City Council - Ways & Means Committee Hearing on Docket #1031

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Good afternoon. For the record, my name is Ben Weber. I'm the District 6 City Councilor and the Chair of the Boston City Council Committee on Ways and Means. Today is May 27th, 2026, and the exact time is 3.30 PM. This hearing is being recorded. It's also being live streamed at boston.gov slash city-council-tv and broadcast on Xfinity Channel 8, RCN Channel 82, and Fios Channel 964. Written comments may be sent to the committee email at ccc.wm at boston.gov and will be made part of the record and available to all Councillors. Public testimony will be taken following the first round of counselor questions. People will be called on in the order in which they've signed up. If you're interested in testifying, please add your name to the sign-up sheet near the entrance. You can also testify virtually.

Please email our central staff liaison, Karishma Chauhan, at karishma. .chouhan for the link and your name will be added to the list. This afternoon's hearing is on docket number 1031. Message and order authorizing the City of Boston to appropriate the amount of $22,845,672 for purposes of funding Boston Public Schools to meet operating expenses for the fiscal year Commencing July 1st, 2025, and ending June 30th, 2026. This appropriation request was approved by the Boston School Committee on May 6th, 2026 and is intended to cover projected deficits in health insurance

18,087,750, and utility spending $4,757,922. This matter was sponsored by Mayor Michelle Wu and referred to the committee on May 20th, 2026, I believe. Today I'm joined by my colleagues on order of arrival, Councilor Pepén, Councilor Breadon, received a letter of absence from Councilor Louijeune. We're joined this afternoon by the Boston Public Schools Chief Financial Officer, David Bloom. I am going to just wave opening statements and go directly to our panelists. The floor is now yours.

Thank you so much chair members of the committee or that council sorry we're here today to talk a little bit about our supplemental appropriation for school year 26. As you know, and we've discussed at prior hearings, BPS has had several areas of costs that were exceeding our allocated revenue to date. This slide outlines some of those costs. But specifically, we've seen an increased cost of health insurance, $18 million significantly over our budgeted amounts. Increased cost of employee salaries due to a lower vacancy rate than is typical, increased cost of transportation that we're managing, special education and utilities. We've been working to identify cost savings to offset those costs since we first brought them before the committee in December.

So to date, we've identified $26 million in savings. through a pause of central office discretionary spending that started in November and a pause of school-based discretionary spending that started in December. We also have identified $6 million in other cost management strategies through active cost management in transportation, facilities, and food services. An IEP review to align appropriate support systems to student needs and reviewing grants to identify available funds. That's left us as of the end of March with a $28.3 million remaining overage. We are seeking a $22.8 million supplemental appropriation from the City Council to cover two of the areas outlined in my first slide.

As the chair mentioned earlier, we have a health insurance projected cost overrun of about $18.1 million and a utilities projected cost overrun of $4.7 million. You'll notice that that 22.8 does not Add up to the $28 million I referenced on the previous slide. And that's because we have about $5.5 million of remaining projected overspending in other areas. and we plan to continue our pauses and other cost-saving measures that we've outlined for the last three months of the fiscal year combined with available grant revenue we have every confidence that with the supplemental appropriation and We will be able to balance our budget. And I'll turn my time now back over to the council.

Okay. Thank you very much. We've been joined by Councillor Flynn, Councillor Pepén. We're going to go with seven minutes.

Thank you, Mr. Chair and Chief. Thank you for being here today with us. I really appreciate the breakdown and quick presentation. A lot of my questions were around Potential savings and where you guys are looking at to potentially avoid anything like this happening again from next fiscal year. I know that you kind of went into that a little bit. Is there any concrete detail that you can explain where you're looking at to make some of these cuts?

Certainly.

I appreciate that, yeah.

Yeah, so I think there are two main things I heard in your question that I'd like to address. The first is in the current year, to try and save as much money as possible. We really did two things. First is we delayed hiring on positions that weren't student facing until the new fiscal year. So I had a position on my team become vacant through retirement. In theory, I could have hired that position in March, but the position's being hired for July instead, so that'll save about a quarter year's worth of salary. We also looked at sort of discretionary programming, non-personnel spending, contracts, and tried to really slow down, if not completely eliminate that work that had not yet started. The other thing we did was just working collaboratively with our departments to really try and identify ways we could bring costs down in the short time. So an example I like to use, I think it's a really good one, We accelerated some of our work to add breakfast in the classroom at some of our schools, my daughter's school included.

She was very excited on the first day of breakfast in the classroom, told me all about it. That helps us bring in more revenue for our food services program and help eliminate a small part of the deficit. So I think those are the things we're thinking about in the short term. The second thing I heard you ask about was a little bit of what we're doing for next year to make sure this doesn't continue. Some of that has to do with, the main thing here is revising projections for accuracy. So we did a big overhaul of our health insurance projections and I feel very confident that we have very strong projections going into next year and then the other thing we did was a really close examination of vacancy rates and position budgeting and we did a big adjustment to our vacancy rate estimation to hope that we're not having a similar salary overrun that we saw as well. That's not the, the salary overrun is not the issue before you today, but it is something that we're trying to manage very closely.

So those are the main strategies we work on.

