City Council - Ways & Means Committee Hearing on Dockets #0733-0740, 0741-0743, FY27 Budget: BPS Operations, Revolving Funds

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Good afternoon. My name is Ben Weber. I'm the District 6 City Councillor and the Chair of the Boston City Council on Ways and Means. Today is April 16, 2026, and the exact time is 2.13 p.m. This hearing is being recorded. It is also being live streamed at boston.gov slash city dash council dash tv. and broadcasts on Xfinity Channel 8, RCN Channel 82, and Fios Channel 964. The Council's budget review process will encompass a series of public hearings that began on Tuesday and will run through June. We strongly encourage residents to take a moment to engage in this process by giving testimony for the record. You can do so in the following ways. First, attend one of our hearings and give public testimony.

We will take public testimony during each hearing. For these hearings, we'll be taking public testimony at the end of the first round of questions from my colleagues. and also at two hearings dedicated to public testimony called listening sessions. The full hearing schedule is on our website. at boston.gov slash council dash budget. Our scheduled hearings dedicated to public testimony are in person here in City Hall on Tuesday, April 28th at 6 p.m. and again in person at City Hall on Thursday, May 26 at 6 p.m. You can give testimony in person here in the chamber or virtually via Zoom. For in-person testimony, please come to the chamber and sign up on the sheet near the entrance. which is over there for anyone in the chamber.

For virtual testimony, you can sign up using our online form at our council budget review website. or by emailing the committee at ccc.wm at boston.gov or by emailing our central staff liaison at Karishma Chohan, sorry, Karishma is K-A-R-I-S-H-M-A When you are called to testify, please state your name and affiliation and residence and limit your comments to a few minutes to ensure that all comments and concerns can be heard. Email your written testimony to the committee, or I'm sorry, so in addition to showing up and testifying in person or doing that in person or virtually, you can also submit written testimony which you can do by emailing the testimony to the committee at ccc.wm.boston.gov.

Third, you can submit a two-minute video of your testimony through the form on our website. For more information on the City Council budget process and how to testify, please visit the City Council's budget website at boston.gov slash council dash budget. In person, public testimony will be taken following the first round of questions again, and individuals who are called will have two minutes to testify. Again, if you wish to sign up for public testimony and have not done so already, You can email our Director of Legislative Budget Analysis, Karishma Chauhan, at k-a-r-i-s-h-m-a dot c-h-o-u-h-a-n at boston.gov for the Zoom link and your name will be added to the list. Again, that's for virtual testimony. If you're here in person, all you need to do is sign up.

This afternoon's hearing is on docket numbers 0733 to 0740 and docket numbers 0741 to 0743. The focus of this hearing is on the FY27 budget for Boston Public Schools This hearing will cover topics including food service, safety, office of human resources slash staffing, and transportation. This hearing will also cover the facilities, transportation, and technology revolving funds This is one in a series of hearings to review the FY27 budget. It's also one of three hearings we're holding specifically on the FY27 BPS budget. I want to note for my colleagues and for the panelists, that the BPS central office budget is relevant to our discussions at all of our BPS hearings.

Given the overlap of this budget with many of our specific topics, in the case of this particular hearing, we are likely to discuss centrally budgeted services and personnel. These matters were sponsored by Mayor Michelle Wu and were referred to the committee on April 8th, 2026. Today I'm joined by my colleagues in order of arrival, Murphy, Councillor Flynn, Councillor Breadon, and I believe we received a letter of absence from Councillor Culpepper. I would like to introduce our panelists, all from the Boston Public Schools. We have Senior Deputy Superintendent of Operations, Dr. Sam DePina. Chief of Human Resources, Francis J. Canty, Executive Director of Transportation, Dan Rosengard,

Executive Director of Safety, Security and School Crisis Response, Izzy Marrero, and Deputy Chief Financial Officer, Blair Dawkins, right? And I have been told that the Chief Financial Officer, who's also here, David Bloom, to answer questions. He has a call at 3.30. He may step out. He'll be coming back. and his deputy Blair can answer all questions in his absence. Let's see. Okay, so we are going to start now, I guess, with any presentation or statement?

No? We just would want to, again, just say good afternoon to everyone here, the council members and the public joining us, and happy to discuss the topics here this afternoon and look forward to answering your questions and sharing a lot about the work that we're doing and what we're planning to do.

Okay. Thank you. Let's get started. Councilor Murphy, seven minutes. Okay.

Thank you, Chair. Thank you all for being here. Some follow-up questions. I know we've met a few times already. and some outstanding questions I have. If you, David, could speak directly. One of the questions I asked twice now is to separate out the central office budget, knowing that it's not just staff that are working under Skipper, that it's all of our custodians. If you could list all of the other. Employees and BPS who are paid through the central budget and then separate out the overall cut and which positions were cut. That'd be helpful. Thank you.

Yes. Thank you. We have approximately 2800 centrally funded positions. This is everything from bus monitors to custodians to special education related services staff as well as the central office. Our budget includes about 700 of the positions. are what you would often think of as traditional central office roles. That includes, for example, the whole finance team, all of our accounts payable, those sorts of things. Princess's team, HR, as well as sort of supervision for academics and other areas. We have 56, I believe, is our most updated number, FTE reductions.

of the 700 above the 2800 of the 700 about 175 from the 2800 so 175 total of which 57 are our central central office um And because you had said the last time that you had a percentage cut to central office, so it was smaller. And of the 120 or 18, Where are those? Are they bus monitors? Like, do you have the list of who's being, yeah.

Yes, so we are going to be reducing some vacant positions in bus monitors and some Special Education staff that are assigned based on the needs of students IEPs. There's a couple of vacant positions there that we think will be consolidating as well as some vacant safety services positions. You're asking about sort of the remaining 110, right? There's also some custodial reductions as we have fewer buildings.

You mentioned some of our bus monitors. Dan, if you could chime in here because when we had our hearing on transportation last month we were talking about the need to have more bus money right and that many of the buses can't leave the yard if they're not following the IEPs, the one-to-ones, the safety monitors. So how is that going to affect that conversation?

Appreciate that question, Councilor. So the reductions, as Chief Blum mentioned, are in vacant positions right now. So we are keeping the same number of active bus monitors that we have. What we found is that with that staffing that we've had, we have not seen any coverage issues yet this year. And as we're projecting further reductions in the number of routes aligned with school closures and enrollment.

And are they permanently being cut?

Yes, that's correct.

And we haven't seen any interruptions on buses being able to pick up, drop off, or have the correct number of bus monitors at all this year. There's been 100%. Attendance, matching the needs. Not just the one, I'm talking, I get it, that it's IEPs and what's written.

What we've found is that the number of bus monitors we have is sufficient to cover daily operations every day, yes.

I'll go back after this, but I feel like that was different from the conversation we had when we were just talking about buses last time. OK. Izzy, I have a question. I know we were just talking earlier. I hear we talk a lot or a lot of attention is brought to some of the bigger safety concerns and issues if it's a firearm if it's a fight if it's a video that goes viral or you know texting to us and concerns which are definitely I wanted to talk more about the kindergarten, first, second, the elementary grades, the lower grades where you hear often

Especially with the expansion of inclusion and just placement and if we're cutting Paris the supports needed for many of our students and just many kids maybe not feeling safe parents raising these concerns teachers themselves in a safe space if they feel like they can relay that safely or get support from their administration so Can you talk about your role and how you play into that need or is that something that you don't step in for?

Excuse me. Thank you for the question. So school leaders have total autonomy, especially with the elementary schools, whether they want safety personnel on site or not. Currently, the bulk of the safety officers are dispatched to the schools that are in higher need. So most of the high schools will have one or more. We currently have 58 safety officers. After the cuts and stuff, I have two openings, so I'll have... 60. And when fully staffed, we have over 120 buildings that we have to provide security for. So you can understand that those situations, the resources are spread thin. However, with that said, Um...

School leaders, school administrators have the opportunity to call when incidents of concerns arise. We do deploy safety personnel to those elementary schools. When the need is great, They also are secondary sites for those that are assigned to schools. They're there for dismissal. And then we do dispatch so that safety personnel are there as a secondary site for arrivals, dismissals, and our The lieutenants, the supervisors, and the sergeants are required to go and check in with those elementary schools regularly. There's another division that we have called the VIPERS. That is an acronym for Violence Intervention Prevention and Restorative Specialist. These are folks that have been trained. It just started this school year. So this is why you may be hearing it for the first time.

They were formerly the community connection coordinators from last year who were prior to that with SOARs or street workers. And so they've all been trained in mediation and conflict resolution. and so there are also.

How many do we have of those?

10. Members and one team leader who plays both roles. So it'll be a total of 11. They can be requested to come in when we're informed or when safety's informed of an issue. Referrals can be made. Shadon Cromwell is the team leader. She'll get notified. She'll assign somebody the case. That person is responsible for connecting with the school. Connecting with Parents. The mediations work when all parties volunteer, are on board. And so they understand when we're dealing with elementary school kids, it's a different approach than we would with the high school students. We can schedule regular check-ins and things of that nature to make sure that the school feels supported. So there are some options there for the school leaders if they requested it.

Thank you. I know my time's up. I do just want to thank you. weeks ago you hopped on that call with the concern at the Kenney School and just thank you for your support and willingness to do whatever we can to help the staff

I'm happy to help however I can.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you very much, Councillor Flynn.

We're doing seven minutes. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to get back to the question I asked earlier about The three district social workers, David. Is there anything we can do as a city council? I still think those three positions are critical, especially during emergencies, crisis time. What can we do to get those back in the budget? Because I just can't walk away and just say, okay, they cut three social workers and that's fine with me. I just can't accept that. But what can the city council do to get those three important positions back in the budget? Because I need them in the budget. I know the challenges students are facing and I just can't Sit here and accept that we're cutting social workers, critical jobs, three district social workers. What can we do to get them back in the budget because

That's just unacceptable for me, and I just can't go along as if that's acceptable.

