Boston Globe Date:Apr 10, 2002 Start Page:B.2 Section:Metro/Region Outraged by a $41 million gap in the Boston Public Schools budget and cuts related to it, local community leaders supported by Boston City Councilors Chuck Turner and Charles Yancey demanded a meeting with Mayor Thomas M. Menino yesterday to insist he reverse the budget decisions of Superintendent Thomas W. Payzant and the mayorally-appointed school committee. In a letter to Menino yesterday, the Boston Parent Organizing Network, the local chapter of the NAACP, the Citywide Parents Council, and others denounced the budget proposals, which include eliminating teaching and central office positions and reducing transitional programs for special- needs students. The ad hoc group said they will work with the mayor to find revenue sources. Carole Brennan, Menino's spokesperson, said the mayor has not reviewed the letter yet but the administration is "comfortable" with the school department's budget. Author: Tench, Megan Date: Feb 23, 2003 Just days before the state Department of Education is expected to release the results of the 10th-grade MCAS retest, perhaps giving good news to thousands of high school seniors hoping to receive diplomas in June, nearly 100 demonstrators rallied at the State House last week fighting to delay the graduation requirement. Amid chants from Boston public school students, parents, and community leaders, Project Hip-Hop, a community-based youth outreach group, presented information about the $120 million budget deficit facing the Boston Public Schools. Such a gap could only hamper efforts to prepare students for the exam, the demonstrators said, demanding that the test be delayed until the schools have adequate resources. Author: Tench, Megan Date: Mar 26, 2003 Mayor Thomas M. Menino said yesterday that Boston will tap into its emergency reserve fund and make deeper cuts to other departments to help the school district make up a $120 million deficit, but acknowledged the city will not stave off teacher layoffs or prevent school closures. In all, the school district will get an additional $32.5 million to help balance its budget, a move Menino and school officials hope will help preserve some of the academic achievements Boston public schools have logged in the last few years. The additional $32.5 million will boost the school district's annual budget to $619 million. School officials also plan to cut $3 million from central offices, and now expect to get roughly $4 million in federal dollars, reducing the budget gap to $81 million. School officials hope to reduce that deficit through proposals currently being negotiated in the teacher contract. But some of those ideas, such as increasing class sizes and freezing salaries, already have drawn sharp criticism from the Boston Teachers Union. The additional $32.5 million will boost the school district's annual budget to $619 million. School officials also plan to cut $3 million from central offices, and now expect to get roughly $4 million in federal dollars, reducing the budget gap to $81 million. Author: Tench, Megan Date: Jan 15, 2004 District officials at last night's School Committee meeting did not release specifics, but they announced plans to hold four public budget hearings in various parts of the city, starting Jan. 22 at the New Boston Pilot Middle School in Dorchester. The School Committee is scheduled to vote on the district's final budget on March 24. For this school year, Boston faced a $55 million budget shortfall - the biggest fiscal crisis in three decades. As a result, more than 800 teachers and staff were laid off last June, and every school in the district had to cut budgets by 8 percent.

Author: Jan, Tracy Date: Feb 2, 2006 Schools would receive an additional $4.2 million overall next year, a 1 percent increase per school, to restore teachers, supplies, and programs lost in previous years. If the city approves the budget, it will be the second consecutive year that the school system has restored money to school budgets, after cutting them by 7 percent in the 2003-04 school year, when Boston laid off 400 teachers and closed five schools, officials said. The proposed $730.5 million budget for next school year, a 2.5 percent increase over this year's budget, also adds more teachers for limited-English speaking students, provides mentoring for new teachers, and gives teachers training on boosting the achievement of various student populations, including minority groups, officials said. "We feel good about the fact that we're able to provide additional resources to the schools and make a small step toward closing the gap that was created two and three years ago," Superintendent Thomas W. Payzant said in an inter view after the meeting. However, the 58,000-student school system is continuing to lose enrollment as it has in recent years and projects losing more than 1,000 students next year from mostly middle and high schools, said John McDonough, chief financial officer of the Boston schools. While the drop will not greatly affect next year's budget, he said, the district anticipates losing at least $35 million in state aid because of students who leave the district for charter schools. Author: Jan, Tracy Date: Feb 7, 2008 Superintendent Carol Johnson faces a $33.2 million shortfall in next school year's budget as she tries to implement ambitious changes to raise graduation rates and keep families in the Boston school system. Johnson proposed a preliminary budget last night of $815.5 million for the 2008-09 school year, a 4.2 percent increase from this year's $782.8 million general fund budget. Johnson acknowledged that her recommended budget is far from balanced. Over the next two months, she will identify millions of dollars in cuts that are likely to include the loss or reshuffling of administrative and central office staff positions. Author: Jan, Tracy Date: Mar 20, 2008