And I appreciate that because I, Of what we said, I don't envy the leadership at Boston Public Schools because of the tall task that you all have to to manage something. Actually, I was with Representative Rob Gonsalvo yesterday. He was like one of the only departments, not the only department that has a crisis every single day. The City of Boston Public Schools There are places that we can save. I think we're having the same questions here inside the City Hall. Where can we make some tough cuts and make some decisions that could potentially give us some savings? I think that that's the right fiscal move to make. So I'm glad to hear that you guys are doing that. and making sure that for next year we are in a better place and trust you all are doing that just well. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Okay, thank you. Councilor Breadon?

Thank you. Good to see you. Good to see you. I have a few questions. Are there structural issues in BPS budgeting that are contributing to recurring mid-year deficits? Is the baseline budget too low or is the forecasting inaccurate? and what reforms, you mentioned some ways of changing projections, like what ways are we improving our budget accuracy going forward?

Yeah, what I would say is I think there were two... The sort of miscalculations we made, two main miscalculations we made for this year that led us to be the place we're in. One is we did not foresee the incredible increase in health insurance rates and premiums. We could sort of go back and debate how much of that was foreseeable, but that was certainly a number we got wrong. I have a lot of confidence in the conversations I've had over the last year that We have that corrected going forward.

So with regard to health insurance, is the largest proportion of that due to the GLP-1 issue or? Is there something else at play?

Yes, so the other thing that I know is at play is we've seen an increase in the usage rate of our employees using our health insurance. So the We used to be around 70% of employees using health insurance. And that number, my understanding is that number has gotten closer to 75% of employees. And so obviously that's a pretty important number for us and so we've revised going forward we've revised our projections based on that.

There's some talk about moving you know just putting BPS Health Insurance into the city pool and just keep it, you know, we talked to the Chief Grafenberger Just take a couple of hundred million out of BPS and give it to the city for health insurance. How would that work?

Yes, I think that would be the main impact. Our budget would get $100 million. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. for Title I grants and other things where we get the revenue directly from the state and then we need to pay the health insurance premiums on that. I'm sure we could technically manage that as a system, but I don't.

It's not just an easy, quick...

It's not, yeah, it's not a flip of the switch.

I think people are insinuating, people are suggesting, well, why don't we do that? That could be easy, that would be what? But it's not just as easy as it might seem, I think.

In terms of the FY27 budget, the only impact would be sort of where the money sat. It wouldn't necessarily change.

Yeah. It still all comes out of the city budget.

Yeah, it's still all coming out of the Treasury, yeah.

So in terms of the utility spending, it's projected it went up by $4.7 million. Is there a particular... The main driver in what drove the utility bills higher?

Yes, the main driver is rate increases and rate pricing. We don't yet have, sorry, as well as we had a cold winter. So those two things together. So we had an increased usage of heat of therms is the term of? Thank you. Thank you.

Do we have data on just how efficient some of our buildings are? Some buildings are obviously more efficient than others. I know we have a very old school building stock. Is that, like, sometimes the old buildings are not any worse than the new buildings, you know? I don't know of any doubt on that.

I'm not sure about the... Energy Efficiency. I know we have really good usage data by building. I would have to look back through the facilities condition assessment to see if that was efficiency was one of the things we

And I know when I came on the council for the first six years ago, there was tremendous interest in building up our solar PV infrastructure, especially in school buildings, et cetera. Have we made any, where are we at with that program that might save us some money?

Yes, I think we're continuing to make progress primarily through the Renew Boston Trust. So there are still projects ongoing. especially I think we like to look at them when we're doing roof repairs because often then you don't put your solar on an old roof yeah exactly don't put your solar on an old roof and if there are any infrastructure issues I think there are continuing to be projects in the pipeline there.

And just in terms of, I know you folks were aware that there was a problem with the budget way back last November, or October, November, in the fall. That's fairly early in the financial year and the school year. Why was there such a delay before it came to us to fix it?

That's a great question. So we brought it to the committee in December, which was the first time we knew With some certainty, the sort of size and scale of the problem we were dealing with, it then sort of varied a little bit in the months that followed, but we sort of knew the scale of the about $50 million problem. I think at that point the thing we weren't aware of was the scale of how much money we might be able to save on our own and what we might need supplemental support on.

I'm also curious about ESSER hires. We all sort of were cautious about Thinking ESSER is a temporary sort of windfall almost. And we knew that all good things come to an end, as they say. Are all of those ESSER hires gone at this point?

Well, I mean, some of them have transitioned into other positions. The people maybe have stayed, but there's no more federally funded ESSER positions.

Yeah, so now they've been taken on by the general budget. They're not funded by external funds. Correct. What do you think about that? What's your estimation? Has that been a successful enterprise? I think we all were very conscious of the risks of doing that. I think in terms of are we are we are we are we ended up with maybe staff maybe if we had to do it a different way we maybe different choices I you know like any big project I'm sure if we had

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. With the scale of the funding and the time period we had, I think there were always going to be some number of positions that ended up on the grant and some amount of Turnover when it ended. I think there are definitely some individual choices that we would go back and look at again. But overall, I think we're pretty proud of the work that was done with ESSER and think we were able to accomplish a lot as a district with that funding.

Thank you. My time's up for now. I'll probably come back for some extra questions.

Okay. Thank you. We've been joined by Councillor Fitzgerald. Councillor Flynn. Thank you, Mr.