I mean, I appreciate you sharing that this morning and thank you for your feedback on that. We'll certainly take it under advisement, but as we finalize the budget.

Okay. But there's still an opportunity to get it back, is that right?

We can certainly talk about it.

Okay. Because when students need a social worker, At a time of crisis and the social worker is in fear, then that's a bigger crisis. And when a school is under All these challenges that they're facing, not having the right staff at the right time, mental health counselors, social workers, that's important. There was a lot of learning lost during COVID. There was a lot of mental health challenges as well, and As a city and as a district, we just can't be cutting psychologists, social workers, school nurses. That's what I focused on when I first came on here. We didn't have school nurses in every school, and I fought for that along with and I think it was City Councilor and Easter Sabi George as well.

But can you commit to me that we're gonna put those three positions back in the budget?

I certainly can't make any commitments today right here, but we'll certainly go back and have another conversation about it.

Okay, okay. Wasn't there an issue, and I might be going back a couple years, Boston Police Department, Boston Public Schools Memorandum of Understanding. Has that ever been signed?

So that's been signed on behalf of Boston Public Schools. The ball is in Boston Police's department's court. Whether it's been signed or not, Boston Public Schools has been operating under that MOU that was agreed upon. So while it's still not signed, that's how we're operating based on the understanding of that MOU.

OK. Thanks, Izzy. Mr. Chair, could I respectfully ask for a copy of that, please? The one that's signed by the Boston Police. I mean, I'm sorry. By Boston. We signed it. Yeah, by Boston Public Schools. It's not signed by the Boston Police, but could I still get a copy of that? Okay. Please. Yeah. Let me go back to David. David, in terms of teachers, paraprofessionals, educators that interact every day with students, Specifically, how many people are getting laid off? I'm not talking about vacant positions. I'm talking about eliminating the job in the person still in there.

Yeah, so there are two types of position changes that are happening for employees now. Turn it over to my colleague to give you the details. One is a position that's being eliminated because of under-enrollment. Right, so there are fewer positions. The other is a staff member who's being separated from their position due to a lack of licensure or other qualification that is required. So we can give you the numbers on both of those.

But someone that doesn't have their license, I would assume they're working to get their license. Is that accurate to say? And if they're working toward getting a license, Don't we want to give them an opportunity to continue on that path? Maybe they've had some challenges at their home or financial issues or paying bills. But I don't want to see them lose their job. I want to see them stay on that path so that they can get that certification, they can get that license. Does that make sense?

Yes, so the way it works is if you are not licensed, for us to get you what we call a waiver for you to be able to work in Massachusetts is we have to lay you off. and then we can request, we have to post that position so that we can then request a waiver from the state. So we cannot guarantee you a job The only way the state will allow us to get a waiver is that that position has to be posted.

Okay so those positions that A teacher doesn't have their license. How many are those?

I can get you that number.

Is that in the hundreds?

Yes. Currently, this year, we had 700 teachers who did not have license, and we've worked to get At least 200 of those educators are currently, have been able to obtain licensure. So that number is constantly moving because of the work that we are also doing with those educators to try to get them licensed.

Well, Mr. Chair, so could I get a list of Every specific position that is being eliminated, whether it's someone that doesn't have their license or the other, what is it? or the vacant ones as well. But the ones also that are vacant, that you're not putting a person in there where there should be a teacher in there, that's one child that's Thank you. Thank you.

and with learning loss for students, then we're going back to dropout rates, then we're going back to Toddiness. Then we're going back to mental health counselors. So why don't we just put the teachers in the classrooms, let the teachers teach, get the mental health counselors supporting the teachers, and then we have a good environment, a safe and healthy environment for learning and teaching.

So, I wanna, so BPS, This year alone, at the start of the school year, for educators, we have a 94% rate of first day of school having educators in the classroom. So we do our best, more than our best actually, to make sure that the first day of school that there is an actual adult in the classroom with students. During the course of the year, are there things that happen like people resign, people go on leaves? Those things will sometimes impact staffing, but we have a mechanism of making sure that we have Long-term subs who then come in and cover those positions. There's not a class that go vacant without an adult being in front of us.

I think the other thing we should highlight, because your team's doing a huge amount of work, too. to place teachers in those vacant positions. So there already are hundreds of teachers who have been displaced from one job who HR has worked to put them in and fill up those vacant positions. So the list of teachers without Thank you very much.

Okay, thank you.

Brayden. So you want to still get that list? I mean, you want to just define it one more time based on the last exchange?

Yes, so Mr. Chair, the list would be teachers that are losing their positions due to the fact that they may or may not have licenses. or any certification. And the other request basically is a vacancy that is not being filled. To me, that's still somewhat of a job cut because you're not You're not giving that child the extra opportunity to interact with another teacher. Okay, yeah. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you. Madam President.

Thank you. Good afternoon everyone. Transportation. The transportation budget keeps growing despite declining numbers. It's sort of in the order of about 200 million which is an $11 million increase from last year. This is one of the questions we have is that there are penalties for chronically late, persistent problems with late buses and buses not arriving. And I was just reading this article in the Boston Public Schools didn't Don't fine vendors for uncovered trips yet. That's probably leaving a couple of million dollars on the table. And there's no consequences. They have a total monopoly on the whole service.

So why are we not finding trans dev for not meeting their targets? Good to see you.

Nice to see you as well. I appreciate that question. I think when we think about, you know, Making sure that we're providing the best service for students every day. And what we're doing with this current contract, which we You know, designed to include incentives and accountability measures that were not in prior contracts. So this, what we've seen over the three years of this contract so far is steady incremental gains over the life of the contract. And what we've seen is on time performance this year is the highest that it's been, not just under this contract, but at any point in Boston history. However, when we saw A specific regression in service with the increase in uncovered trips in December that is what led us to utilize Non-Performance Damages, which is one tool, not the only tool, and not always the best tool, but in this specific situation, we feel that it was appropriate.

We have since implemented those for March and what we've seen is since then we've seen significant improvement and reduction in uncovered trips back to levels in line with prior years while also continuing to see those on-time performance improvements.

And then the other question, you know, I know we're in a process of trying to ensure that we have quality schools in every district, every cluster right across the whole city. What's happening is we're spending a huge amount of money on busing kids back and forward and round and round. It's taking a lot of time away for families, like three hours a day on a school bus is not fun. Where are we at in the long term facilities plan to get to that space where we have quality schools in every neighbourhood? We spend enough to have quality schools in every neighbourhood. Where are we at in terms of the long-term facilities plan to make sure that we could reduce... If we had to come in tomorrow and say, right, we're cutting the transportation budget in half, and you're going to get $100 million, and we can put that $100 million into... Improving facilities at all of our schools.

How far away are we from getting there? Because what we're doing doesn't make any sense. We're just keep throwing money down a hole in the floor.

I appreciate the question, Councilor, and thank you for that question. Earlier in this morning's session, Superintendent Skipper talked a little bit about having the highest quality schools in every district, as you heard as you participated. and I'll just reiterate that our goal is to strike a balance of making sure we're able to roll out our high quality programming in all neighborhoods, right? And start there. We want to make sure that we use our inclusion plan to make sure we're rolling out the best inclusion opportunities for our students. Make sure we roll out the dual language programs for our students. We wanna make sure that we capitalize on what we can put in before and after school programs and what I pilot with the Hub School model and making sure we set up a well-rounded opportunities for our different schools. And once we get that correct, then we wanna make sure we're able to Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

and many more. Thank you.

How far away are we from getting there? We've been working on this for years now.

It's a work in progress and I think with the inclusion plan that we've developed, we've made a lot of strides and we're rolling it out in more detail. And I think there's still some work to do and we've seen a lot of progress. We do have a benchmark that we'll talk more about in tomorrow's hearing when we talk about long-term capital planning. But we do have plans through 2030, so we can talk more about that tomorrow. But that's kind of our timeline as we are currently. 2030? Four years away?

I wonder, Dan, if you could share a little bit of the information you were sharing with me about sort of the, like, four or five main buckets of transportation spending and the size of them, just so the council can get a sense of what that money's going for.

Hopefully folks can hear me. Yeah, because I think this is one big driver of transportation spend, but there are also other large drivers that I think I want to make sure we're discussing those as well. For instance, the non-BPS school commitments, so the charter in private schools, that accounts for over $30 million of our spend every year. contracted van transportation for students who are homeless or in DCF custody through McKinney-Vento accounts for almost $20 million in spend. each year, and then students with disabilities who receive specialized transportation, whether that's door-to-door or a bus monitor. There are just under 5,000 students who receive that transportation. and that is while it's about

You know, under about 25% of the students receiving transportation, they do make up more than half of the volume because each of them receives their own, you know, individual stop versus a corner stop, which is consolidated. So I think, you know, um neighborhood schools would would address you know one of the drive big drivers of transportation but it wouldn't on its own get us to having the transportation budget yeah i appreciate that um

Yeah, okay, I'll go to another question, if we can get it up here. Yeah, so that's my time. Oh, I'm going to have to come back again. Thank you.

Okay. Yeah, we've been joined by Councillor Louijeune. You are up next, but just to follow up on that, Dan, in your presentation before, I thought there was a stat in there, something like 46% of the schools that we drop kids off at are not BPS schools. They're either outside the district Can you just explain more? And I understand if somebody's out of the district and that's one kid, but there could be 100 kids getting dropped off at the Mendel. and JP, but that's one school, so 50% of those schools are outside the district, but it could be one out of a lot. But can you just explain more about that?

Appreciate that, Councilor Weber. To briefly summarize, so under Mass State law, BPS and other public school districts are required to provide transportation on the same terms and conditions to charter and private schools located within the same district. So for us, that means charter schools and private schools In addition to that, any students who are assigned to special education out of district placements, um, and that's identified by our Office of Specialized Services. BPS provides that transportation as well. And so what that ultimately means is that a little over 20% of the students riding on our buses and about 45% of the schools that we're transporting to are not BPS schools.

