the start to the principles this is a year we want to look from within not go outside the system to start for hiring but actually look within at the at the just the amazing educators uh that we have So I
think our hope is when we look at the data at when all is said and done, we're going to see that most of the folks if they didn't have a placement in one school will actually find their why in another school. >> Thank you.
>> Thank you, Mr. Peralta. >> Thank you so much, Chair Robinson, and thank you, Superintendent and David and Serena for the presentation. Uh I have two quick question but the first one I want to give you the the reason the
behind what the background of why I'm asking this question is because um if there is one thing that I would like to accomplish in my tenure as a member of this uh Boston public school committee
is that is a change in hearts and minds of the people still out there that think that bilingual education is a nice thing to have for the immigrant families. It is not.
Bilingual education definitely is helping our immigrant students, but we it's also something good and and so after for the native English speaking families, too. I
I I live this in my in my own family. I try for four years to get my older daughter into the Hernandez school which is two blocks from our house, five minutes walk and the four years we always because
it's the lottery we never won. we always were placed on on waiting list and I I don't know now but at the time I think there were like 15 families for
for every single uh seat in in K1 K2. So we I feel like we we need to be moving in that direction of expanding those bilingual programs
and therefore I mean I dream with with a time when when we use the designation of multilingual learners for all our learners because they have the potential for it. I seen it at the Sarah Ringwood
with my when my kids go. I've seen these kids that were my my the classmate of my daughters that they were they come from families where the parents are not fluent in Spanish. They may have one or two words in Spanish and
now they are talking to me in Spanish. They are bilingual and biiterate and that is us. That is our bilingual programs that are doing this. So the question is I know that David just said that um
it's not 105 bilingual positions that uh teachers is more like 77. It's still a very hard pill to swallow that we are losing this specialized position when we should be funding and expanding
our capacity for for these dual language immersion programs and I hear you superintendent what you are saying that we are we are trying our best but I honestly ask what else can we do so we don't lose this specialized position to
support bilingual classrooms. >> So, I think um I don't know if uh Chief Gir is on because I know she would love to talk about the efforts that we're doing. Um Member Peralta just around exactly what you're saying, right? The
expansion of bilingual programs throughout the district, particularly so that there's regional access, which to your point there hasn't been, right? So, that's meant less access for certain students. Oh, I see Chief Kamir. So, I'll let her start with that and then I think David and I can talk about the
positional piece. >> It's mute. >> It's muted. Joel, >> sorry. Um, thank you, Superintendent Skipper, and thank you, member Peralta. Um yes definitely there are a lot of
families who were like you when you were looking to enroll your child um at the Hernandez because the Hernandez for one point at time in the district was the only one and we have increased more bilingual dual opt um dual language
options for families where we have had the hurly and then we added the Greenwood um but it still wasn't enough right um especially when you look at the demographics of our students across the district, the majority of our ML students are Spanish speakers, but then
we have many other multilingual learner families who speak wonderful um a plethora of languages. So, um since Superintendent Skipper and I have come on to M, we have really looked at the landscape of how we can offer more
bilingual programming, dual language programming for families. So when we look at the landscape, we want to ensure that when a family comes or goes to the welcome center that they do have a dual language option. So currently right now
when parents go in their cluster there is a at least one Spanish dual language option for them. And in addition since then, we've added Haitian Creole, we've added Mandarin language access, we've
added Vietnamese, um, and we're adding Cabo verdian Crayola, which will be the first in the nation at the Frederick next year. Um, and the Haitian Creole one is also the first in the nation. So, at this point, we are at a point where we do have a
footprint of dual language programming available for families. But in addition to that, we have an expansion that's going on. So like at the Sarah Roberts, at the Blackstone, we started off this year with K1 and next year we'll expand
to K2 all the way until we um are a K through six offering and um hoping that many of the students would metriculate to the munes or whatever secondary options that they would like. Um, do we have um, you know, can we are we meeting
the needs of every family right now? No. I'm just going to be very honest with you. We have so many beautiful languages that are across the district, but we just don't have the capacity at this moment to offer dual language in every language that students speak. One,
because we want to make sure we have the capacity to do it. Two, we need to ensure that when we create a program because we don't want to say, "Oh, we used to have a program here and then it's no longer there." We want to ensure that it's sustainable. Also, we need to ensure that the teachers that we have do
have the academic language, the instructional language to be able to instruct in that language so that the students are really truly bilingual, biiterate, um, and would attain the seal of biiteracy. So, there's a couple of challenges we have right now. One is
really building up our um teacher uh field of bilingual educators so that when we do have additional programs like a heritage courses across the district that we would like to offer for other languages um that we're building up that
pipeline and we're constantly looking at the demographics of where families are, where the needs are. But we're really proud that we do have um a group of dual language programs that are currently
expanding every year. Um like the Blackstone next year will have two K2 classrooms and Sarah Roberts will have two in addition to that in addition to all of the other programs that we currently have. And so yeah, we are, you know, constantly working with the
community. will be reaching out even more to really determine where we can expand um in a where we have the capacity to expand and where we can create sustainable programs. Thank you. And then David I don't I think to member
other question about the actual positions and the coding piece. Could could you like give an example of a school and kind of what happened in that? Sure, I can give an example. So, um, the Edison School in Brighton used
to have a a what we used to call the BPSSEI multilingual program. So, it was a classroom where all the English learners would be sort of separated into that classroom across multiple languages. um and they would be taught
by a home room teacher who may or may not have actually spoken that language but who was coded as a bilingual teacher of the changes that we described this year. So the Edison has is going to have nine fewer teachers coded as bilingual
this upcoming year, but they're actually only reducing one of those positions, right? Because a classroom is closing and that's a real reduction. the other positions are being coded more appropriately as we close that program
that isolated students in that separate classroom and move to a more ESLbased model at the Edison. So the teachers aren't the even though there's nine fewer teaching positions coded that way only one of them has actually been
reduced. >> Thank you. Thank you for the explanation. And again like let's not think that we need to close classrooms bilingual classrooms because we are getting fewer immigrant students. We we need to open more bilingual
classrooms because it's not just for the bilingual. is for for also for the the English speaking families that are looking looking around and seeing the this society being so diverse and wanting their kids to grow uh also
multilingual. Um my last question is regarding the reimagine uh a school funding formula. I I have a questions about when when you are considering positions
that are for the entire school. Uh for example, let's take as example the social workers. I think the the require is that for every 400 students the school needs to have a a social worker.
Um and that's m mandatory. But what kind of flexibility there is because one stu one school with 400 students you can compare that that school with another with the
same number of of students but a school A may have you know 2% of the students are on house and a school B may be 20%. And in school A may have 50% of people living in poverty. See, and the other
school may have 90% of of the families in poverty. So >> I understand that we need to draw a line at in some way, right? But what kind of flexibility you have >> for the a specific school and the specific students they are serving?
>> Um, thank you so much for that question. We so for that example we actually differentiate that resource in two ways. First the number of social workers are allocated based on the number of lowincome students in the school not the
overall enrollment. So that means schools with more lowincome students have a higher ratio of social workers per student. The second is that schools that serve
particular populations of students with emotional impairment related disabilities get an additional allocation as well as schools serving students with limited or interrupted formal education. I say this both to update you on the
social worker allocation, but also to say more specifically that we are very open to differentiating any of these positions. And I think one of the places the committee can continue to give us feedback is ways that we should be
differentiating or identifying different needs that should be um supported across any type of position. And so as we build this formula together over the next few years, we can continue to adjust rules
and also create new types of positions and allocations based on needs that you're seeing in the community. >> Thank you. And I'm a man of few words. I never thought I was going to run out of that clock and I did. So I'm gonna shut up now.
>> All righty. Thank you. Um, before I call on you again, Miss Palano Garcia, I just want to check in with Mr. Tron. Did you have any questions at this time? >> Um, not really. I I just want to applaud
the the u the work of uh the finance team and the budget team. I think it's very clear and I um I do appreciate the concerns that they put in particularly across all um all different types of uh
students. I as other members have um concerns regarding um bilingual programs and I have been advocating for that for the last eight years. Now we have members who are
advocating, continue advocating and I I I appreciate the fact that it is still a an issue at at the front burner and I I app but I do see the care
the thoughtful allocations this superintendent and the budget team in allocating um equitably for everything including
bilingual programs. So without without any questions, I just want to express my gratitude to that. Thank you. >> Thank you, Miss Pelano Garcia. >> Thank you, Madame Chair. I have a I have a small question.
Um, yes. So, I just wanted to to mention that we have to recognize the way that we say the dual language program. Um, in Boston. >> Yes. And I just wanted to say the way
that it has been pushed right to have this uh conversation about the dual language in the in in Boston in the whole Boston area. And I would say that this has to do right I believe with the communities
that have been advocating the families that have been advocating for these dual language programs. And also that's why I believe that the only the population that will be beneficiated it's only about 10%.