Chair, and thank you, David, for being here. I have the opportunity, this is the fifth time I'll be voting on the budget for BPS and I've voted in favor of the budget four times. A big reason of A big reason I supported the budget, although I knew the system is failing, I still believe we have a good superintendent. So I'm uncertain where I am right now. What was frustrating to me, David, is I've asked questions for seven years about the HVAC system in public schools, and I was told, By many BPS senior leadership people that it was fixed. And I just heard over the last two weeks that students are in schools where the AC is broken. They're sitting there, as you probably have read as well.

and it's 90 degrees in there. So that's frustrating to me. So we haven't fixed the HVAC system and there's still many schools that Don't have an air conditioned system that's working. That's obvious.

Yeah, so my understanding is there are two things that were going on with that. One was we do have about I think it's six or seven schools where the electrical systems couldn't support the window units for air conditioning.

David, we can't accept that. There has to be no excuse. You fix it. You have all of this money. You fix the AC system, you fix the heating system, and not blaming you, but there's no excuses at all for not giving the kids AC in the summertime. and Heat in the Winter. So, I'm willing to support the BPS team, but on the other hand, I'm not getting reliable information about a simple thing like HVAC or Heating. So what is it? Do we have a problem with HVAC? Or is it fixed? Or is this an isolated incident? If it's an isolated incident, It'll never happen again. I'll accept that. But I don't want to see, you know, in the fall,

A 90 degree day where this HVAC system is broken. I can't accept that any longer. I can't accept it this year any longer. Can you guarantee me that we're not going to have this problem any longer?

I can tell you our team is working its hardest at it and that the HVAC issues specifically with the conversions are proceeding and hopefully all of our buildings will be turned over from heat to AC very soon if they're not already.

But David, I don't feel confident that we're going to do that. Students could be in their building today, 90 degrees. Are we checking on that?

Yes.

Is that accurate? Are students sitting in rooms now that are 90 degrees? I don't have today's data. Can you get that for me? I will. That's important. I've supported the schools, but I have to support the students also. That's the number one priority for me is the health and wellness of our students and teachers. The other issue I have, and again, I'm still undecided on what I'm going to do, but I was talking to a school teacher last night. She testified, she was a high school teacher at BPS, she testified, she's getting laid off. But you told me that BPS said there are no layoffs of school teachers.

So is she... I can't comment on any individual employee situation. Okay, but are we laying off public school teachers, high school teachers? There are... Teachers in their first few years of experience who are not having their contracts renewed.

So they're getting laid off. I can't accept that, David. I can't accept layoffs. I can't accept teachers getting laid off. I can't accept paraprofessionals getting laid off. They're doing the best they can interacting with our kids, providing them an education. How could I vote for the school committee? How could I vote for the budget knowing that a paraprofessional that makes short money, I don't know what they make, $40,000 a year, $50,000 a year? How could I support the budget knowing someone that does exceptional work is getting laid off? That's the struggle I'm having. Is that a concern of yours?

It's certainly a concern of mine that we're making sure we're doing the best we can for all of our employees. but at the end of the day our budget is rooted on the students we serve and we're serving thousands of fewer students than we were before and so we will in some schools and places need fewer teachers and paraprofessionals.

But that's less support that our students are getting from an adult, an educator, that's providing critical service to them, critical educational support to them. That concerns me. I don't know if it concerns my colleagues. But it concerns me when a student doesn't have access to More services. They're getting less services going into the next academic year. Why is that good? Why is that a good scenario? And then I'm supposed to look at the budget and say, oh, this is great. This is a great budget. Even though public school teachers are getting laid off, paraprofessionals are getting laid off, teacher assistants are getting laid off. But besides teachers and paraprofessionals, what other type of direct support for students are being impacted?

I can certainly give you a full list by type. I think there are, especially with three schools closing, There are fewer positions across most types of positions.

Like you made an example, like a counselor, a social worker? Yeah. But then we're balancing the budget on the backs of them. And those are the services that teachers need. I mean, those are the services that students need. They need social workers. They need mental health counselors. They need paraprofessionals. I was working with a group Are you familiar with the St. Stephen's Youth Group?

Very familiar, yes. Wonderful program.

Yeah. Is that program being impacted?

They're going to maintain their sites for next week.

OK. We did a city council resolution. What's the official name of that? and many more. Two weeks ago. No, scholarship fund. Scholarship fund. Two weeks ago. And that program, as you know, it's mostly women. It's mostly women of color. Many of them speak Spanish. They work extremely hard. They make little money. And they do a tremendous service. I'm glad it's not being cut. But those are the types of Educators, we need to keep. We need to keep teachers. We need to keep paraprofessionals, peer mentors, nurses, counselors.

You know, I'm willing to continue to have conversations with you, but I can't support when we cut the budget and we're laying off teachers or we're laying off paraprofessionals, you know. I'm willing to have a conversation with the superintendent.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair. Correct me if I'm wrong, just going through this. This was approved by the school committee already, right? So it is going to go forward. So there's not much of a leverage that we have in terms of Talking about what's going to happen. We still have to vote on this next Wednesday, right? The council has to vote. By the end of June. By the end of June we still have to vote, but the school committee has voted on it. Understood. I just look at the, you know, a lot of what my colleagues said, questions were already sort of answered in regards, so I do appreciate their questioning and your answers, Mr. Boone. I guess I would just say I would advocate for hopefully better financial projections in the future right for the upcoming year so that we don't We've come into this situation again.