Okay, thank you. I don't know. Councilor Louijeune, do you want me to go first or? I can go. Okay.

I'm next.

You get seven minutes.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and apologies. There's a lot going on, but I just want to thank all of you for being here today. I know that we are in a difficult time and There are a lot of choices that we needed to make that are hard ones. I wanted to first, and I missed the presentation, so I apologize if I ask questions that are Repetitive is the question that I asked about the breakfast budget. I want to get a better understanding of how many Boston Public Schools staff We're actually losing. That is not the result of a school closing and not attached to the fact that, for example, We are down, I believe, 3,000 kids overall compared to last year, 2,000 of whom are multi-language learners. I know that I sat probably in that chair.

I remember I was sitting when I was been advocating for more social workers for our SLIFE classroom students with limited or interrupted formal education. and to provide more support services. I was just at the Irish Pastoral Center where someone was talking about how some of our students are walking in every day with more and more trauma. We're losing trauma support specialists, so I want to get a better understanding of we have these buckets. We're losing staff as a result of school closures, mergers, consolidations. because of student population that is declining by 3,000 year to year. What is the remaining bucket of attrition that is happening as a result of a factor that is not those two things?

Give us a second. We're getting you guys the data. So thank you for that question. You missed it earlier. There are two things that happen at BPS. There's the positions that we have to post that we consider vacant for us because an educator doesn't have a license. So those positions, we have to post those positions Again, so that we can get a waiver from the state. DESE requires that we have to request a, A waiver for a person without a license to be able to teach our students. Then there's the positions that were cut as a result of the reduction of students in many places. Like for example, we have Charlestown High who we saw because of the decrease of students

just because of sheer of the political structure that we are in right now.

Students are less, with Charleston High, my understanding is that there are fewer students who are traveling to Charlestown. There are families who are making decisions that their children are no longer going to spend that time traveling to Charlestown.

Yes. And then there is the other aspect of it. The students, we are seeing a shrinking of students. So Charlestown High, for example, is a school that's supposed to have about 800 kids. But right now it has, I believe, David, around 500, give or take. So that means that the student body that we generally use to serve, they're not there. So we've had to make some cuts to reflect, the staff had to reflect the students that we are currently serving. So there's vacancies as a result... So there's been reduction as a result of just, like, classroom closures that we've had to... that we've done because of the reduction in students. But we can get you specifically the numbers of those reductions. And Councilor Flynn earlier asked about just

The positions that are posted because of licensure problems as well. So we'll get you both those numbers. Okay.

Thank you. I guess a question. I know that there was an effort in some of the schools. I believe it was the Curley that had lost their librarian as a result. I care deeply about making sure that our librarians, we have a librarian in every school, just want to ensure, was it at, I think it was at the Curley and the other school, I'm not sure if it was at Henderson.

It was the BTU pilot.

The BTU pilot.

And that position has been restored. Thank you. And what about at the Curley? So at the Curley, they are still going from two librarians to one.

but they still have a librarian in the school. I just want to make sure that we are still moving towards a model of ensuring that all of our schools have libraries. Can you talk to me about When do you think that we are going to see any realization in savings from the very difficult and very hard work of school closures, mergers, and acquisitions? I mean, sorry, mergers, closures, acquisitions, maybe. Consolidated. That's a lawyer tongue. I mean, yeah, I guess that's what happens. I've been talking too much today.

Yeah, I mean the hard thing about this budget is that it actually reflects really significant savings. from those mergers and consolidations and in fact our budget would have been significantly harder if not for that so We ended up, when all was said and done, the last time I was before you, I said we had a $48 million felt impact of school budget reductions with cost increases and everything. It ended up being 47 with a couple of things we put back. But half of that The savings we took from schools came from closure and merger and reconfiguration, which meant the remaining schools saw sort of half as much impact as we would have otherwise had to do if we had had to spread it more evenly. and so we are definitely seeing some savings there I think as we

We'll be able to see even further savings as you operate more modern, newer buildings. The new Frederick is a great example of... Where's the new Shaw-Taylor going to be? I'm not sure where it's going to be. I know it's coming through the MSBA process, but as we take some of our smaller schools... and consolidate them into better, bigger buildings, we save money that we can reinvest into programming in those schools, which is and ensure we're maintaining, as Councilor Flynn was mentioning earlier, the nurse, social worker and all those other important positions. Great.

Great. Mr. Chair, can I just make two comments? One is that I want to see us continuing to do that very hard work of The Mergers, Reconfigurations. I think it's short-term gain, hopefully, short-term pain for a lot of folks. I mean, I've said it. I'm going to be devastated if the location for the tailor is not in its current footprint. But if someone tells me that, because I think there's a lot of capacity, but if someone tells me that what is best for the long term for the community is that there's a different physical location, that's a conversation that we'll have. I think it's important for us to continue doing that so that we could do the also, when I talk about acquisitions, really what I maybe meant to say was the work of building more schools for our kids that reflect the dignity that each student should have. And so I'm glad that we're doing that with Ruth Batson, former McCormick kid, the tailor. But we need a wholesale. I don't know where the Green New Deal for Boston Public Schools is.

I know that some of our costs have been increasing because of HVAC in our schools, but we still have schools that still need AC and still need these upgrades. My office has been proposing the idea of a Boston school building authority because I think it's important to have a dedicated team in our city that is just doing as much as possible. The and as at least politically as possible, the work of building new schools and being thoughtful about the revenue dedicated to doing that. And then lastly, I'll just say to Dan, thank you for the work. I know it's been hard and there have been a number of very difficult issues. that we've had to deal with over the past year or two years. It sounds like we are beginning to see some gains from the use of DeMille, and the Zoom app. What I would like to ask of the chair is if we could have it. Maybe we have it, but if we do have it, if someone could just pull it out and send. A disaggregation of transportation costs.

The costs that are legally required because we're required to transport students with IEPs. The costs that are related. Do we have that, Mr.

Chair? I think Dan went through a lot of this data just before you walked in.

Could we have it? Could we have it physically?

Yes.

Or do we have it already? Whether or not you have it already, we can certainly put something together and resurface.

Just to clarify, I think what you're asking is... Is disaggregation of the transportation costs. Yeah, no, it's like how much do we... So the budget is close to $200 million. How much of that is for and many more. Private and Charter Schools. Exactly. Athletics. Yeah. So I think we do have those numbers in the RFI. We will make sure that we produce a chart in whatever gaps there are. You know, we'll get it from them. But I do think, what is the, if you, just the sort of, when people think about BPS transportation and they think about, you know, just busing, you know, across the city Like what portion, what percentage of the 197 would that be?

A little over 130 million of the 197. And then when we, the rest is like bus monitors, MBTA passes, McKinney-Vento van transportation. And then within that 130th, Thank you.

I like that disaggregation.

Yeah. Great question. Thank you. Okay. Well, thank you. We'll do a second round. Those are my questions. Thank you. Okay, thank you. So just, I guess, David, you know, in terms of like we talked at the first hearing about The supplemental that, you know, BPS is seeking to cover the deficit from this year, I guess, you know, and a lot of healthcare utility costs. What, what, Changes have been made in the FY27 budget. Are we going to be seeing the same thing again? Why? Why not? What have we learned? How is FY27 going to be different, hopefully?

There were five main cost overruns we laid out to the school committee in December. Unfortunately, we were accurate in what those were. Fortunately, I guess, in that they meant we did it right, but unfortunately, they were all, they remain very similar. So those four main items we outlined in December were health insurance, Full-time staff due to a decrease in vacancy rate, transportation, and special education costs. The fifth item that has come up since that December update was utilities. Through our budget process for the first four, We have revamped the budgets for those to better match our run rate and expected cost. Working closely with Dan on transportation, with our Office of Specialized Services on special education, we are feeling very confident

I'm confident at this point in the year that we will not see issues with that pending unforeseen circumstances. Utilities is definitely something we're going to have to continue to monitor, especially with the current Global Political Environment. The cost of natural gas in particular, but also electric prices are definitely concerning for us for next year. It's something we'll continue to monitor. But the scale of utilities relative to some of those other items can be somewhat smaller, so we'll be continuing to monitor utilities.

Okay, and we've budgeted more for utilities and health insurance for next year?

We've budgeted more for all of the main items, yes. But utilities is the one I remain the most concerned about just because It's very hard to predict pricing at the current moment given geopolitical factors.

OK. I guess we've talked about cost savings from school closures and mergers. What is the plan for, we're gonna talk more about that tomorrow, but you know, What is the plan for school closures and mergers? That would be notified next year. I mean, we have like a lead-in.

Yeah, as you said, Chief Stanislaus will be here tomorrow to talk a little bit more. I think we're planning to follow a very similar My team is involved when appropriate to help understand the costs. As I've said before Closures, like this isn't how you decide things, but closures tend to save more money than mergers. Because when you redistribute students across multiple schools to fill empty seats, you often don't have a lot of increased costs there. When you're merging, you're often serving a very similar student population and you see a little bit less savings, but what those students experience is improved. So in mergers, it's a little bit less about cost savings and a little bit more about improved student experience in a larger school because they're able to have more offerings.

Okay, yeah, one thing I get confused about when I hear you guys talking about this is in terms of Closures in the future, whether there's an actual plan to close XYZ schools or these are decisions that will be made in the future in terms of like when people talk about a long-term facilities plan. And we talk about that tomorrow.

Yeah, we can talk more about it tomorrow. And I think just I would just close by saying we're going to continue to work on our 18 month cycle of announcements and process. So that'll continue. We can speak more tomorrow.