Um and my question is what is the timeline right? What is the timeline that we can share? What are the next steps? Because we are grateful for the work that has been done but we just wanted to to share on that. So that
and yes so that this program can continue to expand. And what about the 90% right? The 90% that is remaining that is um hopeful to continue to learn the native um language and also to continue to expand on their knowledge
and on this language. So Chief Camir, do you want to just um could you just share with member Palanka Garcia and the public um you have three programs that have been approved for next year. um just sort of what those are and then what is the timeline for
roll out of the ones that were just approved. Thanks S. So the roll out for the programs that we have that were approved that started off this year um like at the Sarah Roberts and at Blackstone
we have K1 right now and both will expand K through six. So that means we have another seven years of rolling out dual language programming for those schools. The Mather is still starting is still continuing to roll out. So we have one more year rolling out. Next year
when we start off with the Cabo and Crayolo program we will have that will be year one and it will take eight years for it to um roll out year by year so that we become K through six um for the
um for the programs. I also want to say u member Palano yes it's very important that we do have um multiple options for families in dual language programming but also we have families have choice
right now too is so many families do choose dual language program but then there are some families who don't choose that. So we we we have to ensure that we provide choices for families. But even if we provide choices for families and a
family chooses not to enroll a dual language program as a district, we're still obligated to ensure that we're provide um language instruction for students in terms of for um English language acquisition. But it's also important for us to honor the language
um and the um the assets that the students do bring and contribute. So that's also part of the work that we want to do to make sure that we have, you know, culturally and linguistically sustaining practices at the schools
because students and families need to know that even though they're not enrolled in a dual language program that their child's culture, their family is being honored. So we see that with the curriculum embedded there. we see that
in the classroom libraries that we have um for families. So I I just want to also just reiterate that families do have choice and so just want to highlight like at the Blackstone um really want to work with the community
to ensure that we are filling the Blackstone. Um I think part of it is because it's fairly new so not many families know about it. Um, but you know, families are registering for the Blackstone, but some families have not registered for the dual language program. And so, we've actually gone
when we look at the home language surveys, we actually go back and ask families and say, "Hey, um, there is a dual language program for your K1 or your child that you're registering for K2 next year, uh, that there's a Spanish dual language program. Would you like to enroll your child there?" So, some
families say yes and some families say no. So, at the end of the day, it's really about choice for families, but as a district, we want to ensure that our families have options. >> Thank you so much. >> Yeah, Vice Chair Scar.
>> Thank you, Chair. Um, and and thank you BPS team for the for the walkth through and the illustrative examples. Um, I have a few questions. First though, just a comment that appreciate the responsiveness to themes that you'd heard um that you baked into the
presentation about concerns about specific reductions of of um teacher types, etc. And I'm just thinking about the structure of these hearings going forward and how it could be helpful to our questions to hear public comment um
on the front end so that we can respond. Um, I do want to make clear for public comment today that we can still ask questions that relate to school budgets at the central office budget meeting next um, in a few weeks. Um, but I just
wanted to to share that that might want to be something that we consider in the future so that we can be um, continue to be as responsive to themes that come up in public comment. Um, also appreciate your slide that offers
some clarification on the difference between transition funding, soft length uh, landings and um, hold harmless funding. Um, and I guess a two-part question extending from Dr. Alan's um, train of
um, questioning there. Um, what you gave a couple of examples of what you imagine would be different a year from now potentially that might make a school readier to remove that transition funding than today? Um, is is
that generally true for the majority of schools who are receiving transition funding? And also, will there be potentially a new set of schools that will need it um if they experience unexpected enrollment declines? And where would from where would that
funding come? Because right now you're withholding money from schools that actually should be getting more once that's expended. Um what what could occur then? >> Um I really I really appreciate that. I
think I from what I have seen to date, I think there's at most probably three schools in situations that we would consider for a second year of funding for current transition issues because of the sort of persistent and complex
nature of the change at that school. Um, but ongoing, I think part of the need for transition funding was that our previous formula was not directly tied to enrollment. And so
schools that were seeing enrollment adjustments were often dealing with uh multiple things going on. So, they both had an enrollment decline and they had um uh a whole harmless or something else
going on. I think what this formula does relatively well is it it removes funding in um chunkier increments versus as smoothly as weighted student funding did. And so just to go into that, um if
a school loses 10 students of enrollment for next year, if if they're an elementary school and it doesn't change anything about their compliance funding, that funding won't actually go down. It will change their discretion, but the per pupil amount of that is
significantly smaller and more able to be managed with things like non-personnel. At the secondary level, this is more about sort of some key thresholds of enrollment size where if a school goes from, you know, 550 students to 450
students, that would be a pretty significant budget change. But really, until you're at a place where you can remove an entire cohort of teachers across all the subject areas, their budgets will stay more flat. And so what I'm expecting to see for next year is
while there will probably be another group of schools with a more significant reduction because of enrollment decline, the we won't see as many schools that are having a change. Um I feel like the
volume this year is due to a lot of the hold harmless and the legacy weighted student funding policy versus the mechanism of the funding formula going forward. appreciate the point that the new funding formula is really designed to
protect against small differences in enrollment. Um that also can require greater investment, right, to keep things level. And as such, you know, with the unexpected enrollment declines being um more extensive than were
projected, um what does this do to the long-term facilities plan in terms of evaluating what our proper footprint would be in terms of the number of schools by 2030? So, I think we're looking at that right now, member scarit, um to assess, uh,
you know, whether that actually changes the bottom line of the number of schools and if so, at what grade spans. Um, and I would expect that in the spring we would update um, school committee on that piece. >> Appreciate that. Um,
just maybe for a further conversation on at at that time about long-term facilities planning and enrollment. Um, we know so much of enrollment declines are out of our control, but some of it is about choice and just wondering is there any budget, thinking or capacity
to make any plays to get students back to BPS at all? Um, I get mailings a lot from folks trying to take my child from BPS um and make other choices. Do we have those ability to contact families who've made other choices? um what what
is our capacity to um really try to try to capture the lion share of Boston residents to choose BPS? >> Uh we do and I think that that's something the team is the recruitment team is talking about. I think we're seeing it in particular areas like for instance Madison has a pretty robust
recruitment strategy um going right now. So uh I think even the secondaries um for instance uh they redid the profiles. They've also we've got the school fairs. Um so I think we're really trying to think on all different levels about it.
Um it's interesting because some of our data isn't so much that uh students are leaving the BPS. I think it's uh we're seeing the enrollment hit in both in the multilingual learner population specifically with the federal landscape but then also um the cohorts that it's
just smaller cohorts coming up of the number of kids that that people are having. So, um, so it's going to make it even more competitive for everyone to make sure that every student sees themsel here. So, um, it's a good point and I think it's definitely something that the teams are actively working on.
>> I will just I'm sorry you gave me a moment to talk about how much I love the BPS playgroups for kids, uh, who are under school age. Both of my kids have done them and they're just amazing. And I think that is a wonderful way of us engaging in the community for a free dropin program at a school, getting to
see what school is like in a BPS classroom and the kids just have a blast gets them very excited to go to school. So yeah, um >> those are great strategies. I think continuing to think outside of the box as it does get more competitive for sure. Um appreciate the information on
the alternative education investments. um with a specific question around um what you shared about Mel King uh and the uh enrollment decline that's occurred over time to the current enrollment of 80. Uh you also talked about investments into the school to make sure students are getting what they
need. Uh what's the ultimate enrollment vision approximately for Mel King? >> So I think right now we're looking at somewhere between 100 and 125 um that that would that would be about it. Back when we did the spec of um the
design of of a building upgrade, it was uh roughly for about 150. But we're, you know, we're seeing both cohorts smaller EI the number of students being referred with uh an EI disability less. Uh and now that we're opening up EPS for a lot
more access and choice for our students with emotional impairment, um you know, I think that uh the hope is that u Mel King can serve as it's intended to the students that most need a therapeutic day setting. Um but that in other ways
there's least restrictive environment open and accessible uh to our other students. So I think we're looking at uh around 100 to 125. >> Thank you. That's helpful. Um, and extending on member Palano Garcia's
question about um, alternative education and and who it's serving, I think it would be great to have a spring um, update on alternative education uh, where we can hear more about that as well as the intersection of alt ed and
and mass core as that's a a big topic right now as well. >> Yes, >> absolutely. And uh I'm just wondering maybe this may be in the central office uh part of the outline next time, Chief Bloom, but
summer programming funding. Um where does that fit in? Um is it looks like I believe it's an increase um >> yes, >> last year to this year. And why is that? And what does it entail? Uh yes it's it
is a central budgeted option but I I won't make you wait for the answer. Um the um we are not actually seeing an increase in summer funding overall. What we are seeing is a change in the way we're budgeting for it. More
specifically we had been budgeting for a lot of programming using ESSER and then some other grant funding um that is no longer able to support the size of the program we want to offer. So part of our uh budget this year is moving the funding for some of our summer work onto
the general fund. A pretty significant sum I should say. Um and so um that is funding for existing programming versus an expansion of programming moving off of um federal funding.
