Weekly Transcript Round-Up: BPS Long Term Facilities Plan Edition

Boston Public Schools' Long-term facilities plan dominates last week of budget hearings; in other hearings, Parks & Rec silent on White Stadium, Meija misses Climate Officer, & broken O'Bryant promise

This week the Boston Public Schools (BPS) long-term facilities plan dominated news coverage of City government. BPI also has the highlights from the rest of this week’s budget hearings after a look at what is going on with the long-term facilities plan.

Here are the three meetings this past week where BPS long-term facilities plan played a major role:

TUESDAY MORNING BPS Superintendent Mary Skipper and Boston School Committee Chair Jeri Robinson provided the state Board of Elementary & Secondary Education an update on the June 2022 agreement that prevented a takeover of BPS. The Board spent a lot of time on the long-term facilities plan, and Acting Commissioner Russell Johnston reserved one of his few criticisms for the district’s the long-term facilities plan, writing:

The Plan does not include future student enrollment projections, which is a vital component to inform future large-scale renovations, mergers, and closures. Additionally, the Plan lacks specific information on an overall timeline by which rightsizing the District will be complete as well as the size and number of buildings needed in the future state.

Read the whole memo from the Acting Commissioner, check out BPI’s summary of the BESE meeting, and read the Globe’s coverage of the update.

WEDNESDAY NIGHT Boston School Committee met on Wednesday night to hear about the long-term facilities plan, and members were disappointed with what they heard. At the last BSC meeting on May 8 Chair Robinson expressed the desire for more “meat” in the proposal and here is what she had to say at the end of Wednesday’s meeting - she is Speaker 0 and her comment starts at the 4:38:10 mark in the transcript:

I've probably got 5 or 6 pages full of questions. I am not gonna ask any of them tonight but you will get them. Because, I mean, for me, it's some it's sort of like the impliedness of the impact of a number of the changes that are being proposed. So I want to understand if I'm building seats here, where are those? Whose seats are no longer gonna have students in? And who are gonna wake up one day and say, ‘oh my gosh I need 10 more?’ We've been through this in the past. And the issue is: how are we helping every community to understand that there will be impacts? We say we want change. We know we need the change, but we can't be afraid every time any change is proposed that everybody's gonna have an outcry.

Chair Robinson’s appeal not to be afraid is backed up by recent polling data from BPI, which shows 60% of Boston residents support replacing small, old schools with new larger schools. For more on this meeting, listen to the Shah Family Foundation’s podcast ‘Last Night at School Committee’ and read BPI’s AI-generated transcripts of Boston School Committee meetings on one of our free feeds - check out the transcript for the May 22nd meeting.

THURSDAY MORNING At the Boston City Council’s budget hearing on Thursday morning the long-term facilities plan was the only agenda item. District 9 City Councilor Liz Breadon called the plan “underwhelming” and asked “why are we so tentative," in her comments which you can watch here - she is Speaker 3 and starts speaking at the 7:10 mark in the transcript:

While the negative reactions to the plan from some City Councilors and other BPS observers have been covered by the press, but there were two additional issues that didn’t get covered:

• Superintendent Skipper reneged on her promise to present a new plan for the O’Bryant School; and

• The Boston City Council is threatening to not pass BPS’ budget and instead force the district to get approval for spending on a month-by-month basis.

Check those out at the end of this post in the highlights from this week’s budget hearings.

PRESS COVERAGE OF BPS LONG-TERM FACILITIES PLAN

The Boston Globe lede for another article with the headline BPS SCALES BACK PLANS FOR SWEEPING SCHOOL CLOSURES:

Boston Public Schools has scaled back immediate plans for sweeping school closures despite warning for months about the hard decisions necessary to contend with dwindling enrollment and persistent inequities in student experiences.

GBH’s lede for an article with the headline PARENTS FRUSTRATED BY LACK OF BPS PLANNING:

School officials dramatically scaled back efforts to close or merge dozens of Boston schools, leaving some parents frustrated by a lack of planning amid crumbling infrastructure.

The Dorchester Reporter’s lede for an article with the headline BPS ABANDONS PLAN TO PURGE SCHOOL BUIDLINGS:

Despite a decrease in student enrollment by 15.2 percent since 2014-15, officials have unveiled a long-term facilities vision for the Boston Public Schools (BPS) without identifying a single building that would close permanently. Instead of counting buildings and rooms, the presentation at the May 22 meeting of the Boston School Committee, led by BPS Superintendent Mary Skipper, repeatedly emphasized increasing the number of “quality seats.”

The Boston Globe lede for an article with the headline ‘WE’RE KICKING THE CAN DOWN THE ROAD’: CRITICS SAY BPS IS SLOW-WALKING DECISION ON SCHOOL CLOSURES:

To hear Boston school officials describe it, they’re caught in a Catch-22, with too few students for too many school buildings. They need to close some to free up money to improve the quality of education at the remaining schools, yet they can’t close underutilized schools until they can offer families better options.

This article includes a paragraph about BPI’s recent poll, which included a question about school construction and showed that a broad majority of Boston residents support a plan to replace small, old schools with new, larger ones.

