‘Challenging year’: Large number of Mass. school districts laying off teachers, cutting programs

SALEM, Mass. — Massachusetts is known for having the best public schools in the country.

That distinction costs money, and across the state, a large number of school districts are facing unusually tough budget decisions.

Programs are being cut, and teachers are being laid off. That’s happening in North Andover.

Brookline is struggling to close a multi-million-dollar budget gap.

Newton is reeling from federal cuts.

Framingham is losing a battle with inflation.

It’s estimated that Salem will need to let about 50 staff members go.

“This is my 12th year as a superintendent of schools in Massachusetts, and this is the most challenging year I’ve seen,” said Dr. Stephen Zrike, Ph.D., Salem school superintendent.

Zrike says inflation is hitting school systems the same way that it’s affecting households.

“Our energy costs have gone up, and also salaries. Our biggest budget item is personnel, and we want our staff to be paid competitively.”

Higher costs are only a piece of the budget crunch.

The needs of students and their families are changing and getting more complicated.

These changes also lead to higher costs, according to Zrike.

“We have many, many more multilingual learners. We have more students with disabilities. We have many more unhoused students, right? The needs of our young people and our families continues to increase. It’s not the same landscape as it was even a decade ago, or certainly 20 years ago.”

Across the state, parents worry about their children as budgets are pared.

One father said, “We understand finances are always a concern. It must be for private companies, and it must be for government as well, but education is one of the most important elements of society.”

A mother added, “Reading and writing is a problems, and with COVID, it’s gotten worse, so I think this is the worst time for them to be doing this to the children.”

The financial problems cities and towns are facing are linked to the way schools are funded.

The majority of their money is generated through municipal taxes.

In Massachusetts, property tax increases are capped by Prop 2 ½.

“The challenge, even for a district that has property values that should sustain a really successful school system, is raising taxes, which is always a fight,” said UMass-Boston Professor Nick Juravich, Ph.D., an historian who specializes in education and labor issues.

“I think there is a real challenge to articulate at a town level, at a state level, this all in the state. Generationally, you may not be at the phase where you are in school, or have children in school, but you will benefit. Your children will benefit. Your communities will benefit.”

State Senator Jason Lewis, Senate chair of the education committee, says he is seeing communities struggling with the budgets everywhere. “We’re seeing it in more affluent communities, less affluent communities, cities and towns.”

Lewis says he and his colleagues are hearing loud and clear that many districts are in crisis mode.

Another complicating factor is the end of COVID-19 relief funds. That program pumped about $2 billion into local schools.

“It was huge help to get us through the pandemic, not doubt about it,” explained Lewis. “But it also pushed out further the reckoning with this budget crisis.”

The good news is Lewis expects substantial relief in the next state budget cycle, which begins on July 1st.

It’s bolstered with new funds coming in from the so-called millionaire’s tax.

“I’m very hopeful that this budget will include a record-high level for public education. I also expect we will provide historically high funding for special education.”

That would be a relief for parents who have been anxious about deep cuts.

One father told Boston 25 News “It’s sad we don’t look more at other ways to save money before it kind of falls on the students, falls on the teachers.”

Senator Lewis is also proposing a blue-ribbon commission to take a deeper diver into the overall way schools are funded in Massachusetts to see if they can create a better formula for distributing funds to schools.

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