>> Okay. Um maybe this is something to um double click into um next time, but I know that at during the fall presentation on summer programming, we had some questions about kind of there's so much happening, but the quality and
and value and alignment to priorities. I mean, were was there any decision to maybe stop some prioritize others um that are more impactful? That might be useful to hear that point. Yeah, I mean I can just say quickly that this has
actually been um a main focus of most of the conversations about the summer we're coming into I think on two sides. One is on the community based programs through fifth quarter. I think uh in general Boston After Schools collected some really powerful data uh as well as we have in terms of uh impact of the
programming on students but also um just how many students actually attend the program and what their attendance looks like uh in addition to what they learn and how they begin the school year. So based on that data, we definitely are doing refinement on the Boston after school and beyond choosing to both
discontinue certain partnerships and increase certain partnerships. And then very similarly with our own summer learning, we will be adding in very concrete um literacy and math benchmarking uh for students much like we used to do in the BPS um because you
can have fun and learn um and so that is the mantra. So, we're going to be um you'll be seeing a bit of a a real revision, I think, of how we're approaching that. Um and also on the recruitment of students that could be most benefiting by it, benefited by it.
>> Thank you. Almost done. Um Chief Bloom, appreciate the walk through the one pages and how to read those. We're not necessarily able to see how what was purchased with the discretionary funding. Is that right?
Um >> yes that's right. >> Yes. Um and so as such I think it would be helpful coming back to this one allocation of a a guidance counselor for schools to know for secondary schools for example what um postsecary support
for students like with whom is it living and are schools feeling like they have what they need um in in terms of advising and supporting students through transition to post-secary. Um also interested in whether school leaders feel like they have what they need at
single administrator schools. Um for folks who are not also teach is there someone else who's not teaching or a family liaison who's serving in at least some sort of support if a principal has to be away or in an emergency etc.
>> Yeah, I mean thank you so much for all that feedback and I know these are things that we'll we'll definitely look into. Um uh if alongside the budget book information that you'll be receiving uh shortly, there will be some slightly
more detailed information on every school's budget, but it's more of a breakdown on sort of like supplies versus contracts versus some different main categories of positions. Probably doesn't get into quite the level of detail you're thinking about there. Um but we can think about how to develop
that in future years. Um >> there is still so much decision-m at the school level in terms of how how to use you know um discretionary funding that to get a full picture it's sometimes difficult um without that last piece. Um
but thank you. Um >> just two quick things me members. So I think one is one of the things that David and I have had a lot of conversations about is in the reimagining funding as it continues to roll out. um really having eye around this issue of the single building admin
you know going forward. So I think you'll a lot more about that. I think the the point on secondary is an excellent one. It's also complex because it gets into partnerships. >> Um some schools are the beneficiary of partnerships like college advising core or they strong you know um with with
another college prep. Uh so it really it's not even just all represented in the budget. Some of that is all in kind. Um, but I will we will talk with CCLR and see if that office because I know they capture a lot of this is able to give a snapshot of the activities that
are directly correlated to college and career. >> That would be wonderful. Thank you. Um, I'll turn it over to the chair at um a budget presentation in the future. Would love to hear more about the approach to reserves. Heard mention of reserves today. Um, is the approach to hold more
than in past years? um is the you know is the goal to um use them by the end to make schools more whole? Would it be better if we held more? Um so reserves as a request for a deeper dive.
>> Yes, for sure. And I can just say as a as a quick um intro that um our reserve level for school positions is at a similar level uh to the current year budget. Uh
okay. >> Okay. Thank you so much for your presentation. I have a few quick questions. I understand the formula, but how do we look at school performance and outcomes to understand the effectiveness of our budgeting and in the allocations?
>> So I think so chair I think this is in a couple ways. I think you know school leaders ground their work in outcome in their school quality plans. Um that is like the main doctrine that they're using. I think when they're building their budget as principles, we lean on
that plan to really look at what are the areas that we're trying to improve on with student outcome. And so I think that's where in the regional model the conversations with regional soups with the liaison are around making the measures matter and making sure that
they're funding things that are going to do that. So I think it is much more cohesive than it's usually um as when I was a principal certainly u much more cohesive in that that plan is a guide and the regional network is that support
to make sure that school leaders are thinking directionally uh you know with it. I think centrally it's the same thing. We've done zero sum budget the last two years very deliberately with the eye of how do you know that what you're choosing to fund is making the difference to students that you're
intending it to or to whatever audience if it's staff development or whatnot. So that's been an exercise. It's building that muscle for sure with um our those that are decision makers within the budget but it's a core principle within both the schoolbased budgets and the central budgets.
>> Yeah. But but I but I also understand the issue of how staff are budgeted and so you sort of get a more of a formulaic issue around the staffing in a particular school. So I'm wondering if
you're looking at outcomes and stronger needs. Does some of the discretionary money goes towards buying more staff or specific staff time or does the district sit with that school to figure out that they do need two additional taras or or
whatever you know to to sort of balance out the formula and the you know focused need of a particular program. >> Yeah. I mean I think that is where these conversations definitely need to be
individualized to a school experience. So for example, our transformation schools work closely with our transformation support team as well as their school superintendent to build up their designs. I think
one of the trickiest things about answering this question for you right uh every year because I I can count on it. um is um separating out the impact of the level
of funding from the impact of the use of the funding. >> And I think for us what we're really part of what going back to a funding formula with consistent rules will help us do is is be really clear that
um we don't think it's the level of funding. We'll keep evaluating this. We don't think it's the level of funding that's driving differences in in outcomes as much as it is the way those funds are being used and implemented in the school and school community. And so
we're working really closely on what are the restrictions that we can make universally and then what are the supports we provide to schools um to be able to meet those uh to meet their needs and make good decisions
about the use of their funds. Okay. I'm not quite sure that's the answer I'm looking for, but anyway, it's getting uh getting closer to it. All righty. Um also um again looking back at the issue
around the loss of or the reduction of bilingual teachers and and the questions about overall how we're defining bilingual teachers, people who speak a second
language is different than a person who has the qual the abilities to teach in that language. Is that correct? Because there are some people who are able to speak and therefore add value to our students because of their ability to be
bilingual. But then there is a subset of people who have the skill set to to be able to teach directly in that language. And then we have a number of people who are called ESL teachers or bilingual who speak English only.
>> That's right. >> As to >> That's right. children with who are by who need bilingual support. How do we evaluate the effectiveness of this very diverse
teaching population against the outcomes of our students? And what is this telling us about what kind of educators do we need to be investing more in to get better overall outcomes for our students?