Okay. I know Councilor Louijeune mentioned HVAC systems and the revolving fund. I think, is it capped at $2 million for... There's a $2 million limit for BPS for the revolving fund, I believe. And even though there's a lot of schools with sort of received very poor grades for their HVAC system, and we need to Work on those. So how are we going to help those school buildings out? Do we have enough money? What does this limit mean in the revolving fund?

You're correct. The cap for the facilities revolving fund is $2 million. Currently, the balance is much lower than that. I will just say that the revolving fund

The revenue into the revolving fund is just from facility rental. And parking fees. Thanks, Blair. And so the spending that we make from that Most of the HVAC repairs would be coming just straight from the capital budget and not revolving. The revolving expenses tend to be way more of the sort of day-to-day wear and tear for our buildings that are used more by the public.

And the only thing I would add to that as far as the APAC work in general, as many of you all know, we've added ACs in most of our schools except for like four, if I remember correctly. And we received a grant from DESE to complete some repairs and some work at three of the four. Work is currently underway at the Bates, Kenney, and Lee Academy schools. And we've known that the Mather School, there's a larger neighborhood We've assessed every school. We understand what they need to add HVAC, and we're doing that with three of the four remaining that we have left.

And then for food service, there's a large number of vacancies listed. Can you explain what is happening there, what those vacancies are?

Sure, so I'll start and you can feel free to jump in, Chipo. but a lot of these vacancies come from positions that we no longer need based on a meal per labor hour formula. So there'll be staff schools and sites is largely based on The number of meals that the schools serve, and that's also based on number of students. So if that number goes down, and many more.

Well, we'll get to exact numbers, but there is a level of reduction. Okay. I guess, Izzy, I think we have eight. Is it the loss of eight FTEs and school safety? So what are those positions?

So those were unfilled. Seven of those were unfilled safety officer positions.

Can you just explain who, what those, those aren't crossing guards, those are...

No, no, those are safety specialists. Those would be the security officers inside schools. And then one of them is from the Office of Emergency Management Division. They have five folks in one position.

Okay, thank you very much. Okay, so we've been joined by Councillor Worrell and Councillor Durkan. Councillor Worrell, we're wrapping up the first round. We're only going to have seven minutes for each councillor, then we're going to have public testimony at the end of the first round, then we'll go for a second round. So, Councillor Worrell, you've got seven minutes.

Thank you Chair and thank you to BPS for being here. Family liaisons, how many family liaisons do we currently have on staff and how many are we budgeted for?

I will tell you the budget report part and then I'll Now at the end of the table for how many are actually filled. But we have one family liaison at every school. And then we have a small number of schools that have a second. And I'll have to double check that. So it's around 110 positions.

that we're budgeted for, right?

We're budgeted for. And they are almost entirely filled. We can certainly pull the number of vacancies for you.

Awesome. And then this is a transportation question. In March 27, RFI response, we've received a breakdown of the transportation costs and I believe right now adds up. to 90 million like the numbers is 54.7 million door-to-door and corner stops, 3.5 million for out-of-district students, 25 million for charter school students, 2 million for private school students, and then 4.75 million for students who are unhoused. That adds up to 90 million, but we have a transportation budget of 200 million. What are the breakdowns of the rest of the cost? It was in a March 27th. RFI response.

It was a breakdown of funds for FY27 busing.

Yes. Yes. So I think That RFI response didn't include some of the, like, charter school students, for instance, I don't think we're asked about in that RFI. No, charter schools was 25 million for charter school students.

Where are we seeing that? Yeah, I mean, that's the number I have here.

I think we are working on a revised breakdown of the full budget, and we'll be able to send that to you very shortly.

Okay. Councilor Louijeune asked for a breakdown, so we're going to... Work on that with them.

Okay.

They did submit one. Yes.

On March 27th. Yeah. Yeah. But it seems like it was missing $110 million.

We do have an account for Councilor Worrell. I think Mr. Woldegard just needed a chance to just break down it all completely. We can give you this full breakdown if you want in more detail and explain where it all is. Okay. If it's not in the R5. Okay. Or if it's not clear in the R5, we can clarify it. All right.

In the future case, Seeking clarity on cost saving strategies targeted for BPS, how much are we supposed to be able to save through the current cost saving strategies as opposed to now? I guess the question is, in the future case that we're in this scenario again because of financial constraints and whatever the economy looks like then, do you foresee your cost savings strategies changing? Like if we could not? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. through our current cost-saving strategies, which included the spending pauses in November and in January, as well as some action planning across the operations division. We estimate that we saved $26 million.

26, okay.

Correct. And last night, we reported to the school committee A request for supplemental appropriation to cover the overages for health insurance and utilities.

In theory, we could take the same strategies again next year and see similar savings, but we are certainly not planning or hoping to have to do that.

Right. And are you able to provide... To the council, because I know there was a few different cost saving strategies that were implemented. What was the dollar amount saved against each different strategy?

Yes. Can you give me a minute to, yeah, yeah.

I'll have to get back to you with those details. And then do we have a status, I know BPS was doing a equity study. Do we have a status of that equity study?

Is that the work Colin was doing? I believe so, yes. Yeah, he presented briefly on the updated opportunity achievement gap policy last night. Okay. So we do have that available to share with you, yes.

Okay. Is the Boston Compact still active? Yes. Okay. All right. That's good. Because I know we can cut costs by aligning private and charter bell times from 7.30, 8.30, and 9.30. Will the compact still handle that?

Yeah, I can take that question, Councilor. That is something we've been discussing through the compact. And a number of those schools had made some shifts for this year. Then there were four charter schools remaining, which had misaligned bell times. We've been working individually with each of them. I'm happy to share it this time. Three of them have confirmed shifts for next year to align to the BPS bell time structure.

Awesome. In addition to that, Councilor, we're also doing work, if you could speak to Mr. Rosengart, around making sure we have other strategies to get us more of our BPS schools on more of the same tier times. And that's been proven successful as well to add to that.

Yeah, no, that's right. I think at this point in time, We've made some, I think almost 20 schools within the last few years within BPS making minor bell time adjustments and there's only a handful of schools remaining not aligned and those are alternative education high schools where they have, you know, Very specialized programming or schedules for the students, and we're looking at ways to do that in a way that aligns with the school's needs.

And we're hoping to model that so that the compact schools can also see that it's possible.

Awesome. And then I also know that we see a dip in enrollment in fourth and fifth grade. I believe because that's when a number of our other charter schools starts. And so we end up seeing schools lose enrollment in those grades. Is there a way the compact could align grades at our charter schools to whatever the grade alignment the rest of the district is? So getting charter schools to follow our district alignment from K-1

I think we'd have to talk to the compact about that and double check what the legal requirements are around that, but we can definitely explore it. All right.

Thank you, Chair. Okay, thank you very much. Councillor Durkan, we're doing seven minutes.

Thank you so much, Chair. I wanted to ask some questions about food quality. Obviously, Boston Public Schools have been recently renowned and have gotten a lot of I have been lauded for what we've been doing with making sure that kids have access to healthy meals. I know the mayor has been out to some farms. There's been some announcements over the years I think given the budget situation we're in, I just wanted to ask how confident we are that students will still have access to quality meals. And I'm sorry if this question has already been asked. I know that you serve over 8 million meals per year. I have been on a health journey myself and really tried to eat healthy. And I'm just curious, as we're facing a tough budget year, how are we going to ensure that students continue to have access to the highest quality of meals?

Sure. So congratulations. You're the first person to ask me a food service question. So thank you very, very, very much for doing that. And we're happy to say that our quality is not going to diminish or change. and the budget definitely reflects that. So we're committed to making sure that we do have the onsite cooking in all of our schools. and I'm very excited about this because I started in 2006 when Central Office Kitchen was closed and we've been working since 2006 to finally like launch it and get it up and running. So it is up and running. We are serving freshly prepared meals similar at Central Kitchen that we do in the schools and we're able to deliver to the schools that don't have the ability to cook fresh themselves. So we have... All the schools covered with all freshly prepared food will continue to source locally, will continue to make sure the ingredient standards are there. and there's no interruption in services from that regard.

The only questions that you'll see is more around the staffing levels per school because that's largely depending on the meals that the staff serve per day which is also tied to student enrollment. number of students go down there'll be less staff because less food they're serving the other thing i would add is that um we're also expanding our breakfast in the classroom model um which is huge because that's also going to make sure we're We have had a number of schools already start that program but we're spending the rest of the spring Make sure they can roll it out school wide in more schools. I think we're adding another 12 schools of the, I think, Don't call me, but of the 12 schools that we're focused on now, we're rolling it out school-wide for the spring. And the next school year, we're gonna add more schools to make sure they're rolling it out school-wide. So we have a lot of exciting things going on in food services. We continue to serve the halal meals. So I'll stop there, but I'm just excited to talk about food.

Thank you. And I did want to ask a little bit about procurement equity. I know that's been a charge and composting. particularly there's a lot you know when wasted when food is wasted I know that there was a program that had been launched and I was just curious if composting was still something that was a priority and was growing in the schools and I wanted to ask about procurement in particular

Yeah, so we're continuing to compost. We still continue to work with that partnership and arrangement. We're still working on good food purchasing and all those things. So that's all ongoing. Nothing's changed at all. I'm just thankful for the current leadership and past leadership that have got us to this point.

Definitely. And can you talk a little bit more about the cultural competency of food as well? Because I think that that, for me, is something that I think BPS is standing out in that respect.

Yeah, thank you. Yeah, we're going to continue to make sure we meet with students and families to understand what preferences that they have, making sure that we celebrate different cultures per month. We definitely cook meals and allow that opportunity We do different taste testing for students and families as we build in more cultural meals in the menu. So all that will continue and we're excited about that and we're seeing a lot of steady participation with regard to that.

