BOSTON — Dozens of teachers, parents and students rallied outside Boston City Hall Tuesday, urging city leaders to invest more of their budget into schools.
“Our children should not have to pay the price for fiscal decisions made far from the daily realities of what’s happening in the classrooms,” said one parent.
The Boston Teachers Union says hundreds of positions are on the chopping block in Boston Public Schools with the current proposed budget.
“105 special education paraprofessionals eliminated, 142 multilingual educational positions, support staff at 41 schools, and a workforce that is more than 70 percent black and Latino will bear a disproportionate share of the impact,” said Erik Berg, president of the Boston Teachers Union.
Teachers worry the most vulnerable students will be the most impacted by these cuts.
Parents say these positions are crucial for their students, from the paraprofessionals to the librarians.
“She ensures all students see themselves in books and have equitable access to them regardless of family resources,” said one mother during public comment.
Those teachers and families packed the city council meeting Tuesday to push city leaders to invest an additional 1% of their budget into BPS.
That would mean an additional $48 million to maintain staffing levels.
“How can we attract good teachers if there are fewer jobs and less support, when schools lose funding, families notice, they see schools struggling and they leave, no one wants to go to an underfunded school,” said one student during public comment.
“We just celebrated the highest graduation rate in BPS history, that’s 400 additional students who received their diploma and now is not the time to cut back, now is the time to continue to invest in our young people and in our schools,” said Berg.
The Boston School Committee will be voting on its proposed $1.7 billion budget Wednesday night, and then it’ll head back to city council for a final vote.
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