Some schools could close. Summer school may be eliminated. Academic coaches and preschool teachers' aides may be let go. These are just some of the options Boston's superintendent and School Committee considered last night for closing a $30.7 million gap in next year's budget. While no decision is expected until next week, the possible cuts highlight the severity of the budget problem hitting school systems around the state. The school system has already attempted to cut the shortfall in half by identifying $15 million in savings, Johnson said. They include reducing central office staff, freezing hiring and unnecessary travel, limiting executive raises, and eliminating extra money allotted to the most troubled schools for longer school days and teacher training. "It's almost impossible to make any type of substantial reduction without impacting our children," said Richard Stutman, president of the Boston Teachers Union. "If you want to get kids to pass the MCAS and close the achievement gap, cutting summer school would be disastrous."

Author: Jan, Tracy Date: May 29, 2008 The Boston public schools, which recently received a $10 million bailout from the city to close next year's budget gap, are requesting an additional $9.9 million to make ends meet this school year. The deficit is driven in part by escalating food and fuel costs as well as higher-than-expected staffing costs, Superintendent Carol Johnson told the School Committee last night. The school system's financial woes are fueled by a steady enrollment decline and reduced federal funding. The plea for more money is an unusual midyear request that the School Department has only made twice in the past decade, said John McDonough, the school system's chief financial officer. The move also came as a surprise to the Boston City Council, which will ultimately have to vote on the request. "What source

they are looking toward to resolve this shortfall will be very interesting," said City Council President Maureen E. Feeney "We already hit the reserve fund for $10 million for the next year. It's not a bottomless pit." Johnson inherited a roughly $20 million budget gap for the current school year when she took over as superintendent last August, and has already trimmed half of it by freezing nonteaching positions and limiting raises. Author: Vaznis, James Date: Jul 17, 2008 The Boston public schools yesterday decided to increase its breakfast and lunch prices this fall by 25 cents, following the lead of many districts statewide that are battling escalating food costs. The price increase is part of a plan district officials presented last night to the School Committee to close a projected $6.7 million deficit in the district's food service program. The plan identified several cost-saving and revenue-producing measures that should shrink the projected deficit to $2.7 million. However, increasing breakfast and lunch prices along with other food items sold separately will only add $100,000 to the budget. That's because only 10 percent of the district's 56,000 students pay full price, while 76 percent qualify for free or reduced-price lunches. The other students bring their lunches. Author: Drake, John C Date: Mar 16, 2009 As Mayor Thomas M. Menino wages a public campaign to compel city unions to submit to a one-year wage freeze, he has been portraying Boston's projected budget deficit - originally $140 million - as an intractable gaping hole that cannot be plugged without a combination of delayed pay increases and layoffs. However, since Menino first reached out to unions for a wage freeze, the gap has been cut to $103 million by the city's own conservative budget writers, and, under more optimistic scenarios, could dwindle to less than $60 million. Pegging the size of the city's budget deficit is tricky, because of uncertainty about the state's budget and ultimately, local aid. It is possible the deficit could widen, particularly with legislators last week projecting that the state's budget deficit could grow by another $1 billion this year. But the mayor's office has paid little heed publicly to the other possibility - that the gap could shrink.

Author: James Vaznis Date: December 9, 2010 Johnson is seeking to downsize the school district as part of a plan to remedy a potential $63 million shortfall for the next school year, a bleak financial picture that is expected to confront the district for the next few years. The proposal, wider in scope than one she originally presented in October and then withdrew, has sparked spirited campaigns among the affected parents, students, and staffs to keep their schools open.