Yeah, I mean I I think um so chair I think as we we we said like up until two years ago we weren't BPS wasn't tracking um whether a a staff member was multilingual or bilingual, right? Um they might be in a position to your
point but they may be only speak English or they may speak a language other than the primary language in a particular multilingual class. member Palanco Garcia really pushed us on this issue and really pushed us to say we need to
be we need to know like what percent of our staff is multilingual or bilingual and we need to increase that every year and so that's the reason why we've done a lot of recoding so that we can actually answer that question like we know 40% of the hires this year spoke a
language other than English right so we could never answer that question before so we've been doing a lot of correct ing of the coding which is what David's talking about that these positions that are being moved from what was bilingual because a person was in it didn't mean they were bilingual um it didn't mean
they were in a bilingual program and it actually didn't mean that they actually spoke something other than English even so now however in the coding we're doing we can answer that question and we know that when we have a person that's in a
dual language that person is uh that teacher is bilingual certified and we know like if that teacher gets displaced we are displacing a bilingual teacher. We didn't know that before. So a bunch of this is cleaning it up and cleaning
up the coding as David was sort of talking about from what was the old multilingual SEI to what is actually now dual language bilingual education within the BPS a threshold and an expectation and the actual way that we um mark that
individual that staff member is clear. That's how we know when member Palano Garcia says well how do you know that you're hiring more staff that are multilingual? we can say because we actually keep track of this. Now, >> do we and also know what percentage of
teaching staff that we have in classrooms that may not be the strongest people to be able to be a bilingual teacher and how does that impact the number of people that we're reducing and how are we making sure we're not losing
talent that we need. Well, I think you know our goal with our staff who are multilingual is to not lose them, right? That is the the idea is to m to member Torres's point like if we know somebody has the acid of lang of a of another language, we want to know
that so that in the placement of of teachers and paraprofessionals or all actually all educators um or open positions, we're making sure that that asset of language is being reflected. like that's going to be an important piece of keeping our staff whole. Um I
you know I think both Francis and Joelle would be really good to speak to this um just around the um the measure of like with in a bilingual program. Um seeing that staff member as biliterate uh make
you know what is effectiveness look like in that classroom. Um, those are all measures that is working hard on right now. Um, and certainly working in their PD across the bilingual and dual language pathways. But as to the the broader whole staff, I
I couldn't give you that answer right now, chair, but I do think we can ask Joelle and Francis to speak to that at the next meeting. >> Okay. Thank you. >> You're welcome. >> I didn't know if Joel wanted to say anything before I moved on. Go ahead. >> Sure, Chair. Um, I don't have the
number. I can get the number for you, but I just wanted to just reiterate that. Um, yes, we kind of have, as the superintendent was saying, we have and you were saying as well, too. Um, when we think about it, sometimes we have like three categories of bilingual teachers. One, they're coded as
bilingual, may not speak any. Um, they don't have the they don't have the language capacity. Uh then we have bilingual educators who don't have the instructional capacity but they do you know they speak they can communicate with families and and students and then
we have what is really considered a bilingual instructor and for the state of Massachusetts through DESIE a bilingual instructor they have the lensure in a content area um but in
addition to that they have the bilingual education endorsement um that gives proof or the um certification that they are a bilingual educator. They have uh
taken an exam uh to prove that they are bilingual and biliterate um and that they're able to teach and they have the components of um educating students um to promote bilingualism. And so
it is very important that we work on retaining um the these special staff members. Um but you know the superintendent and everyone would say that um for those educators it's very
important that we do retain them but sometimes we may lose them because of seniority um as we're as we're moving on. So um yes would love to work with OHR to ensure that we are retaining um that so that it is a true reflection of the
students that we serve. >> Great. Thank you. Um my last question is about the three day schools and I was wondering what what was the range of per pupil cost for those attending each of our schools and I know they're each a
little bit different. I know the Horus man also there are some students who come to the Horus man who are outside of Boston but I don't think that is true for either the um Carter or for the um Mel
King. Is that correct though? Those are both Boston specific day schools serving Boston. Um, I I'll have to I can get that data for you very shortly, but I I'll need maybe a day to pull it together for you. But the um the only exception to that is
occasionally with the Carter, if a family because of family circumstance has to move outside the city >> and they've served, >> uh, then we would keep them in the school even though they're not technically a Boston resident. Um, but that but they're always they're always a
BPS student first. Um the Horus man is the school that that services students from outside um the district and yes there are some students tuitioned in um and some services they provide as well some additional services. >> Yeah. Yeah. And I guess also in that
range we don't talk about it here but would also like to know again how many students are we supporting who are in out of district placements and as we look at the development of some of our other programs particularly
now for high school special needs or for kids with dyslexia or others. what's the potential or when could that potential be that we would be able to bring some of those students back into the district and at what costs? So, just really some
general questions about the overall cost of the high need the highest needs of special education, those costs and those options. >> Yeah. So, so chair, we serve um anywhere between 375 and 425. it goes back and
forth as out of district uh as students age out or graduate or uh come into the system uh or transfer in. Um and that we're working very hard on developing uh programming that's intended to give parents the option to keep students in
district. Good example is we're developing model um specific learning disability pathways through OSS. Um, and there'll be several schools, East Boston High, New Mission, Fenway, that will have those at the high school level because that's an area where we often see students leave in the ninth grade.
Um, so to your point, this is exactly our thinking um, as well. We know parents want the choice to stay. We know students do. It's up to us to build those programs where we see the biggest attrition out of the system. So, that's a big piece. It was also true of Mel
King where we saw for several years they were the number one school sending students out which would led to us wanting to really help support a redesign there so that parents would choose them and students uh felt like they were getting the same quality education that they would get anywhere
else. >> Thank you. >> You're welcome. >> Yeah, Mr. Try >> I'm sorry to jump in kind of late but um anyway I I just like to uh share my my my thought about bilingualism.
A bilingual teachers who has the ability to speak the the the additional language may be sufficient to to be a bilingual teacher. But in my mind that certification doesn't really qualify the the teacher as a bilingual bicultural
teacher a teacher a bilingual teacher a true bilingual teacher. I think I I I I hope that the school will focus on making sure that those teachers are not only uh sufficient in in that additional
language but also carry with them the the the the sufficiency of of of the cultural knowledge of of of that language as well. Now that with that said, I I just have one last question.
Um the uh the budget the re the the re revision or reimagine budget uh method right now is in response to the um uh you know to the to the inflation to
to you know to all the increases and all that. um the um the method of of the the budget method that we use before the weighted uh soon method in you know in comparison to this method
this this new uh method I'm of the opinion that the the uh the one that is used prior to this one I understand that this one is used because of all these uh reduction you all this financial reduction and all these
hardship. But in my mind, the the the weighted students um formula is more equitable um in relation to students with
disability, bilingual students and and whatnot. So is there or are we going to stay on this um formula budget formula from this point on or are we just on this because of we are dealing with
the current climate financial climate and there may be um sometimes down the road I don't know uh we may revisit the the uh the previous uh formula or are we going to stay on this from this point
Thank you so much for that question, Member Tron. Um, this formula is is actually not um related directly to our current financial situation, but has been the result of a three-year planning process to develop a new formula um
because of some equity issues we felt like we had with the previous weighted student formula. Um, so our plan is to implement this formula ongoing, but I think there is definitely room for feedback and continued development of
the formula um over the next several years. >> Thank you. Maybe maybe we should have a hybrid of of of formula >> maybe. Yeah. >> Yes. Okay.
Okay. Well, thank you for your presentation. Um, and now we will move on to public comment, Miss Parex. >> Thank you, chair. I couldn't I couldn't push the button. Um, thank you, chair.
Uh this public comment period is reserved for individuals to address the school committee specifically regarding the fiscal year 2027 budget recommendation. Comments must be limited to the proposed fiscal year 27 budget. Please note that
general public comment period will take place during the general school committee meeting. We have 13 speakers this evening. Each person will have three minutes to speak and I will remind you when you have 30 seconds remaining. Please feel free to email your comments for distribution to the committee.
Speakers may not reassign their time to others. The time that an interpreter uses for English interpretation will not be deducted from a speaker's allotted time. Please direct your comments to the chair and refrain from addressing individual school committee members or district staff. Please note the comments
of any public speaker do not represent the Boston public schools or the Boston school committee. Please sign in with your registered name. When I call your name, raise your virtual hand and be ready to unmute and turn on your camera. Please begin by stating your name,
affiliation, and where you live. Our first speakers are councelor Co Pepper, Corin Kov Kosovski, Georgia Hollister Isman, and George John Mud. Councelor Calper is not in the meeting. So we will go with we will continue with
Corin Kosovski. Please turn on your camera. You can start. We We can't hear you. No, we can't hear you. Oh, okay. Um, I think she left. So, we will continue with Georgia Hollister Islam.
>> Her hand is her hand is raised. >> She may need to log out and then to get to her sound. Can you please log out? Maybe log out and try and I will call you again. Okay. Yeah, we can't hear you. So, if you try logging out and back
again and I will call your name. Thank you. Uh we will continue with Georgia Hollister Isisman. Hi. Can you all hear me? >> Yes, we can hear you. Thank you. >> Hi everyone. Um, thank you so much for
this opportunity. My name is Georgia Hollister Isman. I'm a parent at the Chitik Elementary School. I have a first grader there. I'm a member of the family council and the site council as well. Um, and I'm here today to talk about the dis the way the district is budgeting
for inclusion classrooms. Um, and the staffing that is sort of like the baseline you talked about is the formulaic staffing for those rooms. Jedic has long been an inclusion school and a successful one. It's something we're all very proud of. Our teachers nearly all hold dual certifications and
have just, I have to tell you, amazing skills serving kids with a wide variety of needs. Um, I will never forget the day I first visited the Cheddick school and watched a K1 teacher simultaneously deal with a kid uh with pretty
significant autism provide reasonable direction to another child and also explain to me about her pedagogy all at the same time. It was truly amazing. Um, but as you have rolled out the new inclusion model, I'm definitely not here to complain about inclusion, but as you
have rolled out the new model, we have gone from a situation at the Titic where an inclusion classroom had 20 students, including five inclusion seats staffed by one teacher and one paraprofessional. Even this is not totally adequate. I really think an inclusion classroom
ought to be staffed by two teachers. But the situation we're in now is worse. inclusion classrooms now have 22 students, one teacher and only a half-time parah. Um, and the school has and only then because the school has
used its discretionary budget to maintain the paras at all. Um, and even my first grader can do this math. This is less education and care for our kids and it's having significant consequences. It's very hard for the school because of the decision you've
made about requiring schools to cover >> Excuse me, please slow down. >> Okay, thanks. Um uh because of the decision y'all have made about requiring schools to cover the cost of the benefits and not just the uh the salary
itself for new positions. It's very hard for the school to use it even its discretionary money to hire new paras. Plus, we have lots of other things we're trying we need that money for, including ESL teachers, school psychologists, etc.