I know that we're resolving 22 out of the 28 million that were over, leaving us at 5.5, but even that's still, right, that's a hefty number that we're trying to... Figure out how to do the cost savings Do we know overall of health insurance if we're going to see this year to year? Is this the norm that we've seen this current year? Because I know it kind of came out of it, for everyone, kind of came out of nowhere. Yeah. Like, do we have any type of... Knowledge if that is like, does it come down at all after this? Is it one of those things like rent, once it goes up, it stays up, right? You know what I mean?

Yeah, I doubt it comes down. But what I will say is we had a period of several years Before the most recent couple years of increases where our budgets or our costs for health insurance were increasing more steadily and at a more reasonable rate to inflation. So you'd see maybe a 2% increase in a year or a 3% increase in a year or even a 4% or 5% increase, but that would still be sort of more aligned with inflation. Over the past two years, we will have seen a close to 40% increase. Justin health insurance costs and so I think number one our number one goal is slowing the growth I don't know if there's a way back down, but I think number one is just slowing the growth and getting us on a more sustainable path.

I know that will be a Because BPS health insurance is a part of the city health insurance program, I know that will be a citywide conversation that we will support, of course.

Yeah. Looking at the utilities, I know it's not as big a number as the health insurance as a reason that got us over, but even the $5 million. Is that because of the buildings are so old, are they inefficient in running them? And I know a cost of a new school is astronomical. But in the long term paying off, I mean, and is that something that we've talked to the utility companies about, about any sort of way we can manage those in the future?

Yeah, I think going back to Councilor Breadon's point from earlier, some of the work we're doing around renewable energy, renewable sources, right, are really about reducing usage there. The big things with utilities right now are Great increases. So our current geopolitical environment is not helping anything for the cost of a lot of our heat is natural gas. So that doesn't help. And of course, a lot of electrical production is done The extent to which we can use our investments in renewable energy to bring down the usage rate in the city I think that will help as well as construction of more energy efficient Thank you. Thank you.

Rebuilding.

Yep. Oh, well. Depends who you ask there, I guess. Well, yeah.

Not more important. More impactful, maybe.

Yeah. I understand. No, look, I appreciate you being here. I appreciate you answering these questions. I think for the most part, it is what it is. You know, we find ourselves in this hole. We have to dip into our reserves to make sure we're Thank you, Mr. Bull. Thank you, Councilor.

Okay, thank you very much. We've been joined by Councillor Culpepper. You have seven minutes.

So I lose my credit from the time this morning that was left?

Correct.

I want to pick up good afternoon. I haven't seen you for a while. You've been trying to stay away from here, huh? I've been keeping my head down, Councilor. Good to see you, David. I want to pick up on those utility costs a little bit because that's one of the things that I first looked at when I saw the $4.7 million. What did we spend last year in terms of utility costs?

Last year, so school year or fiscal year 24-25? Right.

What did it look like for utility costs for those years?

I can pull that up for you, but I don't want to take your time, so... No, no, I can wait. Okay. You know... Do you want to put it on pause? Please.

It won't take me long, I promise. You're welcome. Somebody's looking out for me around here. Sorry, just keep going. I'm down to three now.

That's not how I remember the clocks working, Councilor.

Must be on the fritz.

Yeah. It was about last year, we spent about $29 million on it. Utilities.

For the utility costs? Total utility costs. What was the total for this year? Total for this year?

Was it level funded? Total for this year, so our...

Not including the four. Not including the four. Before we got to the 4.7,

Yes. So current year, we went into the year with a budget of about $30 million. Okay. And we're going to end up spending closer to $35 million.

Okay. And you don't have a breakdown of what those costs were that pushed it up?

I could certainly get you a more detailed breakdown if you would like.

Yeah, please, David. David, check and see if it was premium increases. See what the utility companies are doing. One of the things that I want us to do more is look at utility increases across the board. I know utilities across the state are going up. everyone's trying to figure out why and I'm wondering if those data centers you know we haven't figured out how those data centers are contributing to rate increases yes and so

We have a very comprehensive analysis we can share with you on rate increases and usage. So we can certainly share that data with you. I think rate increases have been a big part of the cost increase.

Yeah. So I want to look at that. Because we're looking at it in other areas to see the impact that data centers are having on utility increases around the region. I know, Councilor, Flynn has filed a hearing order on data centers, but we know very little about data centers. I didn't know there was one in Boston until Councilor Flynn filed that. Here you know what, I started looking closer at data centers. In terms of the lower vacancy rates, how much do you think that contributed to the increased health insurance?

It was certainly a part of it. We typically spend about $15,000 per employee on health insurance. That's sort of a prorated amount because not every employee takes health insurance. So if we're off, you know, even Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Change in vacancy rate and that would be several hundred employees. And so 100 employees would be $1.5 million. So it could even be as much as $5 or $7 million coming from a change in vacancy rate. And what about premiums, Howard?

premiums would then be the remaining with a little bit of it with more employees, a higher percentage of employees are also using our insurance.

Do you have a breakdown? Can you talk about a breakdown of What went into the total supplemental increase?

So we can give you information by all of our plans. So we have six options for plans. Three plans each have an individual or a family plan. We can give you the number of employees by plan and the cost.