And I wanted to ask, and I asked this question in one of our working sessions. We've had, thanks to our chair, a lot of conversations already, both in this room and in other rooms. I asked a question with the breakdown, and I know that Councilor Worrell just mentioned it, the breakdown of transportation costs. Obviously, when student enrollment goes down but transportation costs go up, a lot of folks have questions about that. Could you answer more broadly why that is the case? and just sort of how we're approaching that conversation. And obviously we've had trans dev in here. We've had a lot of conversations about transportation over the past year.

Sure, so we can get some of that breakdown to you. Mr. Rosengart can speak more to that. And then a lot of it is, again, about the service model that we're trying to implement, the measures and targets we're trying to hit with our contracts, and some of the safety measures we put in place. But Mr. Rosengart, please. Yeah.

I think in terms of the breakdown of spend, we're setting a follow up with the breakdown kind of by line of how that overall cost is broken down. But I think when we look at the broader how costs are evolving over time, And what we've seen is that we've had things like Zoom and the ridership procedure Thank you. Thank you. Routes buses on the road every day is down to 625 from 640 last year. We're expecting to see another about 3% reduction in that next year. That's obviously in some ways offset by what we expect to see with inflationary and contract-driven cost increases. Fuel is a big one right now that we're looking at, obviously.

But I think all told, we are expecting to see our actual spend next year be in line with or slightly below actual spend this year.

And I did want to ask a tricky question. I know there was some news, and I don't know if anyone asked this question, I'm not sure if anyone asked that question. I'm sure someone asked that. If there was a plan to start doing that or how sort of the operational and if that is difficult from an operational side or if it's easy.

Yeah, no, I really appreciate that question. So I think that when we look at kind of the Our goal is always to improve service for students. I think non-performance damages are one tool that are available to us. They're not always the appropriate tool for the moment. We've been seeing steady improvements in service over the last three years. However, we saw a specific increase in uncovered trips this year, which Ultimately did lead us to begin to assess non-performance damages in March for uncovered trips. We've seen that issue be dramatically improved since taking that step. Our on-time performance also continues to be higher than it's ever been. And so I think as we look forward, we're going to continue to make sure we're using the right tool for each moment to keep driving improvements for kids.

Thank you. If I may, I just want to say thank you for all of your work because I know the issues that we've dealt with with constituents in my district, you've always been such a resource and I think the reality is it is really difficult to move the amount of kids that were moving around and students that were moving around, should I say scholars, around the city. And I think you have showed up and you've answered questions. You do it all year long, so it's not just during the budget. and I want to thank you for all the work that you do because I know that that work is not easy. So thank you, Chair.

Okay, thanks. Dan, I just wanted to, I know at our last hearing, You did talk about maybe finding transdev for late buses or no shows. It was like $500. Is that what the contract says? And just to update us, I'm assuming no fines have been issued.

So I think as we shared at the last hearing, we did begin assessing non-performance damages for uncovered trips at the beginning of March. So March was a dramatic improvement from the prior months, but we did assess non-performance damages for March, and we're continuing to see improvements in April relative to March as well. What was the dollar figure, do you know? It was about $105,000.

Okay. Okay, and you feel like that's having the intended impact of improving performance?

Yes, like I said, Uncovered Trips are back to kind of the minimal levels in line with prior years and OTP is Thank you very much.

Before we go to a second round, we're going to go to public testimony. The folks from the BTU, you didn't just sign in because you thought this was an attendance sheet. Do you want to testify? I'm assuming. Yeah. Okay. So we got four people. First, Dr. Bianca Ortiz-White, and then Ayush Bajpai, Johnny McGinnis, and then Clifton Braithwaite. So you have two minutes for testimony. Just get close to the mic and whenever you're ready.

Good afternoon. My name is Dr. Bianca Ortiz-Wythe. I'm the strategic researcher for the BTU. I'm also a resident of Rossendale. I am here on behalf of the BTU to urge the Council to consider moving the BPS health insurance appropriation out of the school budget and into the city's central budget under the People's Operating Cabinet to ensure better forecasting and lessen the impact of health insurance volatility on our schools. This is a straightforward administrative fix and right now the current structure is working against our schools. Boston centralizes health insurance for nearly every department. bought police, fire, public works under a single $295 million appropriation. When costs rose by $43.9 million this year, that increase was absorbed centrally, not taken out of any single department's operating budget. BPS is the exception. Its $197 million health insurance costs sit inside the school budget.

So when that cost increased by $49.4 million, 33% in a single year, it came directly out of funding for teachers, staff, and student services. In fact, more than half of BPS's total budget increase this year was consumed by health insurance alone. This raises a really important question, which is, if health insurance is bargained, already happens at the city level, why doesn't the appropriation? Since 2011, all Boston employee unions, including BPS, have bargained health insurance through the Public Employee Committee, the PEC. The City sets plan design, negotiates premium splits, uses the same actuaries, and manages cost containment. BPS has no independent authority over these decisions, yet it bears the full financial risk when costs spike. Boston actually is in the minority when it comes to budgeting health insurance inside the school appropriation.

Most cities in Massachusetts, including Cambridge, Somerville, Worcester, administer health insurance for school staff centrally. and actually just two months ago, the town of Franklin voted unanimously to do the same, citing better forecasting and fiscal stability. I'll wrap up now, but it simply aligns the appropriation with how health insurance is already managed in the city.

Okay, thank you very much. Ayush, yeah.

Good afternoon, everyone.

Thank you for... Yeah, is that on? Okay.

Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak. My name is Ayush. I'm the political organizer at the Boston Teachers Union. I'm giving this testimony on behalf of BTU social workers. We need to put a human face on what it means to cut for district social workers, which includes a slight district social worker from next year's budget. Cutting just three social workers from next year's budget is not a small adjustment. It directly affects 37 schools, 13,491 students, and 71 school-based social workers who would have to be redistributed to the six remaining district social workers. These roles are student-centered positions that anchor safety, stability, and coherence across our system. District social workers lead high-level case consultations in our most complex high-risk situations, guiding schools towards safe, legally sound, culturally responsive, and trauma-informed decisions that keep students learning and out of harm's way.

They provide ongoing mentoring and clinical support to school-based social workers, reducing burnout and turnover and protecting the quality and consistency of mental health care in every single school building. trained staff in de-escalation, safety care, and trauma responsive practices so that more adults in schools can respond calmly and safely when a student is in crisis. In 2024-2025, we trained 329 BPS staff and 179 to date this school year. We coordinate safe, supportive placements and transitions for vulnerable students, ensuring they land in environments that meet their needs rather than being balanced between ill-fitting settings. They strengthen student support teams and other school-based teams by identifying gaps, sharing best practices, and building coordinated plans so students do not fall through the cracks. and lastly they serve as the bridge between central office and schools aligning policy with practice and building an equitable behavioral health system across the district not just to a few well-resourced schools.

To make this concrete, just one district social worker trained 140 staff members in safety care, equipping them to deescalate crisis. They provided 16 instances of clinical support. And I'm just going to wrap up here. Eliminating four of these positions does not just cut out the extras. It does not just trim the outsides. It dismantles a critical safety and support infrastructure that holds our schools together on these hardest days. It is always the kids who need the most and who are the most vulnerable who will be left behind if these positions are cut. For our students' safeties and our staff's well-being, we need to reintegrate funding for these positions. Thank you so much.

Mr. McGuinness.

Good afternoon, Chair Weber and members of the Boston City Council. My name is Johnny McInnis, the political director for the Boston Teachers Union. I'm here to speak on behalf of the over 10,000 members of our union to address Two critical issues regarding our schools. First, as my colleague Dr. Bianca Ortiz-White testified earlier on BPS Healthcare, must be centralized. We are a glaring outlier as one of the few municipalities in the Commonwealth and one of the only big cities in the country to manage health care this way. This change will not negatively impact any health plan in the city. It will, however, allow for better forecasting of our budget and greater fiscal stability. This is already within the city's power.

Section 58 in the city charter requires the city to fund hospitalization and insurance at no less than the three-year average of actual expenditures and it does not exclude school employees. This fix does not infringe on the school committee's authority over the BPS budget. as the money allocated to health care was already mandated to be spent on health care under Section 58. We are not asking to change what gets spent. We are asking to budget responsibly and that the single step have a dramatic effect on protecting our schools from the current healthcare cost shock. Second, our schools need supplemental appropriation if we are going to maintain trust in BPS. The breadth of student-facing services that will be cut under the current budget is staggering.

The students who will be hurt most will be the students with the greatest need. Be aware, it will hurt students with special needs who pay the price. It will be multilingual learners who pay the price. It will be our low-income students who pay the price. There will be loss of trust that will be near impossible to get back. If we want families, students, and communities to buy into a robust, effective, and inclusive Boston public school system, we cannot turn our backs on them now. We know the budget is tight and that Boston is under fiscal pressure. Whether it's increasing charter school tuition reimbursement or reforming Chapter 70 formula, which we are strongly advocating for at the Statehouse, we need to work together to make sure the state gives Boston what it needs. However,

there are solutions the city can take to make the budget work for our students schools and families thank you so much again for your time and consideration please don't hesitate to reach out to us if you have any questions thank you

Okay, thank you very much. Mr. Braithwaite, are you ready?

Good evening, good afternoon, everybody. My name's Clifton Braithwaite, and I'm not in here as the role as a statesman. I'm here as a concerned grandfather, and a concerned father of the community. And I'm just going to give some points. I've been around these meetings a long time, even a lot before anybody here that I believe in at this table. But I have never heard anybody talk about using students that are seniors or grad students to volunteer to help out the shortage in staff when it comes to the social side. When I was in school, we used to tap more of parents coming into the schools who were role models and be a bridge in between. Our sports programs were a lot better. My homegirl jazz from the hip-hop community started at JP High School food pantries.

