Twenty Councilors offered the following resolution to address issues in the schools. The resolution passed 22-1-1
City Councilors urge additional ARPA fund be directed toward schools
by Jerry Reilly | May 24, 2022 | Newton | 36 comments
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I applaud the above councilors and am really pondering where the others are and what do they support. My eldest entered South in the Fall of 2016 and I have a sophomore there now. South has really suffered. While the teachers are amazing, there are fewer teachers, and now jazz combo is leaving the ranks.
Our students need OUR help for funding teachers, counselors and the like. ALL of the Councilors should be advocating for more specialized adults in our schools. Our mayor should be using more funds, because our students need the help.
I wanted to respond to NewtonMom’s comment. I join you in applauding City Council for this resolution. When it was presented at the meeting last night, there were 15 councilors who had signed on. Another two asked for their names to be added during the discussion. At the final vote, 22 voted yes, one (Lisle Baker) was absent (I assume he would have voted yes, as his name was on the resolution), and one abstained. All that to say, the City Council has listened to their constituents and they GET IT. PLEASE, if you are a parent and you haven’t written to the Mayor yet, it’s URGENT for you to do so today. We don’t have any evidence that the Mayor will listen to the Councilor’s request for full funding. Even if your children are still in preschool/elementary school, these cuts will eventually affect YOUR CHILDREN. Based on their experiences in the district, our educators feel that if these critical programs are cut now, they will never be restored. Thanks!
22 councilors voted for the resolution. Councilor Gentile abstained. Councilor Baker was absent.
This is a copy of the meeting video, with the school budget discussion at the beginning. Very unusual to have such consensus among the council. There is no workaround if these posts (such as middle school math and literacy intervention posts) are eliminated. We need stability — not shake-ups — in our schools right now. Thank you to Holly Ryan for emphasizing the extraordinary mental health support needs of LGBTQ students and to Alicia Bowman for highlighting how BIPOC students are disproportionately impacted by budget cuts.
https://vimeo.com/713055192
Let’s not forget this is a one-time infusion of cash and going forward the city likely will not be able to sustain the increased funding.
I wonder if we see the same enthusiasm if the $ required an override.
We’ll find out in a few years
The override topic was mentioned at last night’s SC meeting. I think the timeframe may be next Spring as a “good possibility” but this was about going to the voters for a debt exclusion override for Countryside and the Mayor briefly shared some thoughts about whether it makes sense to go to the voters “beyond just that”. See NewTV recording here: https://newtv.org/recent-video/24-newton-school-committee-meeting/7542-newton-school-committee-may-23-2022 – begins around 2:30.
Given 30% of residents are seniors, inflation has probably hit them the hardest (no ability to increase income, 401k has been hit, medical expenses keep going up) and amounts over 10k are no longer tax deductible
I also expect house priced to have softened next year. An override is likely dead on arrival unless it comes with serious sacrifices from the city
There is no appetite in the city for an override. Most people are stretched to the limit coping with inflation, the price at the pump and groceries skyrocketing out of sight.
Well said. An override is not going to happen.
Well, the last override was nine years ago, about $11 million, during normal economic times (relatively) and included a big enticement to everybody (roads). The vote was comfortable but no blowout.
The city definitely has many needs that can’t be afforded otherwise, but I can’t envision an override passing either. I could possibly be sold (or not) on one theoretically at some time in the future, but does anyone out there think the economy will be better in a year?
As for the ARPA money… not much doubt the schools need it.
Step one, hire a superintendent that is not a social justice warrior who’s focus is solely on bettering the academic standing of all students, not just those at the bottom or who are minorities. Equal education for all. Equal opportunity, not equal outcome, as a goal. Equal outcome would be great but equity does not mean equal outcomes.
Less mixed level classes, more AP, more honors and hire more teachers to accomplish this. Get us back to a top 10 district.
Do that and i will hold a sign in newton center in support of an override.
I should say who is currently considered a minority. At one time Irish meant minority. Russian. Italian. Jewish, etc etc etc.
We need to stop labeling and start educating.
