BPS: Jackson’s proposals would cost at least $17M
City Councilor and mayoral candidate Tito Jackson’s calls to “fully fund” Boston Public Schools, restore school-level cuts, and give free MBTA passes to high school students will cost the city millions — expensive proposals some analysts say will be difficult to pull off given the city’s increasing education budget.
Jackson’s proposals would represent at least a $17 million increase to Mayor Martin J. Walsh’s proposed $1 billion school budget, according to BPS data. Restoring cuts to the 49 city schools that are losing money due to declining enrollment would cost about $13.6 million, and providing MBTA passes to the nearly 12,000 high school students who live too far to be eligible for a BPS-administered pass would cost another $3.5 million, school officials say.
“We’ve seen, year after year, cuts to the bone of critical programs for BPS, from autism programs, librarians, nurses and art programs,” Jackson said. “There is more than enough. It’s about choices. It’s about values.”
While the high-priced proposals indicate Jackson plans to make education funding a top priority of his mayoral campaign, Jackson declined to say exactly how much his ideas would cost and said he would release specific policy proposals in the coming weeks.
And though educational funding has many teachers and parents calling for officials to do more to support the city’s underperforming schools, Boston Municipal Research Bureau President Sam Tyler pointed out that public school spending has jumped under the Walsh administration, which has boosted the budget by $143 million since he took office. The budget is slated to increase another 2.8 percent next year, according to BPS.
“The school department budget, if you take out health insurance, has increased by 25 percent over the last five years,” Tyler said. “The school department has been spending at a higher pace than all other departments. It’s hard to argue that the city has not done a lot for the school department.”
But Black Educators Alliance of Massachusetts President Johnny McInnis applauded Jackson’s plan, calling the ideas “good, solid proposals.”