I think we need to dive deeper into that because a lot of the children going home are going home without food. Y'all been doing a good job on that, but I think we got to expand on that. And some of these things are what I'm asking, but this last question came from my on-page line. Education is key for everybody, especially when they come into our country. But people want to know where's the budget going when it comes to immigration studies. because we have to find a balance that we can help everybody. I'm originally Venezuelan and Trinidadian, first American born in my family, so I'm not against immigration at all. But we gotta have a balance, and I like to do enclosing. With parents and children, if one kid thinks that they're getting more from their parents, we'll cause a divide in the home. My immigrant brothers, I stand with them. But a lot of people don't because they don't understand how politics really works.

So those are the three things that I want to talk about and anything We need to get our parents and our community more involved. And are we bringing back where if a parent didn't finish high school that they could be a part of getting a GED? And one more thing in closing, I worked at a school, I don't want to say what school it was, and a young man was from the LBG community. And when his mother and father came, he had to change back to being a young man. When are we going to have classes for parents to understand? We're in a different time now. What people didn't like or didn't believe in back in the days is different now. So we should be able to help parents to understand the transition of their children. Those are questions that I got offline that people wanted me to ask, but my overall concern is being a grandfather, and I feel that we're losing our educational values. And last thing said,

When my grandson said to me I'm not studying cursive, I couldn't believe it. The rest of the world does it. Why did we pull it out of our schools? Thank you.

Thank you very much. Okay, we're gonna start with the second round. Flynn, Murphy, have agreed to swap places here for this round switch order. Flynn, you're up.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to Councilor Murphy for letting me go first. I listen carefully to public testimony from the Boston Teachers Union in Let me be the first councillor to say that I agree with that recommendation that they have made. Basically moving the health care for teachers and BPS employees. Move it under the City of Boston umbrella, under their human resources. Maybe it saves money for taxpayers. And what do we do with that money? Maybe we can put that money towards social workers. Maybe we could put that money towards other mental health counselors, to teachers, to paras.

I highlighted, and one of the representatives of the teachers union did as well, the social workers, the three district social workers. I still can't get over how a city is able to cut social workers during this critical time. I'm not criticizing anybody, but we have to understand The invaluable role they play in schools, these three district social workers, especially during a time of crisis. We need them in the schools, working with other social workers, working with Students, working with teachers, working with parents, providing critical services that they need and deserve so that they can be productive, so that they can be happy.

As we move forward, I do want us to see a commitment that we're going to not cut social workers or psychologists or nurses, I can't support anything where we're cutting anyone that gives direct support to a student every day. And those are teachers, those are paras. Those are nurses, those are social workers. So my challenge to my colleagues is let's work together to ensure that there are no cuts to BPS employees that interact every day with students. Maybe we can make cuts at other places. I don't know, but we shouldn't be making cuts to

personnel that directly provide critical care for students. My other point, Mr. Chair, is, I don't know why the Boston public school system is the only city department that is getting cuts in their personnel. I'm troubled by that. I think it's one of the most important City departments we have yes we have challenges in the transportation department significant challenges but why are we cutting why are we cutting teachers why are we cutting Social Workers, Psychologists. That's what I'm focused on and I'm going to be focused on from now until the time this budget is signed is what do we do as a city council to ensure that we work together to get the funds back in the budget for those critical positions.

And I know some of it has to do with vacant teachers, vacancies That are not currently filled that we're able to eliminate. Well, that doesn't solve the problem. They're vacant. That means there's a teacher that needs to be in there. and we need to hire someone in that position so that they can continue providing, so that that student can continue receiving a quality education, quality assistance, support So I don't support cutting vacant positions because that's an opportunity loss for our students. I'm troubled by that as if that's the answer because there are because we're not necessarily impacting someone personally in the teacher rank, but we're impacting students. That's who we're impacting. And when the student doesn't have that support that they need,

That's troubling for me as an elected official. I just can't accept that. So I want to go back to social workers once again and listening to the I talked about this before that. How are we going to work with the City Council to get that funding back into the Are there any other options for us to do it?

Earlier this afternoon, Chief Bloom, you know, We will continue to have conversations about it, and we will continue to do that, and we do appreciate your advocacy and the advocacy of the BTU around that. But we also just want to highlight that We do appreciate the work that social workers do do in the district. And as we also mentioned earlier today, we still have about 396 total staff that are supporting our students with a combination of social work and mental health support. and Social Work Services. And we, unfortunately, due to budget cuts, we do have to change the way we manage centrally and these district social workers do a hybrid of some tier three support to schools and some training. Yes, they do. But we also want to make sure that we maintain staff that did that direct service at the school level, which we have.

Thank you, Sam. And Mr. Chair, maybe just a question for you to the administration. Why is BPS the only city department that has cuts to personnel? Is that a fair question to ask?

Yeah, I mean, I think, yes, it's a fair question to ask. And I mean, I think that we'll see what the answer is. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Okay, thanks. Councillor Murphy.

Also, if we could just put it on the record, because I know Council Flynn did ask the question about why is BPS the only city department that does carry their own benefit costs. So if we could just put that on the record, please. That answer, because it wasn't answered. Dan, have they paid yet, the $105,000 we billed them, correct, for March? Sorry.

That gets assessed against the monthly management fee.

So could you just explain that for those watching? Sure.

Yeah, of course. So as part of our contract, we pay the vendor a monthly management fee. and so any non-performance damages are subtracted from that amount.

So you don't bill them, you just give them less.

Correct.

How much do you pay them each month?

Just one second. Sure. is 1.6 million per month.

Thank you for that clarification. On page 57, I know Dave stepped out, but you're here and can answer this. A couple things stood out. and this is the section in the budget that is central office and it goes from six contract and other non-personnel to 90. Could you explain what those 84 positions are and it also though goes from spending 27.2 million to spending less money but adding 84 positions so where did we shift that Payment. And who are those 84 people there? Yes, in the book.

I don't know if you have the same lineup as we do, but Under the budget categories?

Could you tell me, is that for a specific department?

Yep, central. It's under the section of central office operations. Yes. 57.

We're talking about budget office.

Yeah, and then the other question I have is support staff went up just 1.8 personnel, but it went up $3,683,017. So that was the other one, because I don't think less than two full-time positions need to spend $3.6 million for that.

Can I take a deeper look at that and then provide that information?

Yes, but that's an important answer to get, especially where it's coming under central office. So 94 new positions. And where is the pay? It's obviously it's not showing the pay all in that same spot. And do you know the answer to the support staff? It says we're adding less than two full-time positions, but we increased that line. by 3,683,017.

I believe David Bloom has the answer. I think we talked about this in the pre-budget hearings.

I know he's 3.30, but I wanted to ask it again because we didn't get it clear. Yeah.

No, no.

It jumped out to me. I have staffing questions also. Thank you. The excess pool this year, they were given, if you could explain, what I was told is that it worked a little differently this year where they were giving a letter that was sent to them last week and they were told where they would be placed, but that they weren't allowed to take the time, I think it was July 1st, the date where they used to be able to still apply to other positions. Could you explain why? We're not allowing our permanent teachers to take other options up till that date?

So let me begin by saying for people who don't understand what excess educators are, So our excess educators for us are our teachers who are permanent meaning that they've been in the district for more than three years and by state law we are required to to keep those people gainfully employed by the district. So they are permanent educators, and they have tenure within BPS. And when we talk about our excess pool, we're talking about educators who who are either displaced because of reduction or... School closings. School closure. or they themselves can say, you know, I no longer want to work at this location. I'm going to put myself in the excess pool.

And what traditionally happens when they're in that excess pool is we allow them, they are then, we have something called mutual consent. meaning that those educators, the district posts its positions on March 1st and those educators can in return apply for positions that are available to them. However, this year, it's not just this year, but last year as well, what we've noticed is that there are certain positions, especially the positions, our high school positions, where We have more excess educators than we have positions. So this year, we gave our school leaders the ability to say that people can apply up to, I believe the date was April 1st for us, that

individuals can in fact still apply for those positions. And we have the ability to place educators in positions if, in fact, they were not able to obtain a position after that date. We've placed people in those positions, and it's always been our role is that One position, once we've placed you or you've accepted a position, you cannot move after you accept that position. So what we've done is, We've placed those educators in those positions. The reason we're not allowing people to move is right now we have at least 132 provisional educators. who need to be settled, more than likely what's going to happen

Murphy is that those people will leave the district because if you have people moving left and right like that, that means they truly don't know if they have a job in the district.

We're going to apply elsewhere, and we lose them every year. Yes. But this year we do fail. If we did it last year, then how successful was it?

It was successful last year. We were able to get... and most of our excess educators into a position. I mean for the provisional. The provisionals, for the most part, we notice our hiring is we hire more people Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. are one or two provisionals that were already in the district whose positions were either deleted or they were displaced that they actually apply for other positions in the district. and that we are able to retain them. And that's basically what we're trying to do is like retain those educators by giving people certainty. Because like right now, if people are moving...

It gives you more time so you can... Before like summer break starts.

Exactly.

Provisional teachers are no. How many of the permanent teachers that were placed are not happy? And is there any Thank you. Thank you. Nothing that these permanent teachers did to deserve it, but they're in a situation where they're no longer in their own classrooms and able to do their best work.

To be honest, we've probably heard from like two to three people that weren't happy with their placement for the most part. We, you know, we took a lot into account when placing people. For example, we looked at your address, how close a school is for your commute. So we considered all of those things, like the license you have, The demographic of kids that you used to teach and where like all of those things were it was a really thoughtful process and we understand we're not going to please everyone but we really really tried to do that to to understand that people have commutes and all of those things played a role. But I think ultimately for us, we are really thinking also about our provisionals that we want to keep.

and having the hiring process be settled, it's really important to us that we keep these people who have, you know, the district have poured into them, like you're talking about, Three people who've been here for three years who have been in the district and we want to keep them. So that's why it's been a little trickier this year.