It's having real consequences for our kids. Um, we've had kids out in the class out learning phonics in >> phonics in the hallway because a kid's having a hard time. Um, we have I've had the teacher admit to me that she's not spending as much time reading with my
kid or any of the kids as she normally does or would want to in first grade. We have longtime dedicated teachers who are sad and frustrated and thinking about quitting. Um, it's really not okay. I think it's not what you want. It's not what I want. Um, and I know the budget
is tight and there are a million things that money needs to go to, but the staffing system >> uh needs to change. >> Thank you. Our next speaker is John Mud. Can you hear me? >> Yes, we can hear you. You can start.
>> My name is John Mud. I'm a resident of Cambridge, a longtime advocate in Boston, and uh grandfather of a student in the John F. Kennedy Elementary School. I'm going to try and make my comments relevant to the conversation that's happened uh earlier this evening.
First, Boston is investig investing $128 million in education of multilingual learners. And the question is, are we are you getting the best results from
that level of investment? And what how are we using that money effectively? And I would say that the evidence is that we aren't that we are failing to give the opportunity to learn to most of these multilingual learners. Over 90% are
failing to meet state level uh MCCAST standards. Many are not meeting academic English learning uh in in uh the upper grades. Uh so there's a real question. Some have raised the issue that we need
to have a change of mindset about the value of home language and bilingual education. That we need to deal with the 90% now that are not getting dual language. Currently 10% of the students are getting dual language programs. 90%
are in classes where there is instruction in English only and it is not effective. People have talked about the need to expand home language. I don't see that really significantly affected in the in in in this budget.
You have a de uh only an addition of seven dual language or or or bilingual teachers and uh in dual language programs I hear six classrooms. So, you're talking 120 toundu
uh 40 students out of a population of 15,000 multilingual learners. What's happening to the rest of the 90%? The fact that we're recoding so-called bilingual teachers uh into English
speakaking teachers just reinforces the concern that the trend in Boston has been to move from language specific SEI and uh language specific SLE classes into Englishonly gened classes with ESL.
That has not been successful in the past and it needs to be ch changed in the future. We need to invest that 128 million better. The same in spades means uh for the 4,000 special education students who are English learners,
there's only 9.6 sped bilingual teachers in the budget, they're all in Englishonly classes and o over 95% are failing to meet MCCAST standards. Please rethink how we are using the
resources we have. Thank you. Our next group of speakers will need Spanish interpretation. Um the speakers are Fatima Pñena, Dora Sandoval, Denise Caravayo, and Kyra
Amador. If we can have our Spanish interpreter support, >> Fatima Pñena is the next speaker. Oh, heat. Okay. Okay.
Okay. Uh uh my name is Fatima Pñena and I live in the community of Jamaica plane and uh good afternoon um to everybody. Good good evening to the committee to the school committee here. My name is
Fatima Pñena like I said and I live in the community of Jamaica plane and my child goes to a public school in Boston and this question is specifically Okay. local. Gracias. Um, so I am here today
specifically advocating for bilingual schools because not only because the increment the increase of bilingual schools, it impacts the increase of academic better academic performance. It also gives the students a sense of
belonging. It also strengthens their self-esteem and also in the community and also gives them the opportunity so that they can have opportunities in the future. And our children deserve to learn
without their without caring of the zip code. And this is why Okay. Okay. Gracias. Um, so this is why I'm I am advocating for bilingual schools
because it also um implements the growth and supports the development of students also in their home language. So also thank you to the St. Steven program as a mother mentor in the classroom.
And I in being in the classroom as a mother mentor sometimes I have noticed of children who because they don't understand the language um that the instruction is given then they're not participating. Because they don't understand.
And this is why I am advocating tonight. And thank you so much. And just know that investing in bilingual education is also investing in the talent and in the future of our children. Our next speaker is Dora Sandoval.
Hello. Roseberry. Um, good night everybody. My name is uh Dora Sandoval and I live in the community of Roxberry and also I am the mother of three students. I have three
students that currently go to Boston public schools. One of my students is 25 years old. Another student is uh 17 years old. And my youngest child is 8 years old. and Roseberry. And the reason why I mentioned my
children's um my students age is because when I first came to this country, one of my youngest daughter, she was five years old and she was uh she was put in a school where she assisted in she was
attending in kindergarten and it was a bilingual school. In the following year, she was uh transferred to a regular school. Then I after that I moved to in front of
the school Hernandez and I applied for them to be able to receive my daughter but this never happened. And my third child, the one that I mentioned that is 17 years old, he also uh he also attended a regular school
because he was also never uh accepted to a bilingual education school. And my third student, he is actually attending uh the Hley School where he is attending in a bilingual program that is
in Spanish and English. And for me, this has been a wonderful experience for him attending a bilingual um school because I can truly tell the difference from him to my other oldest daughters that were not able to attend
bilingual education school. Um, and for this to happen, I had to wait for 12 years in order to have uh for my son to have access to this bilingual program. And I wouldn't want families to go through this. And this is
why um we need more access for bilingual schools, bilingual programming. >> And I know these programs take time, but I live through three generations and I've noticed the same issues. Steven
and I know that these are um Boston uh these are programs through the Boston public schools and you do what you can but there are also other programs that work independently such as the St. Steven program which is the one that I'm part of.
and I am working as a coordinator part of this program supporting children uh supporting our children and this is why I believe that you should include this programming, this type of programming and include us in the budget for uh the year 2027.
Um as parents, we are doing our job and this is why we are requesting for the schools to continue to give these services. Thank you for listening to me and have a good night. Gracias. Next speaker is Denise
Caravayo. Denise Caravo. Um uh good evening. Good evening school committee. I uh my name is Denise Karavayo and I'm part of the Roxberry community and I have I am the mother of
three children and they go to the school Troder >> and I am part of the Rose uh Roxberry community. And my experience uh my experience has been deeply transformative and in being
part of the program of St. Steven to be able to support my children's education. Um and this is why I've been support it's been important for me to be able to support um my children and other children and it has been uh strengthening uh the community the
educational community but also it has given given me the opportunity to give to me other parents, other educators. And this has given me a voice and a strength. And through this program as a par uh parent mentor, I've been able to learn
how schools work and also how to support my own son and I have also had my own self-growth. Um and thanks to the support I was able to become a paraprofessional which is something that I never thought that I
would be able to do or to become and this has been a personal achievement for me and also this is an example also for my children. And now today I feel confident and also informed in how to support uh my
children to also have the tools for them uh for their academic growth and success. Um, and this is why I am here today uh to petition to continue uh my keeping the bilingual programming um because
this not only supports students, Right. But it also gives them the opportunity to continue their to grow on their cultural identity, to not forget about their home language and to also
Oh, and to also receive the a good quality of education. And this is why I'm requesting for more funding for the PAR mentor um programming because when you invest in families, you also invest in the whole
white school community. And this program, this para mentor program at St. Steven is also going to continue to support single mothers like myself that will be able to achieve dreams um to achieve dreams and also to
have a better quality of life. >> Gracias. Thank you and have a good night. >> Gracias. Our next speaker is Kyra Amador Kyra. Good night members of the school commun uh committee. My name is Kaida
>> Amador and I am a mother and a future educator. Uh, and tonight um just like many other um families that live in I live in the Dorchester community and I raise my children in a bilingual home and tonight
I I am speaking from my personal experience but also committed to education. And also for many children the first language is the one that they learn at home. So when that language is not being supported in their school they might not
feel supported. They might feel dismissed. But when the school supports also their home language and they have the programming, they will be able to feel uh safe and to also to have trust in themselves.