I’ll vote for an override if the NN principal shares all his book profits with the city…and I’ll also hold a sign in the Centre like poster above.
From one NPS high school guidance counselor: “over the course of this school year alone, on a caseload of 180 students, 11 students have been hospitalized because of mental health reasons. 11 different students considered taking their own lives.”
Our kids – your kids – are in serious trouble. This is not a crisis. This is an emergency. We ignore this emergency at our peril.
Jane – maybe we shouldn’t have unnecessarily kept kids out of school. And yes, closing schools and hybrid school did contribute to this crisis, was unwarranted, and was largely pushed for by the NTA. No this isnt the only reason, but it sure as he11 contributed. Just as these actions caused the enrollment decline.
You can try to deny it but we know. Sorry.
Frank….. Hindsight is always 20-20 even when the viewer has cloudy vision, please don’t include me in your “we” group.
Its only hindsight if you thought it was the right move in the past.
I knew it was wrong from day one. no hindsight, sorry.
Keeping kids out of school was wrong, many knew it (not you), and now the kids are paying the price. Sad.
As a pre-COVID, “semi-recent” NPS alum…this is not a product of COVID alone. Mental health has ranged from harrowing to concerningly atrocious across the district for years, especially at the HS level.
Jane is in hiding after being wrong for the 8th time. Sounds similar to Zilles being wrong about the Fund the Schools signs in the city owned classrooms. Asst Super Liam told him how it works real fast.
Nope
There’s close to 2000 students in every high school, for instance, so we were really in the wrong place in the wrong time before there were tools to fight the virus. Covid is spreading like wildfire within NPS right now, except now there is access to medical grade masks and vaccinations that are preventing hospitalizations and deaths.
Note the mental health and academic struggles are everywhere (regardless of previous school closures) because of the incredible disruption to students’ lives. This isn’t the time to play with school budgets.
Frank – Inaccurate information. In June of 2020, the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) stated that school districts could make plans for the 2020/21 school year without ANY union involvement or negotiations. NTA had NO say in the school plan for 2020/21.
Despite this fact, people blamed teachers for the plan the school system implemented and viciously maligned us. When a working group was put together to plan for the reopening of the high schools, NTA was asked to send a representative. NTA declined to join the group because educators knew we’d be blamed yet again for whatever plan the working group proposed. It wasn’t until that point that parents realized teachers had no voice in the reopening plans.
This is probably the 8th time I’ve written this factual account of what happened about the planning of the 2020/21 school year on this site. Yet people continue to blame teachers for a situation that they had no control over.
False.
“Teachers union pushing for full remote learning to start school year in Massachusetts”
https://www.wcvb.com/article/teachers-union-pushing-for-full-remote-learning-to-start-school-year-in-massachusetts-amid-pandemic/33464371#
Sorry Jane, this is the 8th time you are incorrect and twisting words. I get it, its your mandate, but we aren’t blind. You can spin these articles however you want, but “Largest union pushes for remote learning” sounds a lot like what I said…
also:
https://pressley.house.gov/media/press-releases/pressley-joins-mta-aft-students-families-advocates-calling-full-remote-learning
https://www.wbur.org/news/2020/07/30/teachers-unions-remote-school-start
Don’t forget this one:
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/08/25/metro/newtons-high-schools-shift-all-remote-learning-revised-reopening-proposal/
Just a quick update: At last night’s Full City Council budget meeting, I believe the vote was 4 – 14 – 6 on the SC budget. They are meeting again tonight at 7. Link can be found here: https://amysangiolo.com/2022/05/weekly-calendar-5-23-22/
Great to see the councilors found their voice…long after anything was actually going to happen. I don’t agree with him often, but Councilor Humphrey was on the front lines of pushing for ARPA funds from day one, and he was absolutely correct. He knew it was necessary when the rest of the council and school committee was bowing to the mayor, and both bodies need more of that.
The school committee did not bow to the mayor.
The school committee seemed initially warm to the idea of using ARPA, the mayor used her bully pulpit to rail against it very vocally, and all of the sudden there was no ARPA discussion or interest. Hard to call that anything but bowing.