Okay, thanks, Councillor Murphy. Councillor Breadon? Oh, I'm sorry, did you get an answer on that, what's going on in the budget? Not yet. Okay, well... Yeah, I mean, it's just for folks watching at home. The support staff goes from last year for 4.6 million from 90. to 8.3 million for 91.8 positions. And the contracts and other non-personnel somehow has personnel, but it goes from 27 million for six people to 10 million for 90 people. either we're making the best bargain ever or something is... And that's at central office, not at the school level. Yeah, that's the central budget office. That is the budget office for central. So hopefully you get an explanation for that. Brayton.

Thank you. I had further questions on the buses but I think my colleague Councillor Durkan had that question answered. I'm just curious as to what the process is for the school committee to vote on the external funds budget. And from the documents, it seems that this is an additional $160,000. Mr. Speaker, I would like to make a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I would like to make a point of 134,621,226 was in the FY27 budget recommendation to central office while only 25,518,000 thereabouts to schools.

So that means these external funds would round the total school budget up BPS Budget for Financial Year 27, up from £1.73 billion up to... 1,866,704. So the question is, does the school committee have to vote on that? Because that's money that's sort of floating around. 160 million plus that doesn't seem to be clearly identified to be going anywhere.

Yes, our school committee does vote to accept all grants that come into the BPS budget.

And so this $160 million, where is that coming from?

That is in part an estimate based on prior year grant awards. Those grants run the spectrum of privately funded foundations. There are donations as well as federal and state grants.

Most of those grants come with specific purposes to be spent on.

So why is it not included in the BPS budget financial year 27? Why is it? Why is it not included? Why are we voting on 1.73 billion instead of 1.86 billion?

The vote for the $1.73 billion budget is for the operating budget that comes from the city. These grants, most of them we haven't accepted or we haven't received the formal award yet as they're for FY27. There are a There are a few multi-year grants where we do know the funds will be there and we actually already have We already have received those funds and so either they would be carried forward into next year or it would be one of the years included in the grant award. and in the budget book the budget tables towards the end do include the total grant funds but we do go back to our school committee in Hopefully it's May this year to present our detailed grant projections for next year.

So then how can you, why is there the external funds, you know, it indicates that 134 134 million is going to central office while only 25 million is going to schools.

Again, as Dr. Tapina has mentioned, many of our grants are for a specific purpose, and most of our grants are applied to directly by central departments. In most cases, those grants do go to Direct School Programming. An example would be our IDEA grant for special education. Though most of those funds do sit in the central office, I believe our FY26 award amount for IDEA is $18 million. Most of that does sit in central office. but all of the dollars go to supporting students.

Is it a way to even look back to last year and see what these external funds were spent on this for financial year 26 so we get an idea of what the landscape looks like? The other question I had was about the management of Hobbs schools. It's not apparent in the org chart. This appears to now be in Opportunity Garb's office?

Yes, that's correct.

And then what's the total allocation of funds for the 20 Hobbs schools?

Yes, it's 20 hub schools.

And how much money is allocated for the hub schools?

We'll get you that information in a second.

And then also, I'd love a breakdown of where the hub schools are and and where the funds are being spent in the hub schools.

Yeah, so we can get you a list of each 20 schools and some of the activities that are going on in them and show them the problem.

Yeah, because one of my concerns about hub schools, I think they're great. But I also feel that every neighborhood, if it's a hub school, has a particular different flavor because the needs are slightly different. It's sort of a universal thread. We have a lot of kids, families living in poverty and low opportunity, but... You know, different hub of schools. Some need the Katie's classes, some need more food support, and just having a better idea of all of that. And then... See, is it possible to get an average salary table for financial year 27 for managerial employees in central office?

Yes.

Yeah, we'd really like to see that as well. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Okay, thank you very much. We can do another round of just a couple questions from the Chair. So for salary savings, can you just explain what You know, calculations you did, what the methodology was to calculate salary savings in this, in the FY27 budget?

Yes. So we calculate salary savings looking at historical data. This year we did, this year being FY26, we did have an increased fill rate. So we had less vacancies than we have historically. And for that reason, we adjusted our FY27 calculation to be about $4 million less in salary savings to account for what we think will be a continuing trend.

Okay, so the vacancy rate, it was 94%, I think, just so we're projecting around, same kind of?

Yes.

Yes. Okay. and then for terms of where we have class closures like our you know what percentage of I mean, how does the closure of a classroom impact our salary savings? Are we planning not to reopen those classrooms? you know are those positions just are we wiping them off our books for good usually I guess what's the when we hear of a class closing at a school how does that impact the number of vacancies and

Great question. If a class is closing at a school, then those positions do not exist for FY27. And so they would not be counted towards the

Salary Savings. And just to describe our process a little bit, Councilor. So every year we go through a cycle of reviewing what our projected enrollment will be. and what that looks like. And then based on that, we work with schools to understand like what families are choosing, how many people actually enroll. And then we have a sense of how many students are going per school. And then from there, we talk about staffing. As we align the budgets, we go through cycle of year. We do what's called a budget collaboration prologue meeting every December. to plan for the upcoming year. So if we see that there's a need for additional classrooms or teachers at schools, we make those adjustments during that process.

Okay, and there's information here about going for food service to go to... like we're making our own food and so what's the projected savings for if that what's the do you have a plan schedule for becoming self-sufficient and

Yeah, we're pretty much self-sufficient now. We rely heavily on our vendor to provide emergency meals and to provide There's emergency meals that they provide, and they provide some allergy-free meals as well, so we do have some reliance on them for that. For the most part, we're cooking fresh in most of our schools as well as those schools that don't have the kitchens to provide it from our central office. Okay, so is there any more savings that we will get? Yeah, we have some strategies that we've identified.

Yeah, so for next year, we're estimating $2.6 million in savings from the shift to the central kitchen.

Okay, and then what is that? We've maximized that savings, not another...

I think there would be other strategies that the Food and Nutrition Services team could follow to find additional savings, such as continuing their marketing strategies, and continuing to encourage participation and meal service within schools. We're also working with Food and Nutrition Services to Increase opportunities for after-school programming meals. Providing these meals and increasing participation increases our reimbursement from the feds. which would then decrease costs on our operating budget.

Okay, last question for me for this round. So I think under the proposed budget, the dollar figure from salary savings from vacancies is down as 15.7 million. I don't know, is that right? Yes. Okay. and then but that so what you're saying is that amount does not include like positions that have been eliminated because of closure either closure of schools or closures of classrooms.

Correct, because those positions would not be considered vacant, they'd be considered deleted.

Okay. And do you know what the dollar figure is attached to deleted positions? I can check on that for you. Okay. Thank you. Okay. And still no update on the central before Councilor Murphy has to use her time on the central budget office.

numbers, which are... We had, or I asked the team who put the budget book together to provide the backup for that page. They're working on... Pulling that and sending it to me, so I'm sorry I don't have it right now.

Okay, I mean, if we don't have an answer today, we'll get an answer, you know, maybe in writing and circulate it. So, Councilor Murphy?

They could bring it tomorrow.

We also have tomorrow. Yes, there's always tomorrow in this case.

Yes, hopefully in most cases. Thank you. So it's my turn. You're good?

Yeah, how about four minutes?

How about, yeah, I don't. So each school has its own breakdown and the book. And some schools under the contracts and other non-personnel have and then there's others that have zero costs so if you could explain exactly what that pays for what that's spent on because some Like the Mildred Abbs has 170,000 in that one. The Mozart has zero. So do you know what that's covering?

Sorry, can you repeat the question?

each page in the budget book broke breaks down the school so if you open like any page to if the schools are there the third one from the bottom on in the chart it says contracts and other non-personnel Could you explain, because some schools have that zero and others there's cost, so exactly what is covered under those costs?

In that row in school tables on the budget book, would be our contractual services. Most oftentimes in schools, those pay for partnerships. The amount would also be for Supplies, stipends to staff. The reason that number may be zero for some schools is that they could have budgeted for those activities using their Title I Federal dollars.

So at the school site council level, they provided you this number and they're deciding how they're going to spend it or not.

School site councils do work with their school leaders to develop their budgets.

Well, the school leader's part of it. Yeah, so that's what I'm saying, that this is coming from each school telling you where they're, okay. One specific question, the Carter School. which is a wonderful, wonderful school. I've worked with Mark. But I have a question about when you flip through the percentage of low income, I think it's the highest. There are a few that have low 90s, but the low income level at the Carter School is 96.2. Which I don't need to ask why it's 96.2. My question is we know that there are middle and high income students across our city with severe special needs. Where are we placing them? And are they all the out-of-district placements? So I would like a direct correlation or some understanding. That's a very high number at one school.

Yeah, so what I would say is we will have offers of specialized services here for sessions tomorrow, and they can help us break down on where they go exactly. But I know in general, Families have their team meetings and they discuss. You know, you're familiar.

So I'm not asking the process.

I'm saying where they go.

Why is that the highest?

I'm not sure, but we can see if we're getting into that tomorrow with our team that specializes in that work.

Okay. Do we have any ideas now? We want to wait.

I don't want to speculate, so I prefer if we...

Could you speak to just will we still have long-term subs? How's that going to work itself out? Is that going to be different at school levels? How's that?

No, we'll still have long-term subs because a long-term sub can sometimes happen as a result of Someone going out on a leave. So those processes are still going to exist. Like, we're still going to have individuals who take leave. Things happen. So we are going to have, we're going to, yeah.