And so when you submitted this year's fiscal year 27 budget, did you look at all of that before you put the budget together?

We took a much closer look at it because of this challenge and we actually did a A second review of it in the spring. So we did an initial projection that was shared with the committee in February and then we actually presented a revised proposal to the school committee in March. based on some changed assumptions that led to increased costs. So we actually, yeah, we have the sort of much more refined health insurance number this year.

And can you give that to us also through the chair? Certainly. At some point? And the breakdown that you have here, especially with regard to the utility costs and the impact of the lower vacancy rates and premiums. Yes. So that we can see... What's going on with the premiums, Professor Boyle? Did you include the increased energy costs in the utilities when you said utilities? Does that include the Increase? Yes. And energy? Yes. And so you put it all together to come up with the 4.7. Yes.

So the majority of it came from electrical utilities, so about 3.7. came from electrical utilities and the remainder came from, most of the remainder came from natural gas heat. About a million? Yeah.

Okay, okay. And at what point did you see that these, Increases wouldn't be, or they wouldn't be absorbed by the current budget. I mean, obviously not in the beginning of the year. At what point during the year did you start saying, oh my goodness, we've got a problem here?

For the utilities, it was the December bills that we received in January. The risk for utilities came in a bit later for everything else. For health insurance, we knew in the fall. For vacancy rates, we knew in the fall. Utilities, because so much of our utility usage doesn't really spike until the winter, it took us a little bit later to know the impact of those changes.

David, thank you so much. And obviously I'm going to be supporting this supplemental because I don't think we have a choice.

Appreciate it, Councilor.

Thank you. Okay, thank you. A couple questions from the Chair. So, in terms of health insurance costs, what other tools do we have to I know there was a negotiation over like utility management or whatever it's called. And that sort of slowed down the rate of increase maybe. What other things are we looking at?

So I know there's a number of issues. I would say that health insurance, the details of the way our health insurance premiums work are not something I'm intimately familiar with because we partner so much with Citi Finance on it, but I know Specifically, usage of medications is the main thing we're looking at right now.

Is it just the GLP-1s? I know GOP ones are a really significant portion of it, yes. Okay. And then, so, you know, I think just in terms of the Teachers and paras being lost. Can you just clarify the numbers on Vacancies, actual positions being lost of those. And then in terms of services provided, so 3,000 fewer students. What's your response in terms of us not being able to provide the same level of service that we're doing this year? Have you given thought about that in these decisions?

Always a difficult conversation when we have to reduce positions. That's not something that I've had to bring to this council. This is now my 11th cycle doing this. At a system level, this is certainly the most significant change we've ever proposed. We are expecting to have about 150 fewer paraprofessional positions across the system. Close to 290 fewer teachers, right? So teaching positions, I should say. So those are really significant, as Councilor Fung was mentioning earlier, and those are really significant changes. About half of the reductions are coming from our schools that are closing. And then the rest are coming through program consolidation at schools.

and programs that are no longer needed. We know a lot of these things are tied to federal policy and having the impact on our schools. We had been expanding our programs for students with limited and interrupted formal education. but enrollment numbers in those programs are way down and we would have a number of programs that would have zero students in them next year so that we are reducing those programs across multiple schools as well and that's obviously impacting the educators involved in those We would certainly be happy to once our hiring season is complete come back to the council and give you information on the number of employees who left the district. Right now we're doing a lot of matching so we had you know at the beginning of the season we had several hundred employees who didn't have positions maybe because they're building closed or because their classroom closed and then we've been working to match them with jobs find them new positions across the system

We're down under 100 of those permanent educators without positions, but that doesn't include teachers who were non-renewed for licensure reasons or other reasons where they didn't have their qualification or certification to teach and we're still working through those issues with those educators as well.

In terms of the vacancy rate, at least in fiscal year 26 and I think in years past, it's been 90, Thank you. Thank you.

You know, I think we'll probably get up to 97, 98%.

Is that what you've budgeted for? Okay. So... So you're hiring teachers while you're laying off teachers? Can you just explain this?

No, so it's because we have fewer positions, even though we will have fewer employees, we're closing more positions than we are laying off employees. Thank you. Thank you. just really sort of filling our jobs more fully.

We have like a hiring freeze in place or will you be able to fill those vacant positions?

All of our positions are open. The only ones that have any sort of freeze are ones where we've said, You have to hire someone from inside the pool. You can't go outside of the district to hire. But those positions are still open for hire. They're just only open to internal candidates who don't yet have a position.

Okay. Okay. Well, thank you. We're going to go to public testimony. Let's see if I can get the sign-in sheet. If anyone wants to sign in. Mr. Moore, do you want to sign in before you? Oh, you did already? Okay. Okay, I've got, I'm sorry, I've got George Lee, and then, I apologize, a name I can't read, and then Nate Nichols.

Hello. Good afternoon. Apologies, Councilors, this might seem a little random. I just want to thank Councilor Weber. You were here till past 10 last night and helping make sure young people could testify, including alternating to make sure young people could get home and you worked to move the YEO hearing to an hour later to make sure young people could be heard and I know at least up to date you've been working to make sure young people's voices are in this process. I just want to confirm that you are still planning to meet with us at 5.30 tonight. Young people, we were originally going to meet with you in Roxbury. We caught a call yesterday requesting to change that. We rearranged to come to City Hall. Folks are starting to come in. People are ready to meet with you at 5.30. We know you're doing amendments tomorrow.