That just isn’t what happened.
Short term I’m in support of the ARPA funds being used. We need to buy time to solve the real problem, which is a long term disconnect between our tax revenue and our city’s budget.
This is a problem that stems from generations of failure. We’ve kicked the can down the road for decades.
1) Water infrastructure. Sewers. School buildings. Building maintenance. Roads. Sidewalks. Police station. Fire Stations. When I moved here I was dumbstruck at how run down the city was. We didn’t maintain and modernize our buildings or our infrastructure. Over the past decade we’ve made a dent, but it has been expensive and a bubble of expenses which should have been dealt with slowly.
2) Pension and health care costs. We paid our city employees less by promising them future benefits. Those benefits are more generous than in the private sector, but it is what it is. We mortgaged our future to allow for lesser payments in the past. Again, the bill is now due (and is due for decades going forward.)
3) City contracts. We’ve entered into contracts with our teachers, our first responders and our city personnel which are at (or below) market for other union personnel. These costs, along with health care associated costs, are going up each year.
4) Inflationary issues: The city is not immune to inflation. Materials and supplies cost more. Staffing costs more. Third party help costs more.
That’s just the basics. We have consistently written checks in the past that our future tax revenue cannot cash.
This isn’t about Covid school response or Woke politics or whatever other red herring b.s. you want to claim as a reason not to support an override. It isn’t just about reducing our school budget either. Heck, from the emotional response we can’t even stand cutting a jazz band. (I love the jazz band for the record, but there is a reason most schools don’t have them…because they can’t afford the staffing.)
We are going to be off budget by millions. And it is going to grow going forward. And that doesn’t even account for projects many of us support, like better roads, better sidewalks, better police training (mental health), senior center, new pool, new school buildings, better playing fields, new police station, etc.
For those of you who feel it is mistake to sign a teacher contract that we couldn’t afford, what is your response to the fact that our neighboring communities can not just afford it, but have surpassed us in terms of salaries and benefits? We don’t live in a vacuum. There is a market for teachers. We don’t set the market, but we maintain we want the best teachers. You pay for quality in most employment markets.
For those of you who feel we can simply cut the city budget, how do you square that with the poor roads, the movement to fees vs taxes, the need for new school buildings and first responder funding? Do you really feel that cutting “waste” will get us there? Naming a small portion of the budget you don’t agree with isn’t nearly enough. We are talking a structural deficit that grows over time.
For me, I can’t escape the math. If I want to maintain a lot of the things I love about Newton and improve it along the way, I’m going to have to pay more in taxes. I can’t say I’m happy about that, especially with the loss of federal deductions and inflation. But I’m trying to be realistic based on my review of the budget.
I don’t know if an override will pass. I think it will, and I think we have crafted them in the past to protect those among us (the elderly and those with limited means) who cannot pay. I am not sure the school committee, the city council and the mayor have the stomach for the political ramifications of pushing for one. I think it might take multiple years of folks seeing the hard choices ahead of us before folks find the political will to make the difficult choice. The ARPA money buys us time, nothing more.
Yup you nailed it. I’m sad to say that it may be beyond fixing at this point.
If you are not listening to the Budget deliberations – you might be interested to know that there was a vote to reconsider the NO vote on the SC budget from last night. That failed by a vote – 10 – 14 – so there was some switching of votes. There apparently was a memo that was put together and sent to the Council about an hour before the meeting. I haven’t seen it but sounds like the conclusion is that a NO vote on the SC budget is ineffective and is meaningless. Those continuing to vote NO include Councilors Noel, Humphrey, Bowman, Ryan, Albright, Greenberg, Laredo, Norton, Markiewicz, Wright, Lucas, Oliver, Malakie, Kalis.
Final vote on SC budget before Full City Council: Councilors Noel, Humphrey, Bowman, Ryan, Albright, Greenberg, Laredo, Norton, Wright, Lucas, Oliver, Malakie, Kalis.
11 in favor and 13 opposed.
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Sorry – clarification those listed voted NO on SC budget.
Sorry – clarification those listed voted NO on budget.