Last Night @ School Committee

A bite-sized summary of Boston School Committee meetings, and "Deep Dives" on the biggest issues impacting public schools nationwide.

Episodes
Episodes
Show Notes
Show Notes
Tools
Tools

Episodes

Last Night at School Committee - May 6, 2026

Last night’s Boston School Committee meeting was straightforward and relatively mundane, highlights of the evening included conversations about transportation, budgeting, and the district’s effort to prepare for the rapid growth of artificial intelligence in schools. 

The evening began with a recognition ceremony honoring graduating seniors from the Boston Student Advisory Council. Superintendent Mary Skipper then spotlighted improvements in bus reliability, noting that morning on-time performance climbed from 85% in February to 94% in April, while afternoon performance increased from 81% to 89%. The Committee then approved more than $1.45 million in grants, including a major state rebate supporting the expansion of electric school buses. The district then submitted a request for an additional $22.8 million supplemental appropriation to balance the current fiscal year budget, with officials again pointing to rising health insurance costs, transportation expenses, and special education obligations as major drivers of the deficit.

The most forward-looking portion of the meeting came during the district’s presentation of its proposed artificial intelligence policy framework. District leaders described the proposal as a set of guardrails intended to promote ethical, safe, and responsible AI use while ensuring that human judgment remains central to education. Committee members raised questions about academic integrity, overreliance on technology, and the potential loss of foundational skills. The final version of the policy will be voted on and approved in July. 

Show Notes

Featured
A Look at BPS's FY2027-2031 Capital Plan and the District's Facility Quality Gap | Last Night at School Committee: April 15, 2026

Last night’s School Committee meeting touched on a number of critical issues for BPS, including a vote on a policy amendment to MassCore, an ask for more money to fill a budget gap, an update on decade old policy surrounding opportunity and achievement gaps, a new strategic roadmap, as well as an an approval for a new MSBA statement of interest. To learn more about these topics, please listen to the podcast for more in-depth analysis. Regarding BPS facilities, which played a key role at the start of last night’s meeting, we conducted an analysis to better understand the future of the district’s capital plan in the coming years.

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FY2027 Budget Adopted, MassCore Completion Rates Questioned, and School Choice Discussion Revisited | Last Night at School Committee: March 25, 2026

Last night was the first full meeting in a month after a series of budget hearings. The meeting covered three topics; vote on the 2026-2027 budget, update on MassCore and the annual discussion on school choice. We dig into each of these areas below and on the podcast. We are also excited to unveil a new tool to help you better understand the BPS budget. 

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The Boston Globe’s Christopher Huffaker on BPS’ Graduation Requirements | Last Night at School Committee: Special Episode

Earlier this month, we recorded a special conversation with Boston Globe reporter Christopher Huffaker. Huffaker is a reporter for “The Great Divide” - an investigative arm of the paper that analyzes and reports on educational inequities throughout the state. 

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Central Office Budget Recap | Last Night at School Committee: March 4, 2026

Last night, the district had a two-part meeting, beginning with a Budget Hearing for FY 2027 and then a short School Committee meeting. The budget hearing largely touched on many of the same financial themes we have heard from the district before, including transportation costs and collective bargaining expenses, while also highlighting some more granular fiscal challenges at the school level. School Committee members asked a number of questions about multilingual programming, cuts to personnel, and the connection between the FY 27 budget and the long-term facilities plan. 

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BPS Presents FY2027 Budget: Staffing Cuts, Enrollment Decline, and Multilingual Program Changes | Last Night at School Committee: February 12, 2026 Meeting Recap

On Wednesday evening, the district held a hearing focused on the Central Office budget. In their presentation, district leadership stated that they prioritized "student-facing" investments that directly supported schools. Highlights from the central office budget include an $86 million increase due to four main categories: health insurance, transportation expenses, special education, and collective bargaining.