And as a mother um as a mother, it's important that our children have real opportunities. And as also as a future educator, I know that bilingual uh programming not only teaches students um with the language also with the support,
but it also teaches them and grows their cognitive abilities, their problem solving abilities and also And it's not not only about right now, but it's also looking towards the future, right? in investing not only in
bilingual in bilingualism in programming is also investing in diversity. Uh Boston is a city that is very diverse and is also um investing in educators uh caretakers, health providers and and also future
leaders that are bilingual. And also the schools that have the support um for bilingual educators and the programming, they're able to it helps them to serve better and to also to respond better to the real issues that are facing in our communities and
in our city. And moreover, when families are able to to be engaged in in the school because of the bilingual programming, they're able also to have better communication, better relationships with the school and
also to develop also the students um not only academic but also social and emotional abilities. And investing in bilingual schools is not just an additional cost, but it's a long-term investment. And this is something that I see as a parent mentor
part of the St. Steven program that I see the real needs that our children have. And our kids don't have to leave behind their home language, but it can also be a tool, right, to help them advance and go even further in their future education. Thank you so much for your
time. Gracias. Our next speaker, we're going to try again with Karen Kosloski. Korean cups. >> Hello. >> Hello. Can you hear me? >> Yeah, now we can hear you. >> Okay. Okay. Not sure what happened
there. Sorry. >> No worries. >> Okay. Uh, good evening members of the school committee. My name is Karen. I live in Jamaica Plane. I'm a parent of two children, a first and a fourth grader with an IEP at the BTU Pilot
School. I'm here tonight to speak about two of the negative impacts that the proposed budget cuts will have on our school. Um, first is the loss of our librarian. On October 6th, 2021, the school committee approved the BPS
library services strategic plan, which promised that every school would have access to a school library program by 2026. This promise was based on the idea that access to libraries is key to meeting
the very standards set by the district in its highquality student experience rubric. The four core components are rigorous and culturally affirming learning experiences, wellness and enrichment, a supportive
network of caring adults, and physical spaces that support learning. I struggle to think of a single budget line item that so clearly and thoroughly achieves these goals more than a library. And yet, the proposed budget for our school
does not include a librarian. Second is our playground. The BTU pilot school sits on Walk Hill Street, which is a very busy street near Forest Hills T. The current layout of the play area requires students to leave the school
premises and walk down Walk Hill to gain access to the basketball courts to um this is incredibly unsafe for the teachers supervising our students and it's unsafe for students who have on multiple occasions wandered from their
class. In 2019, we attempted to use ESSER funds to rectify this. Our playground plan was approved in the early part of the process and then pulled without notice. Our school wasn't notified and the playground never came.
Since then, we have had to get creative. Our family council applied for a Lowe's hometown grant. Our co-lead teachers collaborated with Madison Park School to rebuild our wasp riddled barn. And last year, some of our parents worked with two neighborhood landscape architects to
design a scope for the project in an attempt to access CPA funds to pay for this. This proposed budget all but guarantees that there will be no funds coming from the district to help us. >> 30 seconds. >> Boston School Committee, I understand
that the financial pressures we're facing are real, but we have tried in the past and are willing to try again to come to a solution. I cannot imagine that the best po possible option that we have is to continue to take away programs and opportunities from
students. If this continues, I'm afraid that enrollment will continue to decline and students will continue to miss out on important chances to grow and learn. Thank you. >> Thank you very much. Our next speak our next speakers are Yermaris Matias David
John Baptist Elizabeth sorry Elizabeth Tonog Banua Elizabeth spring still Marius Matias and good evening everyone uh my name is Maris Matias and I live in Southoun with
my two kids my son is a sophomore at the O'Brien mathematics and science science school as well as a former student of BPS and lately I became a par professional to take in consider first of all take
take in consideration the opinions that that parents students and teacher have to make the right decisions about the school budgets this is the reason that I'm here today is to talk about the uh the budget cut at the schools I would like I would like
for you to take in consideration how important it is the uh the school budgets at the school to give a h a good quality education. Keep it in mind. It is important instead of taking away funds to make use of the
budget to provide programs that will help our English learners especially need kids and get bilingual uh programs to get done properly done to get it properly done. Our youth needs the best uh education that we can provide. having
our to learn their their in their native language and will become beneficial for the future and for better job opportunities. It is important to have more schools that have bilingual education.
keep keeping it in your brains and hearts and not just talking about plans about bilingual education but we also would like to see action not empty promises. Thank you for listening.
>> Thank you very much. Our next speaker is David John Batist who will need a interpretation Haitian Creole interpretation. Mr. Jean Batista, >> please unmute and turn on your camera. Okay.
>> Okay. >> Baptist. My name is David Jen Baptist. >> And I want to greet everybody in the panel, especially the committee >> for this great work that you guys are doing.
I live in Madapen and I am a tutor of two children who lives who goes to Manahunt and I am also a counselor with the program St. Stevens. I just wanted to take some time to talk a little bit about the program St.
Stevens because it allows us to be part of the lives of the children not only as a tutor but also be in their lives. Were we able? >> Uh were we able to work with them um with support of the school and teach
them to work hand in hand uh with the school and support other kids? When the tutor is uh helping with the children collaborating, it gives the kids more value on themselves and they
feel like they are well supported. and I see this every day as a parent mentor um at the school of manah >> the kids see that there are parents that believes in them and support them in their learning >> and that allows the kids to learn
better. >> I want to also share New York. >> I want to uh offer my full support in uh there to be a continuity in more bilingual schools so more kids can be
part of that. Because bilingual is a strength and it is a force um that allows the kids to be able to learn in their uh n u native language. >> That way the kids will have more
opportunity to develop their language um or their their learning in both languages. And they'll also feel more included in what they are learning in both languages. parameal. >> Uh, and I also want to say um take the
opportunity to say the St. Stevens program is also a benefit for the parent mentors as well. That is why >> I'd like to suggest >> if you guys add more programs >> more parent mentor program and give St. Stevens more opportunities in the budget
of 2026 2027. >> 30 seconds. >> It will it will continue to support the students as well as the families. Thank you very much. >> Thank you. Our next
our next speaker is Elizabeth Tonogan. Hello. >> Hello. You can start. >> Okay. Um, good evening members of the school committee. My name is Dr. Elizabeth Tonuk Banana. I live in Malden. I have taught ESL for almost two
decades in Boston. I am multilingual and I've been part of many types of learning communities from K to 12. I have seen firsthand how programmatic cuts have harm multilingual learners and students with IEPs. I am here tonight to address the proposed budget cuts for Charlestown
High School, specifically as they pertain to our impactful co-eing model as well as our multilingual teachers of newcomers whose roles have been eliminated. One of the four core components that make up the BPS highquality student experience is
rigorous and culturally affirming learning experiences. To provide this experience in a way that fosters students sense of belonging, which be which CHS does better than any other high school in Boston public schools. We must be able to continue building on the
successes we have had with fully staffed inclusion classes. These cuts undermine our programs that have proudly sorry these cuts undermine our progress we have proudly made in the past three years. My co-teer and I for our subs
separate classes spend countless hours together planning and preparing to support our multilingual learners who have specific learning disabilities. My co-teer is an alumni of our school and she affirms our students cultures authentically which allows them to see
themselves through our HQIM. Through a trans languaging approach, we are able to dig deeper into our academic content, improve confidence, and validate students cultural and linguistic identities. Through our targeted work, I have learned more about serving the
students of Boston in the past two years than in the prior 20 combined. In turn, she's told me that I have taught her not only how to better support our students, but I've also instilled a new confidence in her. I've provided encouragement and trust in her abilities, which has been
especially meaningful to her as she is a teacher with her own learning disability. CHS is a strong is stronger and our students have benefited greatly from these meaningful partnerships. As part of our MTSS, it is critical to have
skilled, compassionate humans tailoring and adjusting plans that build on students assets in ways that couldn't exist >> if the co-eing model gets dismantled. Boston School Committee, I urge you to resend the cuts to allow for impactful
co-eing to continue at CHS. Our school has had a great many successes with this model and deserves to continue achieving in every possible way with this approach. Thank you for your time. >> Thank you so much. Our next speaker is
Elizabeth Spring. You can start. >> Okay, great. My name is Elizabeth Spring. I'm a resident of the South End and an ABA strand specialist at the Curly K8 School in Jamaica Plane. I'm here to urge you to reconsider the proposed budget cuts to Boston public
schools, particular particularly the reductions that will disproportionately harm students with disabilities. These students are not an abstraction in a spreadsheet. There are children who rely on consistent services, trained staff, and stable learning environments
to access the education they are legally and ethically entitled to receive. When budgets shrink, specialized services are often the first to be targeted for cuts. Across the district and specifically at the Curly, the decrease in ABA strand
specialists and inclusion specialists will remove critical support for students to learn in their least restrictive environment. These positions were added to the curly a few years ago and helped bring our school out of transformation by increasing classroom supports for educators and the amount of
time students were included in their least restrictive environment. This past fall, both DESIE and BPS celebrated the curly for our efforts to come out of state transformation. A decrease in funding will greatly impact our ability to continue that work and in some areas
will reverse it. For students with this with disabilities, these supports are not optional enhancements. They are the very tools that make learning possible. Without them, IEPs become hollow promises. Boston is a city that prides itself on
equity. Yet, these cuts risk targeting the very students who already face the greatest barriers, our students with disabilities, who are also disproportionately students of color, multilingual learners, and from lowincome families. When we cut
school funding, we widen inequities and the achievement gap. The long-term consequences are profound. Students who do not receive adequate support are more likely to experience academic failure, disengagement, and exclusionary discipline. Uh, investigating a special
education is not only our legal obligation under IDA, it is a commitment to the dignity, potential, and the future of our children. I asked this committee to protect funding for special education services, preserve critical
staff positions, and prioritize the needs of our most vulnerable students. A budget is a statement of values. Please ensure that Boston's values include equity, inclusion, and an opportunity for every student. >> Thank you.
