(The following was delivered to the School Committee at its public hearing on Thursday, March 15)
Welcome to the Chelsea Public Schools FY19 Budget Public Hearing this evening. Between what our district needs and what resources are available, a $3.1 million gap exists.
Throughout this budget season, our efforts have focused on maintaining a district-wide perspective and making sacrifices in service of our students and staff. We have preserved programs and services mandated by compliance, regulations or law; we have given priority to our Turnaround Plan work and our Accelerated Improvement Plan work, recognizing that these initiatives shape our students’ futures. Cuts have been targeted to minimize effects on classroom instruction, and we have realigned positions to match the evolving demographic needs of our student population—shifting positions toward areas of greater student need.
This week marks Public Schools Week throughout the nation, making the timing of our FY19 budget presentation particularly meaningful. Our nation’s democratic foundation rests on public schools. I must tell you plainly: I LOVE PUBLIC EDUCATION!
Universality and inclusion define public education. Every race, religion, sexual orientation, ability, and language finds welcome and educational opportunity in our schools. Per dollar invested, public education delivers the highest return for our nation’s future.
Nothing serves our children’s success and national prosperity better than strengthening public schools. Yet we live in a time when society and citizens alike are unwilling to invest adequately in public education. The budgets I present each year fall further short of addressing our students’ intricate needs.
Year after year, I bring a budget insufficient to guarantee equitable education when compared to students in wealthier public school districts. Each year, these educators—the teachers, administrators, and paraprofessionals here tonight—face demands to accomplish more with significantly less.
The civil rights issue of our era centers on whether we will provide adequate school funding for our children and the next generation. Will you stand alongside me in this civil rights struggle? Will you join me in pursuing social justice?
We must demonstrate courage today to champion public education. We must find the courage to confront our federal and state leaders with this demand: in education, especially for our children in urban communities is no longer a fluctuating dollar figure, annually.
I ask you to:
- Call or email your state legislators to restore to Chelsea this year the $300 per student rate in the economically disadvantaged allocation – an amount that will provide Chelsea with over $1,000,000 more in our budget.
- Call or email your state legislators to support Senate Bill 223, An Act Modernizing the Foundation Budget for the 21st Century, which will begin a seven-year incremental and fairly paced structural fix to the foundation budget formula. Because if the foundation formula was implemented today, without adjusting rates for inflation, but simply giving us what was promised in the formula algorithm itself, such as 100 percent charter school reimbursement rather than 47 percent reimbursement, Chelsea would have an additional $17 million dollars in its Chapter 70 budget.
- Call or email your congressional delegation to stop at the federal level the continued prioritization of privatization as well as stop the elimination of federal grants such as Title II, Title IV, 21st Century, and other cuts proposed in President Trump’s FY19 budget.
Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “Courage is more exhilarating than fear, and in the long run it is easier. We do not have to become heroes overnight. Just a step at a time, meeting each thing that comes up, seeing it is not as dreadful as it appeared, discovering we have the strength to stare it down.”
I urge each of you to join me in demonstrating that courage, to face the inequities directly, and to advance the next phase of our educational civil rights challenge and social justice work. Delay is impossible—the structural deficit harms our children’s futures.
It is time we valued and invested in public education again.