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FY2027 Budget Season Opens: Rising Costs, Declining Enrollment, and a New Funding Formula | Last Night at School Committee: February 4th, 2026 Meeting Recap

Last night kicked off the FY 2027 budget season with an overview and a release of all the budget documents. The district’s preliminary FY27 budget proposal totals $1.71 billion, representing a $74 million increase over current spending. This increase comes even as BPS serves roughly 3,000 fewer students than last year, continuing a multi-year trend of declining enrollment. On a per-pupil basis, the district is now spending approximately $37,000 per student. What makes this especially concerning is that increased spending has not translated into improved outcomes. Only one-third of high school students are currently on track to meet BPS graduation standards, and proficiency in ELA MCAS for students in grades 3–8 has declined from 35% in 2019 to 29% in 2025. During that same period, the district added approximately 1,700 positions, raising fundamental questions about staffing growth, productivity, and accountability. Transportation costs illustrate this disconnect. The FY27 budget proposes an additional $11 million for transportation, bringing total spending on yellow buses to approximately $200 million annually, despite ongoing reports from families that buses remain unreliable and poorly coordinated.

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BPS Starts 2026 With New Committee Members, a $53M Deficit, and a Special Education Debate | Last Night at School Committee: January 21st, 2026 Meeting Recap

The Boston Public Schools (BPS) School Committee held its first meeting of 2026 this week, coming at a critical moment for the district with new committee members, the current $53 million budget deficit, as well as serious questions about inclusion and transparency.

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Amid Community Outcry, BPS School Committee Votes 6-1 to Close Schools — and Raises More Questions Than Answers | Last Night at School Committee: December 17th, 2025 Meeting Recap

At last night’s meeting, many important issues were discussed and decided. These included an important memo about enrollment decline, a school closure vote, and a budget update. Conversations between the Committee and district pointed to long-term issues for BPS.
The meeting moved directly into the public comment period. There were 30 speakers, with the overwhelming majority urging the Committee to halt the proposed school closures. Testimony from teachers, parents, students, and organizers emphasized a lack of transparency, insufficient engagement, and deep uncertainty about what will happen to students once schools close. Speakers repeatedly stressed that families and educators had received vague answers to direct questions about transition plans, accountability, and the future placement of students, particularly those requiring inclusive services.

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Tools

The 2027 proposed budget for Boston Public Schools is over $1.7B, providing funding for over 10,000 employees responsible for more than 46,000 students across 105 schools. Comprising over 40% of the city’s budget and shouldering responsibility for educating tomorrow’s leaders, understanding the changes in the budget are crucial. The district makes many of its financial documents publicly available, although not always in an accessible or easily understandable format. The tool below combines multiple sources of data (chiefly the FY27 budget sheet and the budget book) in an easily browsable format to help students, teachers, policymakers, and concerned citizens to understand the changes in the coming fiscal year. 

  • School Database allows you to explore enrollment, budget, and staffing changes for individual schools from 2026 to 2027. The dashboard shows district-wide changes, and searching for or clicking on individual schools in the list will bring up school-specific data. 

  • BudgetBreakdown details how the FY2027 budget is spread between direct school funding and central office funding, and how each broad category and specific line item is changing. Hovering over each box provides more information, and filters on the right allow for a closer view.

  • Budget Over Time will detail how each broad budget category has changed since 2019, and which portions of the budget have grown the fastest.

Methodology

Numbers may vary slightly from sources elsewhere. While it may be an error, it’s also possible that the underlying data has variations from source-to-source. As this tool attempts to unify disparate sources across times and departments, variation is a given. Some of the more common questions sources of inconsistency:

  • School inclusion: BPS, in its budget, includes a number of in-district charters (Boston Day and Evening Academy, Green Academy, Dudley Street Neighborhood School, and the Kennedy Academy for Health Careers) which are sometimes excluded from datasets. Given that these are funded and staffed by BPS, they are included here. School names and formats change over time, and while we strive to be consistent, this can create confusion. 

  • Enrollment: This total varies based on when the students are counted, and totals in the beginning and end of the year may vary. As mentioned above, the inclusion of in-district charters can also add several hundred students. 

  • Budget: We use the most recent FY27 budgets, but these are still subject to change and may vary between draft budgets. For historic budgets, we use current spending levels as opposed to adopted budgets, which can lead to variation. 

Budget category: To create cross-time comparisons in the budget breakdown, we have attempted to group central budgeted functions as they are in the FY27 budget, as they were grouped differently in years past. These groups are unofficial, and while all individual line items remain as they appear, the category in which they appear may be unexpected.

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