Back in March the Boston Globe editorial board weighed in on the BPS budget back in March and ended with this line:

The real question is how long School Committee members — and the parents and students they are supposed to represent — will put up with that kind of treatment.

The School Committee is voting on whether or not to accept the long-term facilities plan at their June 17, 2024 meeting according to the BPS leadership’s presentation given at the BSC and Council meetings earlier this week.

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READ BPI’S ANALYSIS OF BOSTON’S SYSTEMATIC IMPROVEMENT PLAN

In February 2024 Boston Policy Institute, Inc published an analysis on how Boston Public Schools is doing on the Systematic Improvement Plan that was agreed to by the Mayor of Boston and Massachusetts’ Department of Elementary & Secondary Education back in June 2022.

READ THE REPORT HERE

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There were also a number of other budget hearings this week:

• Parks & Recreation;

• Boston Housing Authority and Mayor’s Office on Housing;

• Law and Treasury;

• the Environment Department & many of its associated offices; and

• Boston Public Schools presented their long-term facilities plan.

This week marks the end of the Council’s budget hearings, but budget season is far from over. Next week there will be public testimony on Tuesday, a hearing on a tax hike that has implications for this year’s budget decisions on Thursday, and two Amendment Working Sessions on Thursday and Friday where the Council will work on making changes to the Mayor’s FY25 budget. BPI will have more on what to expect next week, and keep reading for the highlights from each of this week’s hearings.

Parks & Recreation The major issue BPI was watching for at this hearing was White Stadium, and there was only one question from a Councilor about the subject. Overall, the phrase “White Stadium” only appeared four times:

• Twice in the public comment from Christine Poff of the Franklin Park Coalition: “Franklin Park is benefiting from a lot of investment and pretty exciting projects from the overlook and the bear cages to White Stadium, and the investment what we think that White Stadium will bring to the park and the surrounding communities,” she is Speaker 10 and her comments start at the 35:58 mark in the transcript.

• The other two times “White Stadium” was said was in the only question and answer about White Stadium, from Ways & Means Chair and District 4 City Councilor Brian Worrell. His question was about maintenance funds in Franklin Park, not the proposed renovation - he is Speaker 0 and his question is at the 2:13:22 mark in the transcript.

Boston Housing Authority and Mayor’s Office on Housing In 2023 the pro-housing advocacy group Abundant Housing Massachusetts released its first ever questionnaire to Boston City Council candidates, asking in depth questions about housing production policies and any action they had taken in the development process - read the questionnaire & responses here. Every one of the At-Large Councilors filled out the questionnaires, along with four of the district councilors: Ed Flynn, Enrique Pepen, Ben Weber, and Liz Breadon. Five district councilors did not fill out the questionnaire: District 1’s Gabriela Coletta; District 3’s John FitzGerald; District 4’s Brian Worrell; District 7’s Tania Fernandes Anderson; and District 8’s Sharon Durkan.

Few of the Councilors shed more light on their views at Monday’s hearing. Boston is currently considering a major re-zoning called Squares & Streets whose major goal is to create more housing and seeing escalating fight in court rooms and at public meetings over new housing developments between organized NIMBY and YIMBY community groups. Despite all that activity, only one City Councilor said the words “Squares and Streets,” “NIMBY,” and “YIMBY,” and she did it in just one comment:

I think I've made my position on housing very clear supporting waivers for affordable housing projects, supporting squares and streets, supporting office to resi, and I think I have a more nuanced position on housing than simply YIMBY or NIMBY, but if I had to fit myself into one of those categories, I know which one it would be.

District 8 City Councilor Sharon Durkan did not say which side of the NIMBY/YIMBY divide she considered herself on - she is Speaker 20 and this comment starts at the 2:19:16 mark in the transcript.

Law and Treasury BPI has been looking for any sign that Boston will follow the lead of other communities across the state and expand its new ‘Planning Department’ from a carbon copy of the BPDA org structure that its staff are coming from into a true community planning department. A major part of that would be bringing the planners and other specialized workers currently spread out across roads, parks, and housing into the Planning Department. A question from Councilor Liz Breadon about the BPDA attorneys who are becoming City of Boston employees makes it clear that is not happening for now - she is Speaker 6 and her question starts at the 53:31 mark in the transcript. Here is what Adam Cederbaum, Boston’s corporation counsel, had to say - he is Speaker 3 and this answer starts at the 54:33 mark in the transcript:

Those employees are gonna sort of stay kind of in the same situation with the BPDA’s transfer to the City sort of making up. So you won't see in our budget request for this year anything to do with the new planning department, even though there are gonna be a number of lawyers.

With the Wu administration and Council both facing calls from the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce and Boston Municipal Research Bureau to limit spending, the addition of the BPDA staff to the City presents a major opportunity to reorganize City government.

Environment Department & associated offices In our preview for this week’s budget hearings there were two things BPI was looking for in this hearing: inaugural Chief Climate Officer Brian Swett and the Landmarks Commission.