But that's exactly why it's important to be able to have a sit down and outside of the public hearings really have constructive conversations back and forth about solutions. And I just want to confirm if that's the case.

Oh, OK. Is that your public testimony? We'll talk after the hearing.

Well, if you're going to not answer directly, then I'll just add some more to my public testimony, which is I have an email. From April 16th and April... The reason I'm asking is last time we got locked out of your offices when we tried to meet with a staff member. That was on April 16th and 15th. And we have an email from April 16th. inviting us to set up a time with you. We have an email on April 30th offering four days including May 27th. We confirmed on the next day, May 27th. We confirmed the time on May 12th at 5.30. We said it would be in Roxbury. So we have been preparing to meet with you for a few weeks. Young people, again, are coming in. and we want to make sure you're honoring that commitment.

Okay, are you finished?

I guess if you are not going to honor that commitment, it would be good for you to explain We can talk after this hearing is done.

Okay.

How's it going? So I'm just following up. How's it going, Mr. Boone? This is my seventh grade math teacher. I mean, locked in, twin. Just following up. Worked for the Center for Teen Empowerment. I'm the program director. You know, we did a lot of work, you know what I mean, to make sure that we could have this meeting, you know what I'm saying, with our young people in a constructive fashion with you as Ways and Means Chair. So I do want to just follow up around George's question, just making sure that we are still on for 530 to make sure that we can have this meeting. Because again, we're trying to be solution-oriented and work forward towards a solution that works for all of your constituents and all of the constituents of all of the council members, the residents of the city of Boston. And so for us, it's really important that we're able to have this meeting. I'm not sure where that sits with you, but I do know that that's something that's really important for our young people and really important for the constituents of the city of Boston. Again, as we're following up, We have to make sure that we're having these constructive conversations. We're not trying to be anyone's enemy. We also don't want to make enemies along the way. We're trying to really work together, figure out solutions.

And you know, at the same time as we know where you are, you also know where we are. We're accommodating. We're trying to make sure we're meeting you where you're at. And it doesn't feel like that's happening on the flip side. So just trying to follow up. Is that meeting happening today?

OK, we can talk after the meeting.

I also want to add, as far as my testimony goes, that when it comes to Boston Public Schools, I want to urge city councilors just to make sure that you're doing everything that you can in your power to make sure that our teachers and our Administrative staff within EPS are being uplifted. A lot of times when these cuts are coming from the top down, the folks who are doing the work, the hard work of working with our students, are being the ones who are more often or most often on the chopping block. When it comes down to it, if we are not able to uplift the teachers and staff in that regard by making sure that they have safe and secure and stable positions, we're also failing our students. And that means you're failing the future of the city. So I want to make sure that that's also a priority for all the city councilors, which I'm sure that it is. but just reinforcing that message, you know what I mean? So I also want to add that in there.

Okay, thank you very much.

Thank you.

Okay. Anyone else who had Mr. Bloom for math? Anyone else for public testimony? Is there anyone online? No? Okay. I'm going to go to my colleagues for another round of questions. Five minutes. I think Councillor Breadon.

Thank you. In our conversations with Chief Grafenberger about the health fund, the trust, we have to Because we went over budget with the TLP ones, there were some pretty heavy draws on the trust fund because we self-insure. Where does BPS have to contribute to that trust fund as well? Because BPS is this sort of entity over here. Sometimes, a lot of the time, we're not able to really engage with it the way we'd love to. But do you contribute to the trust fund?

So my understanding of the way it works for BPS is that we have a set rate We pay per premium holder. So the level of the trust doesn't necessarily impact us. except for how those rates are set. So in the document that I'll be sharing with Councilor Culpepper that I'll obviously share with you as well, you can see sort of those amounts Per plan type and by the number of employees. So I think the only way it would, so we, I'm assuming those premiums then go into the trust, right? So the way it would impact us would be if the premium increases due to the trust drawdown.

Yeah, it's always hard to get my head around all these things. And then in terms of you say that there's three school closings and that the staff won't be needed for those three schools, but I'm assuming that those students are going to transfer to other schools. Thank you. I'm curious, you know, are there ways, like, our February vacation used to be called Save the Cold Week. Are there ways to shift the school gear? I'm not sure this would work because we have extreme heat in the summer.

and we have extreme cold in the winter it might not work but I know are there ways of thinking about how do we sort of close our buildings down for vacation times or whatever?

Even when I started working in schools 20 years ago, the idea of having sort of 90 degree days in April in Boston was crazy. So I think the idea that... Air conditioning in the spring has now become such a necessity because of the climate is this incredibly important issue. I think unfortunately There probably isn't a way to move around it because September's have gotten so hot as well.

We basically have, you know, we go from having five or six Thank you. Thank you. Flynn's point earlier about how heating and cooling of our buildings and how to make it as efficient as possible is going to be critically important. So your health insurance usage went up from like 70% to 75%?

Something in that range, yes.

Is there a reason? Is that like spouses or partners coming on, moving from their Other employer insurance into BPS insurance?

We're not very sure of the reasons why. We just know more A greater percentage of our staff are using our insurance than had been true in the past.

Do you think is that our liberal approach to GLP-1s?