>> Thank you very much. Our last speaker is Sarin Still. Good evening. You can start. >> Good evening, members of the school committee. My name is Son Still. I live in Dorchester, Massachusetts, and I'm a PAR educator at the Melbourne H. King School in the South End, one of the more
affluent neighborhoods in Boston. Our schools should reflect the strength, investment, and promise of this community. Instead, we are facing proposed budget cuts that will devastate our students, families, and staff. The current proposal would eliminate 46% of our staff and completely dismantle our
elementary program. Let me be clear, these are not minor reductions or strategic adjustments. This is systemic dismantling. When nearly half of the school staff, >> please slow down for the interpreters. Thank you. >> I'm sorry. Okay. When half of the staff is removed, you are not trimming a budget. You are destabilizing a
community. You are removing trusted adults, consistent relationships, and the very infrastructure that allows our most vulnerable students to succeed. The true cost of these cuts goes far beyond dollars. It is the cost of not fully understanding or not choosing to understand the work we do every single day. Our impact cannot always be
captured by standardized test scores or attendance sheets. We do work that is preventative, relational, and life-changing. We deescalate crisises before they become emergencies. We prevent hospitalizations. We intervene so that the child can stay in schools rather than be in institutions. We
support families who are in survival mode, navigating housing instability, trauma, economic hardships. We serve as connectors to resources and advocates and stay present and studying their chaos. When a student is in crisis, we are the ones sitting on the floor with them. When a family doesn't know where
to turn, we are the ones picking up the phone. When a child wants to give up, we are the ones that tell them that they can do this. You may not always see this work in formal reports, but that does not mean it's not real. The absence of data does not equal the absence of impact. Too often, it feels as though
our work has simply not been valued because it does not fit neatly onto your spreadsheet. We do not want to be erased, rebranded, or quietly dissolved. We want our work to be named, defined, and respected. We are not a failure to be fixed. We are a resource to be strengthened. We want to continue the
great work we're already doing with transparency, accountability, meaningful support from the district. We want investment, not elimination. We also want the district to recognize the value of keeping this work in-house close to communities we serve. Outsourcing and restructuring may look efficient on
paper, but relationships cannot be contracted out. Trust cannot be rebranded. Community centered work must remain noted in the community. The Melvin H. King School carries the name of a man whose legacy is grounded in inequity, justice, and empowerment. I ask you to reflect deeply on what it
means to dismantle a school that bears his name. What does it about what does it say about your priorities? How would Melvin H. King feel about what is being done to his legacy in Boston? Tonight, I urge you to reconsider these cuts. See beyond the numbers. See the childrens whose futures are shaped by this work.
See the families who rely on us. Thank you. >> Thank you very much. Um, chair, that concludes public comment and I want to thank all our interpreters who supported us. >> Great. Thank you, Miss Prax. And I want to thank everyone who spoke tonight. Your input is critical as we consider
the superintendent's budget recommendations for fiscal year 2027. I want to remind everyone that all budget documents are available online at bostonchools.org/budget. You can email your comments to budget bostonschools.org
as well as to the school committee. There's nothing further. I will entertain a motion to adjourn this budget hearing and immediately convene our regular school committee meeting. Is there a motion to adjourn the hearing? >> So move. >> Is there a second?
>> Second. >> Is there any discussion or objection to the motion? Miss Pavitz, will you please call the role? >> Thank you, Chair. Dr. Alkins. >> Yes. >> Mr. Peralta. >> Yes. >> Miss Polano Garcia. >> Yes.
>> Miss Garage. >> Yes. >> M. Torres. >> Yes. >> Mr. Tran. >> Yes. >> Miss. Robinson. >> Yes. >> We adjourned the budget hearing. >> Thank you. We'll move right into
tonight's school committee meeting. We'll begin with the approval of minutes. I will now entertain a motion to approve the minutes of the February 4th, 2026 school committee meeting as presented. Is there a motion? >> So move. >> Is there a second?
>> Second. >> Is there any discussion or objection to the motion? Hearing none, Miss Pra, will you please call the role? >> Thank you. Dr. Alkins, >> yes. >> Mr. Peralta, >> yes. >> Miss Palanka Garcia,
>> yes. Miss Miss Torres, >> yes. >> Mr. Tran, >> yes. >> Miss Garrett, >> yes. >> Miss Robinson, >> yes. >> The means are approved. >> Thank you. Before we continue, I want to let members know that the quarterly
transportation ontime performance memo will be shared tomorrow and posted with tonight's meeting materials. At this time, we will receive a report on two tenative collective bargaining agreements between the Boston School
Committee and the United Steel Workers Local 2936, also known as our bus monitors. Before I turn it over to Labor Relations Director Jeremiah Hassan, I'll invite Superintendent Skipper for remarks. I'd
like to remind everyone to please speak at a slower pace to assist our interpreters. Thank you. >> Great. U Thank you, chair. Um so the bargaining team for BPS um for BPS is approximately 700 BPS bus
monitors uh who are members as chair said of the United Steel Workers Local 2936 reached a tentative three-year agreement in late January and following some minor revisions signaled the final memorandum
of understanding on Wednesday, February 4th. The union voted to ratify the agreement this past Saturday, February 7th. We are here to ask you as the committee to vote in favor of the agreement and request a
supplemental appropriation of just over 1 million from the Boston City Council to support the contract through the end of FY26. The contract is a successor agreement that will extend through June 30th,
2028. The anticipated FY27 cost will be included in the revised budget we present to the committee in March. FY28 will be included in the budget presented to the school committee next year. The
contract includes a wage increase which is in line with our other collective bargaining agreements as well as improved employee benefits and operational reforms. Director of BPS Office of Labor Relations, Jeremiah Hassan will get into the specifics of
the agreement in the presentation in a few minutes. Jeremiah and BPS transportation director Dan Rosengard are also available to answer any follow-up questions you may have. So, at this time, I will turn it over to Jeremiah.
Superintendent, thank you very much. Uh, Chair Robinson, committee members, thank you for having me tonight. Uh I am excited to present on behalf of the bargaining team uh and the bargaining team for our bus monitors union the tenative agreement that the parties reached uh over the course of the last
month but it's been uh a long uh road to get here. We started bargaining in the spring. We went back and forth. I think both teams were really passionate about some issues. Uh but we work together to ultimately reach an agreement that we're both proud of. We're both fair. Uh as superintendent mentioned the bus
monitors ratified it on Saturday and I hope you will do the same tonight. With that let me share my screen and present the slides. So just a brief overview as uh the superintendent mentioned it's roughly 700 members of the unit. Uh they're
represented by the United Steel Workers Local 2936. The agreement, it's a a single agreement for three years. Uh as superintendent mentioned, finalized on February 4th, 2026. Uh the members vot ratified on the 7th and we hope that you will uh ratify
tonight uh on February 12th. Uh the wage increases, it is 2% increases each year plus an additional $1 increase for all monitors effective January of 2026. And then in the third year, there's an
additional 70 cents per hour added to the assigned monitors rate. So that's effective January of 2028. The total cost of the agreement over the threeear span is 5,941,214. And as the superintendent pointed out,
we are requesting a supplemental appropriation in the amount of 1,46,178 to cover the cost in FY26. the benefits and reforms that the superintendent mentioned uh essentially they boil down to these six bullets.
There's additional flexibility regarding the bus monitor's use of personal days uh and excuse absences before school vacation. So what that means is uh if a bus monitor is required to be absent due to the death of the family, jury duty or
hospitalization, they will now uh be entitled to still get their vacation pay. Um they won't lose out for not being present on work the day before or after vacation. Uh they will also receive paid time for completing their
incident reports. They have 15 minutes of paid time uh to complete that work after their shift and we codified some seniority based bidding processes that the monitors saw sought to really protect their most senior members uh in
daily bidding. Operationally, we were able to secure some really favorable uh reforms that we think are are going to be necessary and beneficial to our overall service of students. Uh specifically we got eight hours of additional required training uh that can
be used throughout the year. This is important for us because uh if trends or habits are showing up amongst monitors, we now have the ability to offer midyear training where previously it was only before school started. We also were able to agree on a commitment to transition
into electronic bid information which will uh be both beneficial to the environment because we have uh we'll be printing a lot less paper uh and beneficial to our transportation team because they no longer have to spend hours printing and organizing the bid
packets. Uh and then finally we cified the party's joint commitment regarding safety vest and ID cards. uh this is kind of cottifying a practice that's been in place, but one that both bodies recognized as important uh for students safety and for just the general public
to know who are bus monitors uh and for schools to know when a bus monitor is coming into their campus. So that's the overall uh high level view of the contract. Um, as the superintendent mentioned, we uh worked hard to get this
done with our union partners and we both support this agreement and recommend that you vote in favor of it. I'm happy to answer any questions that you have at this time. I believe Dan Rosenard who's representing transportation is also on the call and available to uh really answer any in-depth operational
questions you have. >> Great. Thank you, Mr. to sign for the report and thank you also to Dan Rosenard and the transformation team for their work on reaching these agreements. I will now open it up to the committee for questions and comments.