For the first issue, the new Chief Climate Officer who was recently announced as taking over the cabinet that covers all of this hearing’s participants was not at the hearing. Chief Swett’s absence was something that At-Large Councilor Julia Meija pointed out at length in an exchange with Oliver Sellers Garcia, the Green New Deal director in the Mayor's Office - Councilor Meija is Speaker 8, Sellers Garia is Speaker 3, and that exchange starts at the 1:56:23 mark in the transcript.

The second thing BPI was looking for was any mention of the Landmarks Commission (LC), which is part of the Cabinet which Chief Swett is now leading. Unfortunately, there was no mention of the LC during this hearing. Despite not going before the Council for a budget hearing the Office of Historic Preservation - which oversees LC - held a public meeting in Dorchester earlier this month, which according to the Dorchester Reporter: “was billed as a chance for Dorchester residents to hear about Mayor Wu’s ad- ministration’s ‘vision for historic preservation’ from the key person charged with executing the mayor’s agenda.” The LC didn’t appear to come up in that meeting either. The LC has been a source of chaos starting the very first day of the Council’s budget hearing on April 22 when the Dorchester Reporter and other outlets reported that the LC’s Executive Director had been fired after all sixteen Commissioners on the LC had sent a letter to City officials alleging “interference” from Wu administration officials. Councilor Durkan, who oversees the LC as the Chair of the Development Committee, had suggested that the body should be moved under Planning earlier this budget season, but did not bring up the idea on Tuesday - read more about her proposal.

The only mention of anything historic at this hearing was testimony from Jun Seung Lee, the Policy Manager for the Emerald Neck Conservancy, which Jun described as “ a nonprofit that stewards and restore and improve the 1100 acres of the Emerald Necklace.” The Conservancy is also the the main plaintiff in the on-going lawsuit intended to stop the proposed renovation of White Stadium - June is Speaker 12 and starts her testimony at the 1:28:38 mark in the transcript.

Boston Public Schools Long-Term Master Facility Plan There were two issues that the press has not included in coverage of Thursday morning budget hearings:

• Superintendent reneged on promise to present a new plan for the O’Bryant School; and

• Boston City Council threatens to not pass BPS’ budget and instead force the district to get approval for spending on a month-by-month basis.

The first issue is that BPS Superintendent Mary Skipper appears to have reneged on a promise she made to District 7 City Councilor Tania Fernandes Anderson at a Council meeting earlier this year to deliver a new plan for the O’Bryant School by the end of the 2023-24 school year. The Superintendent made that promise in an untelevised working session of the Ways & Means Committee back on March 14, and while the meeting was not videotaped, BPI’s Executive Director Gregory Maynard was there and noted the exchange. This meeting happened just after Mayor Wu withdrew her plan to move the O’Bryant School to West Roxbury, and a day after this column from Joan Vennochi of the Boston Globe asked: “Is the John D. O’Bryant School of Mathematics and Science dead to Boston Mayor Michelle Wu?”

At the hearing this past Thursday Councilor Fernandes Anderson asked - she is Speaker 9 and asks the question at the 51:57 mark in the transcript:

I guess my first question I'm gonna circle right back to O'Bryant because we're waiting on an email or some sort of correspondence we will follow-up about. The last time we spoke superintendent we had discussed and you said you were gonna look into it and try to get back to me before the end of the school year with a timeline and looking forward to hearing that.

Superintendent Skipper asked her Chief of Capital Planning Delavern Stanislaus to answer the question. Chief Stanislaus’ answer is long, but here is the important part - she is Speaker 2 and her answer starts at the 52:40 mark in the transcript:

The O'Bryant is still a priority for the both the Mayor and the Superintendent as we're sort of phasing in the capital plan conversation and when that project can and will be started. The specific project around O'Bryant is not something that our team will be moving forward right now. It is a part of all of the other long term facilities plan and capital budget conversations, and we will continue to engage with that community. [emphasis added]

The second issue that was not covered by the press is the threat that the City Council would not approve BPS’ budget. The threat was first made public last week in a letter from Ways & Means Chair Worrell summarizing the budget process so far - he published the letter on his Instagram account on Friday, May 17.

Brian Worrell is the Council Vice-President, Ways & Means Chair, and District 4 City Councilor. He published this letter on his IG account on Friday, May 17.

Here is the line from Councilor Worrell’s letter:

At our working session last week, councilors discussed the hypothetical process if the Boston Public Schools budget was rejected by the City Council.

At Thursday’s hearing Councilor Fernandes Anderson brought the issue up first - she is Speaker 9 and brings up not approving the budget at the 57:55 mark in the transcript - and Councilor Meija brought the issue up as well - she is Speaker 7 and her comment about the budget starts the the 1:37:13 mark in the transcript. Superintendent Skipper gave a long answer to Councilor Fernandes Anderson’s question, and then handed it over to BPS CFO Bloom, who ended his answer about going to a month-to-month budget with this:

I'm not saying this would be a crisis necessarily by any means. It's something we could definitely manage, but it would lead to real consequences across all of our schools if if we weren't to know this is our appropriation for the year, if we were taking it month by month.

Read CFO Bloom’s whole answer in the transcript - he is Speaker 6 and his answer starts at the 1:08:35 mark.

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