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This time she really means it: School superintendent warns of 'devastating' cuts if she can't close some schools, eliminate bus routes
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How the Boston Public Schools were destroyed
The BPS is now proceeding according to a suicidal internal logic. The high schools are totally divided between a few exam schools getting by on $4000/student, and the rest of the system which then must average over $23,000/student to produce graduates that even the teachers admit are functionally illiterate.
How is this system ever going to get on track like this?
Maybe a few years of growth allow the city to paper over the fundamental flaws of this approach, but the Republicans are waiting around for the exam schools to finally wink out and the remaining political support for the BPS among the middle class to disappear. The Republicans did nothing to make this happen, they merely sat back and let the BPS put preservation of top pay for a screwed-up model as the priority.
Exam schools
I don't understand your post on several points.
Your feeling is that the exam schools are on their way out? That seems like a pretty wild speculation as they are one of the hallmarks of the BPS. What is your support for that? Are applications down?
Second, by 'the Republicans' do you mean the national GOP which is about to have a significant role in government or the local GOP who have zero representation in the City of Boston and a vestigial presence on Beacon Hill? And they are waiting for the BPS to fail so they can do .... what again? Have a party? Set up charter schools? Buy a pony?
There are many problems with the BPS, but the GOP isn't one of them.
is it special needs?
The exam schools succeed such as they do on the academic strength of the incoming students. But that depends on parents still setting out to get their kids in and keep them there. As I wrote they are budgeted for around $4000/student. This has led to large class sizes and fewer classes overall.
Given the present trajectory it will only get worse for them. The demographic changes at the BPS have already led to a large population of special needs students who are soaking up a huge chunk of the money. There is a perverse incentive in the system to absorb more of these students at the expense of the middle-class students as those teachers with various certifications make a higher salary. In addition, this shields the regular high schools from facing cuts while the well-performing exam schools are hacked every year.
Making cuts has a real impact. In this geography, there is really no problem with moving your kid out to the burbs or going private. Even if the exam schools don't go bust they will get weaker every year on the present course.
Interesting
Did you really mean to say that special needs students are absorbed at the expense of middle-class students?
What Republicans do you speak
What Republicans do you speak of? There aren't any in city government. The state government, aside from the occasional weak Republican Governor, has them as a piny minority incapable of doing anything in the face of an overwhelming majority of Democrats. At the Federal level, I don't see Scott Brown destroying the entire BPS in one year as a Junior Senator, and Department of Education testing standards sure as hell have not changed a thing in this state given that the Mass Board of Education has STRICTER STANDARDS THAN THE FEDS.
Patronage positions, unrealistic compensation schemes not tied to performance, busing murdering neighborhood schools, graft, and sheer incompetence are to blame for BPS's long decline. Not some locally impotent political party strawman dressed as an elephant having tea in the corner.
Remember, for the
Remember, for the small-minded, pointy-headed, Che-shirt-wearing set, the GOP is just an all-encompassing bogeyman, the stuff of dread and legend, to be whispered about in quiet alleys away from Big Boehner's prying eyes. Or something.
I prefer comments like that. So much easier to know whose opinion you can safely ignore.
Republicans didn't do anything
Opponents of public schooling do exist... but overall I agree with you. There will be whining and complaining as the schools are shut down, but overall the system got plenty of money and support but still managed to hang itself.
Somebody needs to ask some questions
these numbers are pie in the sky. The school budget is forecast to increase to $881 million next year from $821 million this year (there's an outside account called external funds that complicates this a little - that may shrink because that's where one time fees get accounted for - but they are in there for a reason - they are not operating funds - but the school department has been using this as an overrun account for years). In these times, how can the city justify a 7% or so increase for a system that will probably shrink by 10% over the next 2 years as the charter system expands.
I smell spin and politics. Somebody needs to dig into these numbers and see what is going on to cause such large increases - for a smaller system.