Any questions, comments? Okay, hearing none. Um thank you and the committee looks forward to taking action on these items later this evening. Thank you. >> Thank you, chair. And I just let me say like quick thank you to the bus monitors union and their bargaining team. Like I
mentioned, this was a long process. Uh both sides are passionate about their positions, but ultimately we were able to come together to get to a uh a really fair agreement. So I think uh we appreciate their hard work and their dedication and their passion at the table.
>> Great. Thank you. Um because we'll now move on to general public comment. Miss Parex. Thank you, chair. This public comment period is an opportunity for individuals to address the school committee on school related issues. Questions on specific school matters are
referred to the superintendent. Questions on policy matters may be discussed by the committee later. We have four speaker this evening for general public comment. Each person will have three minutes to speak and I will remind you when you have 30 seconds remaining. Please feel free to email
your comments for distribution to the committee. Please take your name, affiliation, and where you live before you begin, and sign in on Zoom using the name you registered for public comment. And be ready to unmute and turn on your camera when it's your turn to speak. Please raise your virtual hand when I
call your name. And to support interpretation, speak, please speak slowly and clearly. Our speakers are uh Oh, we have only two speakers, John Mad and Elizabeth Spring.
John Mud. >> Good evening. You know me. I'm John Mud, resident of Cambridge, uh, and a grandfather of a child in John F. Kennedy Elementary School. I want to take a few minutes of time to try and talk with you about the structure of these meetings. I believe the school
committee, the superintendent, and BPS as a whole could benefit from structuring its meetings to be more open to direct give and take with parents and the public. As it is, giving testimony in the air with no expectation of
response from the committee is unsatisfactory for those who testify. To put it mildly, it often feels like speaking to a black hole where vacuums which vacuums up everything that disappears into some never neverland. Uh
when I started my advocacy, I hate to say it, way back in the 1990s under Mayor Manino, Superintendent Paant, and Chair Liz Ryinger. And in subsequent administrations, there were budget hearings where there were public meetings where the public could ask
questions and get immediate response from staff. Under the structure now, that kind of interchange is impossible. Only members can ask questions and get answers. What is even more troubling to me is that this practice of establishing protective barriers for the school
committee from exposure to the public seems to be a pattern. There is even no in-person school committee meetings in the entire budget development process uh this year. Uh the the the first hybrid meetings are when the where the public
can appear directly before you or in April after the budget is approved on facilities plans. You've heard many of us talk about the racial equity planning tool which provides for consultation with the affected school committees in
the development of plans. But your capital planning department process only calls for participation by the affected communities in the implementation of these plans. All of these practices in which the committee and BPS puts
themselves in the position of making decisions without authentic participation of school communities in decisionmaking breeds mistrust and cynicism. It is possible to do better. You can do better. I have long argued that you could develop some kind of
process where there can be genuine dialogue and discussion on key policy issues. There could be oversight or town halls on critical issues where there is an open discussion among school committee members, experts, parents,
community representatives and advocates on critical issues. From the discussion earlier tonight, the whole issue of multilingual education would be benefited by such a discussion. BPS and most importantly the students would be
better for it. policies could then have genuine wide-ranging support that could student outcomes. Thank you for me. >> Thank you, chair. That concludes public comment. >> Thank you.
>> Thank you. Okay. Um, thank you, Miss Parex, and thank you to those of you who spoke this evening and shared your perspective with testimony is is important to us. Our first action item this evening is the grants for approval totaling $6,21.
Now, I'd like to turn it over to the superintendent for any for final comments. >> Wonderful. Thank you, chair. Um, so there's two grants tonight for the committee's consideration totaling $6,000 and $6,21. The first is a new Massachusetts Board
of Liberty of Library Commissioners Explore Grant totaling $4,000. This school year, it serves 200 students at the Henry Grrew Elementary School. The purpose of this grant is to provide explore grants that improve library
services, collections, and programs to support fluency building and reader engagement for our multilingual learners and students with disabilities. The second is an increase to a Massep continuing competitive grant of $221
for a total of more than $384,000 this school year serving 50 students in adult education. This grant will support ESL and job training for adult multilingual learners. We would ask the committee to please vote in favor of accepting these funds.
Great. >> Thank you. I'll now open it up to questions and comments from the committee. I just quickly want to say that I'm very pleased to see that the department of education is supporting the English
classes for the parents of our kids too which is very important as as we hear many times through the night educating uh a parent is also educating the kids in in our schools. So I'm very pleased to see that. >> Great. Any
other comments? Okay. If there are no further questions, I'll entertain a motion to approve the grants as presented. Is there a motion? >> Move. >> Is there a second? Is there any discussion objection to the motion? Miss Pavix, will you please call
the role? >> Thank you. Dr. Alkins, >> yes. >> Mr. Peralta, >> yes. >> Miss Kolano Garcia, >> yes. Miss Torres, >> yes. >> Mr. Tran, >> yes. >> Miss Garrett, >> yes.
>> Miss Robinson, >> yes. >> The grants are approved. >> Thank you. Earlier in the meeting, we received the report on the bus monitors. The next action items are two related votes. one on a memorandum of agreement between the Boston school committee and
the United Steel Workers Local 2936 representing our bus monitors and one on an fiscal year 26 supplemental appropriation request to the Boston City Council to support the cost of the agreements. I will now open the floor to
the committee for any final questions or comments. Okay, thank you. Okay, the committee will take two separate votes. One on the agreement and one on the supplemental appropriation request. There's nothing further. I will now entertain a motion
to approve the memorandum of agreement between the Boston School Committee and the United Steel Workers Local 2936 effective July 1, 2025 through June 30th, 2028 as presented. Is there a motion?
>> A move. >> Is there a second? >> Second. >> Is there any discussion or objection to the motion? Miss Pavitz, will you please call the role? >> Thank you. Dr. Alkins, >> yes. >> Mr. Peralta, >> yes.
>> Miss Palano Garcia, >> yes. >> Miss Torres, >> yes. >> Mr. Tran, >> yes. With a reservation. >> Miss Garrett? Yes, >> Miss Robinson.
>> Yes. >> The motion is approved. >> Thank you. Our last action item this evening is the fiscical year 26 supplemental appropriation request in the amount of 1,46,178 to support the memorandum of agreement
or successor collective bargaining agreement between the Boston school committee and the United Steel Workers Local 2936 as presented. Is there a motion? >> Thank you. and somebody seconded it. Okay.
>> Thank you. Is there any discussion or objection to the motion? Miss Pavix, will you please call the role? >> Thank you, chair. Dr. Alkins, >> yes. >> Mr. Peralta, >> yes. >> Miss Palano Garcia, >> yes. >> Miss Torres, >> yes.
>> Mr. Tran, >> yes. >> Miss Garage, >> yes. >> Miss Robinson, >> yes. >> The motion is approved. >> Thank you. The next remote budget hearing will take place on Wednesday, March 4th at 5:30
p.m. at which time the committee will pres receive a presentation focused on the central budget. Our final remote budget hearing will take place on Wednesday, March 18th at 5:30 p.m. prior to the school committee meeting. Is
there any new business? Okay. All right. Hearing none. Thank you. That concludes our business for this evening. If there's nothing further, I'll entertain a motion to adjourn the meeting. Is there a motion? >> So moved. >> Thank you. Is there a second? >> Second.
>> Thank you. Is there any discussion objection to the motion? >> Hearing none, Miss Pavix, will you please call the role? >> Thank you, Chair. Dr. Alkins, >> yes. >> Mr. Peralta, >> yes. >> Miss Palano Garcia, >> yes. Good night.
>> Miss Torres, >> yes. Mr. Tran, >> yes. >> Miss Garrett, >> yes. >> Miss Robinson, >> yes. >> The meeting is a great >> Thank you all. Have a good night. Happy Valentine's Day. Happy President's Day.
Have a safe holiday weekend and week, vacation week. >> Thank you very much. Bye bye. Have a good night everybody. Good night everyone.