And I know this answer, but I just want to get a kind of an understanding. Many times, or not many, but there are times when teachers will take a long-term position for many reasons sometimes it's like they're happy with the school the principal likes them they feel like it will turn into something but we know that when you're in a long-term sub position you're not Thank you. Thank you. may not have selfishly put themselves right because sometimes I've seen it many times where you know they're great asset to the building then maybe someone else is taking a maternity leave and they want to stay at that school but then they find out especially at a time like this what we're making cuts

Yes, so two things. When you have a long-term sub, if you're on a long-term sub assignment, by December, you become you get a contract essentially. So that time counts towards, because you are the teacher of record, So that time will count towards it. What we really try to do is we try to implore our people to, I know you like the school, but like, It's important that you get that professional status. So we are always trying, our recruitment team have been really great this year of working with educators who are reaching out to us that are saying, Hey, I need a position somewhere else. Can you help me look for that position? And we try our hardest to work with everyone that come across our emails. You know, getting them prepared for those interviews.

But we, you know, we always urge people to try to get that permanent position.

Could you, I know my time's up, but could you just explain For those listening, that even if you have the time accrued, if you're in a position that you don't own, that you can't be made permanent, if you could just explain that, that'd be helpful.

Yes, so... to all the people watching at home.

But my colleagues don't. Because we're getting calls from those types of staff, too.

So I think it's important to understand. Yes. The permanent process, I think a lot of people don't understand the process. For you to become permanent, there's two things you have to do. One, you have to be licensed. So you can be in a position, but if you're not licensed, you don't get professional status. So you need to be licensed and you need to be in a position for at least three years within the BPS, not just BPS, but any district, you need to be in that position for at least three years. And on the first day of your fourth year, you did not make permanent. So if you don't own that position, it's not yours because you're doing a long-term sub, so you can't be made permanent in that position.

We, again, we try to work with people to get them a permanent position, but what we've seen that's stopping a lot of our educators actually from being permanent is that licensure piece because oftentimes what happened is that you know I started the first day of school I've been sitting in this position for two years but unfortunately you're not licensed so that's been the really hard thing for a lot of our educators is because Sometimes we have to say, yes, you've been here, but for three of those four years, you are unlicensed.

Okay, and they don't need the certification to be there. Thank you for that. I appreciate it.

Okay. Thank you very much, Madam President Breadon.

Yes. We talked earlier about school safety officers, and I was just wondering The notion of school safety officers in an elementary school really gives me pause. I'm wondering, are we implementing, you know, A restorative justice teaching model where, you know, inevitably moments of conflict arise in the classroom. Kids can almost resort to physical punching it either, but Are we really working with helping our kids resolve conflict without restoring, you know, it's a teaching moment when something starts to unravel and have we got enough staff like paras and whatever trained in restorative justice to be able to deliver that sort of way to resolve and teach students how to resolve conflict without resorting to violence and such.

I can speak to my staff and the training that they've gotten. So to be clear, There aren't any safety officers assigned to an elementary school there all day. They respond when called upon for those emergency situations. Their job is to provide services immediately, document, notify the necessary people or agencies that need to be alerted. If they need to notify BPD in accordance with the MOU, they will.

So, DPD, Boston Police.

Boston Police, yes. So there's an MOU that outlines...

So you're reporting an elementary school student to the Boston Police Department?

So there's certain offenses that, by law, we have to alert BPD. Even though the law does not prosecute anybody under the age of 12, but by law and in accordance with the MOU, we have to notify Boston Police.

What sort of incidents are you talking about?

Sexual offenses. Weapons Offenses. Let me pull it up real quick.

Yeah, no, no, it's fine. Yeah, I can see that these are serious situations.

But that's the rare occasion. Yeah, so it's only the serious offenses. Again, most of them involve sexual assaults and things. Outside of that... When it's just a fist fight or just a conflict between students, we don't involve police in that situation at all. However, we have a team called Vipers. It's violence intervention. Prevention, Restorative Specialist.

Yeah, I worked in a school for special needs kids and we did CPPI. It was conflict prevention and physical intervention. So we really taught to We had 18 hours of training as new staff to do it, and then we had eight hours every year to keep up to snuff.

So this staff here is 10 individuals, 11 if you include their team leader, They're all trained in mediation and conflict resolution. They're the ones that would intervene and mediate between the two students. The goal is Students and people tend to follow an agreement that they took a part in. And so the job of the Vipers is to facilitate the two students coming to an agreement and To repeat, I mean to deter any repeat conflicts.

So how many people have you trained in it?

So it's 11.

11 for the whole system?

No, no, that's just his staff.

Your staff? So are teachers and counselors and other people trained in de-escalation?

I'm sure they are, yes ma'am, but that's not under my division.

I'm sorry, Councilor Breda, why are you looking up the other questions? Yes, other staff are training mediation, MTSS supports, Safety Cares. So there is a lot of robust training that our staff do on restorative practices that we offer district-wide. That doesn't necessarily come out of Chief Marrero's office, but it does happen district-wide.

Yeah, that's good. Mr. Chair, can I have one more question? Yes. It appears that there are at least four senior advisors and a deputy working with the Chief of Staff spending approximately $2 million. Can we get the job descriptions of that group of people, like that $2 million for five people? Seems a lot of money.

Yes, we can get that to you.

Worrell.

Thank you, Chair. And I know I wasn't here for my second round, so I got my second and third round now. I'm joking, I'm joking, I'm joking, I'm joking. I'm really joking. I'm a big fan of Discovery Hub. That's something that probably was talked about. In the first session, it's a program where our young people are able to get weekend support or classes. Springfield has just released their No Pressure Saturdays, kind of similar to this Discovery Hub that has been stood up over the last two years. I am a little disappointed, because my understanding is that it's no longer going to be funded. Okay, it is? I see that confusion. Yeah, there's some monies available to continue some of that program, yes. Okay, is it level funded or is there a decrease?

There are some decreases, but some programming, we'll have to see what can happen.

Okay, all right, because there was Discovery Hub over at the Henderson School. and it was getting real real good attendance. So we'd love to make sure that we at least keep the ones that were getting good attendance going and I know Corey and team are being stretched thin but that was One of the programs that I was very excited about and definitely was a lot of engagement there. And thank you for your participation in going and putting in some of those as well. Thank you.

Yes.

Also, I've been always advocating for Vote Tech or some form of, you know, whether a certificate program to be done. at every school. How many of our schools, especially like our high schools, how many of our high schools have like a certificate program or vo-tech or some sort of career path?

Yeah, I'm sorry, but Brett Dickens was here earlier today, would have all that information, so I don't have that right on my fingertips, but we could get that for you, and we could bring it tomorrow if that's helpful.

Okay, and then there was a federal grant around... Let me just find what it was. $7 million federal grant for the Para to Teacher Pipeline. What's the status of that grant?

That grant was actually... How do you say it? Taken away from the federal government. OK. It was a $6 million grant that was supposed to create a pipeline for educators, paras to become teachers of record. It was going to be a residency program. And unfortunately, on March of 2020, For 2025, right after the current president took office, that grant was immediately taken back.

Yes. Very, very unfortunate. And are we looking to stand up a program or anything similar on our own?

Yeah, so currently we have our own Grow Your Own program, which is a bilingual education program that we have. where this year we had 46 people who went through this program. We have 21 teachers of record from that program. So each year, the district does its own Grow Your Own program where we take paras as well as members of the community who are doing who are going into teaching as a second career that we matriculate We do an accelerated program where these individuals essentially become teachers. We currently are also working with UMass Boston to create a A master's program for those people. After they become the teacher of record, we now have a program where they can also go through UMass Boston. We currently have seven people that

We received a grant that we were able to pay for them to get their master's. The program started in 2025. It will end in 2027 where we hope these seven individuals will be graduating with their master's. with certification in moderate disabilities and bilingual education. So there are programs that we are doing. Unfortunately, I have to say that money We don't have that money anymore, so the people who are currently there are going to be the last individuals in that program.

Unfortunately. And what's the cost to run that program?

To run the, to get them their masters.

No, the Grow Your Own.

The Grow Your Own program, it's, I can get you the specific cost, but like right now we would like to increase the amount of people that We have in that program, but it's only two people that's doing that work. And they were able to get As I stated, 21 people who went through this program. There were 46 people. 21 of them are teachers of breakfast.

Awesome. Thank you. Okay, yeah, you sure? Go back in if you want to stay. I gave you five minutes, if you have any other questions.

No, they've been big, yeah.

Okay.

Well, so just to follow up for Dan on transportation, I think the data is we have We're looking at 3% fewer routes next year, but the cost is going up $10 million or so. From the data we got in the RFI, we had asked how many door-to-door transportations there are based on IEPs, and it looks like for in-district, out-of-district, K-6, high school, The numbers were going up in 25 and 26. The answer we got was FY27 projections will be further developed this spring. Transportation volumes and costs are downstream of enrollment. School Assignment and IEP Decisions.

However, BPS Transportation is currently projecting a 3% reduction in the number of Transportation, in the volume of transportation. But are we projecting a decrease in door-to-door transportation also or not?

I appreciate that. Thanks for that question, Councilor. So what we've seen, and we have very close collaborative working relationship with the Office of Specialized Services, what we've seen actually is Throughout this year, we've started to see those door-to-door numbers leveling off. There's IEP meetings happening continually throughout the year. But over the past few months, we've started to see slight stabilization and then slight reductions in the overall number of door-to-door students. So we'll continue to monitor those as we develop Projections for next year. And then the only other piece I wanted to just address quickly on the spending, I think, as David and Blair and others have talked about, we saw some cost overruns this year above our budget. So our budget for next year is going up, but when we look at actual spending, we are projecting to see stable, if not slightly reduced, actual spending and transportation next year relative to this year.

Okay, when you say actual spending, is that like per student or?

No, the total amount of actual spend. Okay. And that's because we saw overruns against our budget this year.

I got it. And then are we projecting out of district transportation to go up, down, level for FY27?

At this point in time, I think we don't have enough data to make solid projections there. So we're assuming generally level, which is what it has been over the last few years.

OK. Okay, I think that's it for me, unless everyone wants to stay. I guess we're coming back tomorrow, some of you. Do my colleagues have anything else? No? Okay. Well, thank you very much. And today's second hearing is now adjourned.