Local News
Faced with continued enrollment declines, school officials in Boston say that their new budget maintains a 10:1 student to teacher ratio.
Boston Mayor Michelle Wu and Superintendent Mary Skipper speak to members of the media in October 2025. Barry Chin/The Boston Globe
The Wu administration recently rebuffed efforts from one Boston City Council member who urged officials to use reserve funds to prevent layoffs within the Boston Public Schools system. In doing so, administration officials said that more than 560 positions have been eliminated for the upcoming school year.
The job cuts are the result of a $1.7 billion BPS budget that councilors approved last month. Officials have said that the budget will result in more than 400 layoffs, which prompted outrage from some educators and protesters.
One of the council members who voted against the budget, Ed Flynn, sent a letter to Mayor Michelle Wu and Superintendent Mary Skipper last week calling on them to consider a supplemental budget from reserve funds to reinstate the employees being impacted by the layoffs. Flynn’s letter came after, he said, he held discussions with members of the Boston Teachers Union, who raised concerns about the layoffs predominantly affecting “lower-income women from communities of color who work closely with Boston’s most vulnerable families and students with disabilities.”
BPS officials have been notifying hundreds educators in recent weeks that their jobs may not exist in the fall, The Boston Globe reported.
“I firmly believe that preserving these positions is an investment in our children, neighborhoods, public schools, and the success of our city. This is also about social, economic, and racial justice!” Flynn wrote.
A city spokesperson responded in a statement, saying that the budget represented “difficult but necessary tradeoffs” to protect the city’s long-term financial picture and invest in immediate community needs.
The job cuts are necessary, in part, because of an enrollment decline of approximately 3,000 students over two years across the entire school district, officials said. School closures and certain programmatic changes are also driving the layoffs. A net drop in state education aid is another contributing factor.
“Instead of inflating spending by nearly $75 million annually to keep half-empty classrooms open, the FY27 BPS budget approved by the Boston School Committee and City Council maintains a 10:1 student to teacher ratio and transitions to a new funding formula that ensures every school has the academic programming and enrichment opportunities our families deserve,” the city spokesperson said.
The Wu administration maintains that reserve funds should be used to cover extraordinary, one-time costs. Earlier this year, Wu used about $70 million in reserve funds to fill deficits in the city’s operating budget and the BPS budget for the fiscal year that ended on June 30.
The district has seen a reduction of 568.5 positions, administration officials said. They stressed that the actual number of employees who will be out of a job will not be finalized until later this year, after school starts.
“Our teams are prepared to support every educator who is impacted and identify vacancies within the district that could be a good match. We remain confident in our ability to meet the needs of all our students,” a BPS spokesperson said in a statement.
There have been 368 tenured BTU positions eliminated. As of June 25, 311 of these teachers have been placed into other permanent positions. The other 57 educators are on track to be hired or placed into permanent positions within the district by the end of the summer. BPS is required to place or reassign permanent BTU educators who have lost jobs into new, comparable positions, officials said. This process is proceeding along a normal timeline.
Before a June 15 deadline, 512 non-tenured BTU educators were issued non-renewal notices. So far, 65 of them have been rehired and another 52 are in the process of being rehired, administration officials said.
There are 205 paraprofessionals that are owed positions, and 12 remain without positions, according to the officials. All of them will be reassigned before the start of the new school year.
The recall process for paraprofessionals that were employed during the 2025-26 school year but do not have positions for the upcoming year will continue until Dec. 1.
“By taking these long-overdue steps to match our staffing levels to the size of our student population, we’re able to invest more in the things that deliver the greatest impact for our kids: high-quality academics, expanded training for teachers, comprehensive access to college and career pathways, bilingual programs, and before and after school opportunities across the district,” a city spokesperson said.
Ross Cristantiello
Ross Cristantiello, a general assignment news reporter for Boston.com since 2022, covers local politics, crime, the environment, and more.
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