It could be. It certainly could be. It could be, you know, the city has good health insurance and as health insurance changes have happened more broadly, It certainly could be impacted.

Okay. I think that's all I have, Mr. Chair. Thank you. I yield back my 32 to one of my learned colleagues.

Okay. Thank you. Councillor Flynn, I think you're next. Thank you Mr.

Chair. Thank you again to David for being here. In the first round I asked about the cuts to teachers, to paraprofessionals, to nurses, and other educators that provide students with direct support, interacting with them daily. Reverend Culpepper mentioned, you know, we're voting on the supplemental tomorrow, which I'm going to vote for.

Next Wednesday.

Yeah, okay, next Wednesday. Yeah, next Wednesday. Which I'm going to vote for, but you know, I'm still I'm still discouraged about voting on something when we're cutting teachers, when we're cutting paraprofessionals. That bothers me. I'm discouraged about I'm just looking at a map here. The Mather Elementary School the other day in the classroom was 97 degrees. In Orchard Garden Schools, 94 degrees. I could go on. The Madison Park, 90 degrees. But how effective are we in terms of teaching? How effective are we in terms of learning? When kids are trying to learn and teachers are trying to teach when it's 95 degrees.

Again, we're going to vote for the budget, but we're not doing We're doing a disservice to the students and teachers when we don't at least acknowledge that we have a significant problem, that we're trying to educate kids in a classroom that's like a steam bath. I was in an environment where it was 140 degrees off the coast of Iraq. But I'm just trying to wrap my head around How much teaching and how much learning is going on in a classroom when it's 97 degrees in the classroom? How are we teaching them? And again, David, I like you. I'm not blaming you.

No, I understand.

I'm not blaming you. I'm trying to do the best I can for the teachers and the students.

I remember doing my student teaching in July in a classroom with no air conditioning, standing right in front of one of those rotating fans that was just blowing the hot air around the room. I think it is never... Thank you. Thank you.

But will this supplemental address those issues or it really needs to be dealt with in the capital budget?

Is that accurate? That's correct.

Yeah. Okay. I've talked to Mary Skipper at length about the Josiah Quincy Elementary School gymnasium. Do you have an update for me in terms of how we're going to address some of the infrastructure challenges inside the I didn't come prepared with an update today, but I'm sure she can get you one. Okay. I've talked to her at length and I've talked to Sam as well at length about it, but Do you think there's going to be some progress made during the summertime where we're able to get people in there fixing the gymnasium? Because I want to make sure that my constituents have a place that they were able to

I certainly know it's an amazing hub of the community that school I don't have an update on the construction work today but I'm sure that All right. Dr. DiPina would be able to give you an update.

You think they might be starting work on Monday? I don't know. No.

OK.

I don't know. All right. Well, for the chair. I do want to see when I can get an update on when the work is going to start at the Josiah Quincy Elementary School gymnasium. It's not a significant amount of work, but it's some work that needs to be addressed, that needs to be done. My goal is really to get it done over the summertime. So when the students come back in September or late August, that they have a gymnasium that they're able to to play sports and exercise at. There's a lot of kids I see, students I should say, at the school that are students with disabilities And they're using the gymnasium. They're getting their exercise as well. But if you have a little bump in the floor and students are on wheelchairs,

I want us to address that issue. That's important to me. But you have said that the work starts Monday?

I don't know. I'm just not personal.

Oh, I thought you said it starts Monday.

I'm sure. I'll be there with you. Maybe you and I could do it on Monday, Councilor.

We'll get there together. I'm sure Councilor Culpepper would come too. Yeah, Councilor Culpepper will help. Mr. Chair, I have no further questions. I just want to say thank you to David Bloom for being an outstanding employee of the City of Boston. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Councillor Culpepper. Thank you, Mr.

Chair. David, I wanted to pick up on Council Weber's question about the number of vacant positions, the number of teacher layoffs. How many... Can you give me the categories of the individuals that will actually lose their position? And I understand that no teachers will, right?

So some teachers will. If they maybe don't have their license, if they're working in an area that's oversubscribed, there will be some teachers who lose positions.

Will they be out of a job? I'm trying to get to the teachers that will be out of a job. There will be some teachers out of a job. And it was my understanding that there were enough vacant positions that No one would actually lose their job if they could be paired up with one of those positions.

We're doing our best to find as many pairings as possible, but there will be some teachers who are out of the job.

Even if they have all the credentials and the certifications and all that? We're trying to make it as few as possible, but there will likely be some. There will be some teachers in. What other categories will As soon as you know, can you let us know how many teachers will be out of a job? Because I thought the superintendent said that there would be no teachers that would lose their jobs because there were enough vacancies that all of the teachers, if they decided it was a different area and they had to go into a different area, that they would not lose their jobs and that there would be no teachers losing their jobs.

None of our permanent staff will. So all staff with three years of experience become permanent educators in our system, and none of them will lose positions. But some of our provisional educators who have less than three years of experience will be losing their jobs.

and what are you what are you doing what's the bps doing to help them find employment so we we do a number of things i think within the system we work with uh

We do some resume support. We do licensure support, helping them pass their tests and other things they need to do to get positions. And we certainly are always happy to provide references to other districts as needed.

So how many vacant positions are there? Because I think there was 600 positions that were posted at one point.