Author: Johnson, Akilah Date: Feb 3, 2011 Boston public schools would close a $63 million shortfall by cutting about 250 positions and restructuring class-size averages, and will also use an infusion of city and federal funds, according to a proposed budget presented to the School Committee last night. "It's not perfect yet," Superintendent Carol R. Johnson told the committee. "But, I think this budget is trying to begin a really intense effort to really focus on students. Not programs. Not schools. Not fancy logos." The district's proposed $829 million budget for the next school year also calls for a new way of distributing funds, giving the most money to schools that teach the students who traditionally are the most expensive to educate. Author: Johnson, Akilah Date: Feb 7, 2013

Boston's public school system needs to spend $61 million more to educate the city's children next school year, in part because enrollment is -expected to be the highest in nearly a decade, according to a proposed budget presented to the School Committee on Wednesday. The district expects nearly 1,200 more students next school year, mostly in pre-kindergarten and elementary school, as well as special education, pushing enrollment to an estimated 58,271. More children mean more classrooms. Books and blocks must be bought, as well as desks, chairs, computers, and whiteboards. But, more impor-tantly, more children mean more staff. The district's proposed $934.4 million budget is a 7 percent -increase over the current year, John McDonough, the school system's chief financial officer, said before the School Committee meeting. "We're in higher demand; more families are choosing -Boston public schools," said -McDonough. "While it's good news for the district, it creates additional costs." In part because of rising health care costs, employee raises, and transportation costs, the district had forecast a $76 million budget gap. But money from the city's general budget will help plug most of that, providing $58.2 million. Author: Vaznis, James Date: Jan 21, 2014 The Boston public school system is grappling with declining state educational aid, a trend that is forcing the district to rely more on property taxes and other revenue from the city's general fund to pay for initiatives and overhauls of failing schools. Just 13 percent of the public school budget this year is covered by state aid, according to a school system analysis. Fifteen years ago, such aid covered 31 percent of the city's school budget. School officials anticipate that the downward trend -- already more than a decade long -- will continue. That means that even though state aid has increased slightly for Boston, less of the money is actually going to the traditional school system. For instance this year, Boston's public schools are losing a total of $87.5 million in aid to about two dozen charter schools. That leaves the public school system with $121.9 million in state funding, about $58 million less than what it received in 2008.

Author: Vaznis, James Date: March 27, 2014 The school department also over-projected enrollments for this school year, causing school officials to open classrooms that turned out to be unnecessary. Correcting that problem should result in about $11 million in savings. In all, the School Department had to cut over $100 million in spending to balance next year's budget.

Author: Vaznis, James Date: Feb 5, 2015 Interim Superintendent John McDonough is proposing to close a "handful" of schools under a preliminary budget proposal for the next school year that he presented to the School Committee on Wednesday night. The $1 billion spending plan also calls for other cuts, such as streamlining menu offerings in school cafeterias and possibly ending bus service for most seventh-graders. The latter measure was approved by the School Committee last year but was put on hold in light of growing opposition from parents and elected officials. The cuts, McDonough said in an interview before the meeting, are an unfortunate reality the school system must face as the cost of doing business rises faster than revenue, creating a potential shortfall of $42 million to $51 million. Author: Fox, Jeremy C Date: Jan 12, 2016 Boston Public Schools faces a budget deficit of up to $50 million for the coming fiscal year, as expenses increase and federal and state aid to the School Department declines, Superintendent Tommy Chang said Tuesday. Chang, in a letter to parents, pledged that no schools would close due to the shortfall. But he said $20 million will be cut from

the central office budget and $10 million to $12 million more will be saved by trimming the per-student funding formula, affecting the budgets of individual schools. Chang said that "a sizable gap" remains despite changes to school enrollments and programs that will further impact school budgets. As the School Department prepared its annual budget early last year, it faced a nearly identical deficit of an estimated $42 million to $51 million, leading then-interim superintendent John McDonough to propose five school closures and other cost-saving measures. Ultimately, two schools were closed.