Ep. 48, Last Night @ School Committee: 2/2 Meeting Recap

Last Night At School Committee

Last night’s meeting kicked off the Fiscal Year 2023 budget process for Boston Public Schools. Over the coming weeks, there will be public hearings on the draft budget proposal unveiled last night, culminating in a vote in March by the School Committee and subsequent consideration by the City Council and Mayor Wu. The meeting began with the Superintendent’s Report, where the Superintendent addressed a recent Boston Globe report highlighting discrepancies in BPS data that suggest the district has overstated its graduation rate for five of the last seven years. The Superintendent downplayed the significance of this data, while School Committee members asked pointed questions about transparency and trust.

The meeting continued with public comment, in which parents and students from the P.A. Shaw Elementary School continued advocating for the promised expansion of the school, followed by the nominations of School Committee member Rafaela Polanco Garcia and Roxanne Harvey, Chair of the Boston Special Education Parent Advisory Council (SpEdPAC), to the English Language Learner’s Task Force.

The Superintendent and her team then presented the preliminary budget to the School Committee. After discussion of MassCore implementation, academic outcomes, and a “quality guarantee” for all students, the Superintendent and her team answered questions from members of the School Committee, who pressed her on why the budget does not factor in enrollment declines and how the budget addresses the needs of current – and not just future – students.

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