Yes, I can see. I have to ask our HR team to pull that. but we can certainly get you the information.

Okay, about the number of positions that was posted because I thought there were far more positions posted than there would be individuals laid off and that if the laid off individual was willing to accept something that they were doing different, that was different from what they were doing, there would be no layoffs.

I mean, I think the technical term of layoff for us means a permanent educator. So there will be no layoffs of permanent educators in that circumstance. But for provisional educators who have not yet Chief Permanent Status, there will be some staff who are not renewed who do not have their contracts renewed for next year. When will you know? At some point over the summer, I think we could certainly give you some estimated information today.

Of the other categories of paraprofessionals? or teacher's aides. Can you tell me the number of individual per category that are actually going to lose their job? I'm not talking about layoff and finding. that are actually going to lose their job?

Yes, I think the pool for those positions is happening this week, so potentially as soon as next week we would have that information. Do you have an idea? I don't know.

Okay.

I can tell you how many fewer positions we have. How many? There are about 150 fewer paraprofessional positions, but a number of those are vacant. And then people will retire and they'll be the normal sort of departures.

And so there's going to be quite a few individuals that will be losing their jobs. Yes. When I thought earlier there would be no Individuals that were going to lose their jobs.

There will definitely be some individuals who are losing their jobs.

And that's not what we heard earlier, David. We never heard this. In fact, this is the first time that I've heard that maybe you have, Mr. Chair. But I thought there were more than enough jobs to pair up individuals that were on the excess list.

On the excess list, yes.

They're all set, everyone that was on the excess list.

We have not yet found placements for all of them, but we are working through that process now. But the excess list is only for permanent educators. permanent teachers with more than three years of experience.

It's a seniority issue, I think.

It's a seniority issue, yeah.

I mean, that's historically the problem. When you have to cut back, you end up going, you know, you have to cut the newest teachers.

That's not what we heard. We heard that know, even the educators on the excess list, we were told that There were enough positions to pair them up so that there would be no one on the excess list that would lose their jobs.

Yes, I'm saying you only end up on the excess list if you have tenure or whatever. That's right. And so if you're a second year teacher, and this is, you know, happening, this happens often in BPS, you know, new teachers, they They sort of seem to lose their positions before they acquire that. I think is it three years? I don't know.

You have to have three full years.

So no excess. No teachers or administrators. Anyone on the excess list, none of them are going to lose their positions.

If they're on the excess list, which means they have more than three years of teaching experience, then they will not lose their positions.

And as soon as you can, it would be helpful so we can see. What's going on with the folks that don't have a job? Because we're going to hear from them. I know. And then you're going to hear from us. You know. I do. I do, counsel. Thank you, David.

Okay, so I just had one follow-up question. I know we've heard about health insurance costs and I think One of the proposals was to move the health insurance from BPS to the city. Have you looked into that? Would that save money that we spend on health insurance?

It's sort of moving money from one basket to another and it would run into a number of DeVell Moore,

Okay. I think they're waiting outside my office.

That's fine. I won't tell you. I promised Nate I wouldn't tell you about his... I will read that into the record, I promise. How long did you teach? I taught middle school, I taught three years basically, so not very long. Yeah, middle school math.

I could not teach my kids math on my own. I can teach them how to read.

Yeah. I'm not sure I could teach my kids math either.

Okay, Devel, you got two minutes to wrap up this hearing.

Okay. Well, in that case, I'll probably just restate some of the things that I spoke about yesterday for the people that weren't here. But hi, good evening, counselors and everyone. My name is Deval Moore. I live in Roxbury. I'm an 11th grade 17-year-old Mecco student at Weston High School, and I'm a senior youth organizer at the Center for Teen Empowerment's Dorchester site. I've been working at TE for two years or three sessions. And yesterday at the hearing, I mentioned that what makes these cuts so frustrating is that they expose a deeper contradiction in how the city understands public investment. and Boston is perfectly willing to spend enormous amounts of money managing the downstream consequences of inequality, but becomes hesitant the moment the conversation shifts to reducing inequality at its source. I also said that youth employment programs are one of the few policies that simultaneously address economic mobility, public health, educational engagement, workforce development, and violence prevention.

And the research on this isn't controversial anymore because stable employment during adolescence is strongly correlated with long-term earnings, lower justice system involvement, improved educational outcomes, and stronger civic participation. and in other words, these programs, they do work. I mean, we're dedicated. I'm at my youth job right now, my youth school year job right now. I love what I do. I have a passion in what I do. I love community organizing and stuff as well. And I mean, there's 10 of us here right now who are willing to continue to fight for this and it shows that we're determined. And stability rarely receives the same political urgency as punishment. We have all of these policing techniques and methods set up within our community.

And all that it's doing is continuing to divide us from our political understanding and knowledge of what goes on in the city of Boston, whether that's the youth, whether that's the adults that are being affected by their pensions, I'm going to continue to fight for this Like I said, this is what I do, this is my passion, and this is Teen Empowerment, all of the other orgs that could not stand here right now and testify on their behalf as well.

Okay, thank you. Okay. On that note, we're going to just adjourn this afternoon's hearing. I want to thank everyone who came to testify, thank Chief Financial Officer Bloom for Your preparation and your answers today, my colleagues who were here. Thank you. This afternoon's hearing is now adjourned.

Thank you.