Dear Friends,
On January 26, 2012 a meeting was held between Curley folks and BPS administrators regarding next year’s budget.
Detailed notes of the meeting can be found here.
Principal Jeffrey Slater, Assistant Principal David Diaz, and we attended on behalf of our school. BPS Chief Financial Officer John McDonough and several Assistant Superintendents were also present.
We learned the history of the budget process from the time of the school merger to today. It was sobering. Encouragingly, the BPS representatives stated their wish to continue to talk with us and work on a way forward. There may be opportunities to increase our funding in very specific categories based on the district’s own enrollment data. Ideas on what we might do next are in the notes.
It is our recommendation that we revise our strategy going forward. Our activities to date have been focused solely on the Curley. While that focus should continue, what concerns many of us, and what was made clear yesterday, is that the funding crisis is city-wide. There is much we can do to still have an impact on how education is prioritized in Boston.
The planning meeting on Tuesday, January 31st at Carrie Fletcher’s house will still take place (email her here for directions). We can pause to review our progress, share what we’ve learned and decide as a community “what’s next,” including whether to or how to continue lobbying the School Committee on this topic.
City Councilor John Connolly has reached out requesting to meet with us, so he will attend a portion of the evening.
February’s School Parent Council meeting will be held on Wednesday, February 1st at 6:00 pm in the Upper School Library as regularly scheduled. Childcare and food will be available as usual.
Thank you everyone for all of your calls, letters and emails. We succeeded in getting the school committee’s attention and respect, and we have a seat at the table to help determine the future of our school.
If anyone has questions, please feel free to contact either of us.
Sincerely,
Lindsey Weeramuni and Carrie Fletcher
6 comments
Inci Kaya says:
January 27, 2012 at 6:36 pm (UTC -5)
Hello Lindsey and Carrie,
Thank you for a thorough run down of the meeting and your discussions…
I’m not sure if this was intentional, but the two documents attached to your report above are the same… Was there a separate note about possible next steps? It seems that the majority of the problem lies in funding at the state and even federal level, not to mention the way funding is allocated to charter schools. I hadn’t realized how much charter schools drain funds away from BPS. Shouldn’t it be the other way around?
Best,
Inci
Heshan Berents-Weeramuni says:
January 27, 2012 at 7:05 pm (UTC -5)
Inci, the multiple links do lead to the same set of notes from the meeting Lindsey and Carrie attended. There are some possible action steps to do with the classification of the school buildings together with a better assessment of our student demographics that may allow us to redress our budget shortfall. Hope you can make either next Tuesday’s special budget meeting of next Wednesday’s SPC meeting where we can really discuss how we want to move forward. The minutes from both will also be posted if you can’t make it. Couldn’t agree with you more about Charter school funding’s effect on the BPS, it’s unfair.
rosw says:
January 28, 2012 at 4:00 pm (UTC -5)
BPS Superintendent Johnson is in favor of charter schools. She promotes them and helped change the law to open more under her direction.
Susan McConathy says:
January 28, 2012 at 4:10 pm (UTC -5)
My thanks to Lindsay and Carrie for their work on this. I, for one, appreciate the professional, non-emotional approach the Curley team has taken to address the on-going budget challenges. Thank you also for the transparency with the information. It is very helpful to read about the issues and learn about the next steps. Nice work!
Dan Barcan says:
February 3, 2012 at 8:52 am (UTC -5)
I read the CFO’s comments and was disappointed, but not surprised, to see him misrepresent how charter schools are funded versus district schools. Put simply, his statement is not correct. Public charter schools are funded in a way that is directly derived from how the sending district schools are funded, and is often less on a per-student basis. But what’s more important is that we do not want to be used by the district’s managers to restate their anti-charter rhetoric. We want to be united to ensure the right funding for all public schools.
This is a reasonably complex (and really quite boring!) issue, but one that is important for us to understand so we can stay focused on the real issues. I am happy to devote more time or come to a meeting if people would like to better understand charter and/or district funding.
Heshan Berents-Weeramuni says:
February 3, 2012 at 10:18 am (UTC -5)
Dan, thanks so much for your comment. I think we would all vastly benefit from your experienced perspective. I think Carrie and Punam would be glad to set a little time aside for a primer at a future meeting depending on your time.