I still remember making the 1.5-mile walk, which I now make daily, from Newton Center down Parker Street to Newton South High School. I was wearing a black suit for my initial interview on a warm day in May nearly ten years ago, hoping I wouldn’t be too sweaty when I arrived.
I knew I’d wanted to stay in the Boston area, and had done research on nearby schools. When I searched up Newton, I read the same moniker over and over: “great school system.” When I told people I was applying to Newton, the most common response was to praise the great school system. When I spoke with families, they cited the great school system as a primary reason they had come.
During my interview, I answered some questions, did my sample lesson, and was given a tour of the building. During the tour, my guide said something that stuck with me: “We treat teachers like professionals here.” As long as you got your work done, they didn’t particularly care where or when you did it.
After all, they said, the great teachers are fundamental to our great school system.
Once I was hired, I learned more about why Newton Public Schools has been so successful in helping students. The high schools have a list of so many different acronym’ed programs, there’s a presentation every year to remind everyone of what everything stands for. Many of these programs are targeted at students who are struggling with some aspect of mental health and are run by highly trained specialists.
In the middle and elementary schools, the story is the same: extensive programs to support kids, with some of the most successful being the middle school literacy and math interventionists. These experts have specialized training that allows them to work with students who are “behind” the expected level and provide intense supports that result in enormous gains, often multiple years-worth of levels, to allow them to “catch up” and have the necessary skills to be successful as they move forward in their academic careers.
I was told that these programs were vital to our students’ success, and any teacher in the district, and many parents and kids, can attest to the life-changing role these specialized programs have had.
Taken together, the teachers and the programs form the beating heart at the center of the Newton Public Schools – a great school system.
But a lot can change in ten years.
The longer I worked in Newton, the more I noticed things that didn’t mesh with the schools’ reputation, and indeed its promise, of greatness. Electives that didn’t run, music and arts programs being cut, class sizes ballooning over thirty. There was always complaining when things like this happened, sometimes loudly if a much-beloved program was eliminated, but because the cuts were often small and incremental, there was never a large-scale mobilization to really step back and look at the direction of NPS.
Given recent events, I thought it would be useful to ask myself what the key characteristics of a great school system actually are and whether Newton has them; I encourage you to do the same.
Small Class Sizes
While people are unlikely to agree on an exact number, the idea that smaller class sizes are better is an obvious one. More individualized instruction, less grading for the teacher and therefore more time to prepare creative lessons, and more opportunities for each student to have their voice heard are undoubtedly valuable.
I do not know what Newton’s average class size is, but I do know that the typical class size of a junior honors math course at Newton South (the class I mostly teach) hovers at or just below thirty students. When I discussed with students what they felt the optimal number of students was in a rigorous high school math class, nearly all of them settled on twenty.
Related to class size, I also know that the universally accepted optimal model for middle school instruction is the four-person team: students are in one class, and they move among a math teacher, a science teacher, a social studies teacher, and an English teacher. These teams, under the mayor’s proposed budget, are at risk. Even in 4-person teams, class sizes are likely to explode to ~23 students per class, far outside the range of the recommended 13-17 for middle school for effective support of SEL and academic progress.
Student Supports
As discussed above, Newton has a large number of student support systems. In the years I’ve been in Newton, the supports at South have been relatively constant. Some have been shrunk or eliminated, but others have sprung up or been added to.
If student needs remained constant over time, then this would be fine. However, in the wake of the pandemic, schools across the country are seeing mental health crises on an unprecedented level. In Newton, we’re seeing students hospitalized for suicide attempts rather than suicidal intent. We’re seeing students who can’t get into treatment programs because the hospitals are already overflowing, with months-long waitlists. We’re seeing students sent to emergency rooms instead of mental health programs who turn around and leave with no treatment because they’re physically stable, and the ER’s are not equipped to provide mental health treatment.
There is a mental health crisis, and Newton has mostly continued to act as though nothing has changed, using the same programs staffed at the same capacity.
Mayor Fuller’s proposed budget would cut additional counseling positions.
Wide Range of Elective Opportunities
The music and arts programs have been decimated, with the most recent cuts going toward Newton South’s nationally recognized music program, with Jazz Combo and Chamber Ensemble scheduled to be cut next year. Nearly thirty students have already enrolled in these classes. (Learn more here.)
To be clear: this is not a fully-funded program having to shave a little bit off in hard times. This is a program that has already been cut to the bone and is now being ground away even further. People may wonder why the cuts this year are so particularly painful; why does cutting only a couple positions here and there have such a substantial impact? It is because there have been a steady trickle of cuts over many, many years that have only left programs able to run because of the dedication and talent of the amazing teachers.
But when everything is a shell of what it used to be, one more stomp means you have nothing left.
At South, there are electives that do not run every year. There are electives that teachers would like to offer, but can’t due to a lack of funding. The teachers at South are creative and passionate, and they have so much to offer; the students at South are similarly creative and passionate, and they are robbed, year after year, of opportunities that would allow them to grow and discover and delight in learning. The robberies are often invisible; most students are probably unaware that there is a class called “Physics of Music” that hasn’t run in many years, or that there is a class in introductory quantum mechanics that is relegated to the indeterminate land of being an independent study, despite 30+ signups every year, due to lack of funding. We turn away entire classes of students who sign up for Engineering because we do not have enough staffing to run all the sections. We could double our staffing in Engineering and fill every one of those classes.
These are the “invisible” cuts. The cumulative effect of years and years of underfunding that lead to the lack of opportunities that you may not even be aware of. Students just accept that a lot of the time, they won’t get the classes they want if it’s a high-demand class and/or they’re an underclassman (priority is given to upperclassmen). It doesn’t have to be this way. We could have enough funding to provide great experiences to every kid, every year, but we choose not to in the way that we budget.
Buildings that Enhance Learning
I have some experience in this area; I attended Uxbridge High School as a teenager, a school that was placed on probation by NEASC due to the Depression-era building. NEASC, which is responsible for accreditation of high schools in New England, straight-up told Uxbridge that, if they didn’t build a new building, their accreditation would be revoked. We struggled with cabinets falling off the walls onto students, asbestos in our walls (not discovered until much later), and overcrowding.
A few weeks back at Newton South, a student in one of my classes screamed. I spun around, and several students had jumped up.
“It ran right over my foot!” the student cried.
“I saw it!” multiple others affirmed.
“Saw what?”
“A rat!”
“It wasn’t a mouse?” I asked. “You know we have a mice problem here.”
Multiple students confirmed that it was, in fact, a rat.
I looked around and confirmed that the rat had left, and we could settle back down into class. And that was how I discovered that, in addition to a well-known mice problem (ask any students or faculty), South apparently has rats as well.
After class, I walked back to my office, circumventing one of the two buckets set up in the hallway to catch water leaking from the ceiling. If this is news to you, ask any student or teacher, and they’ll be able to tell you about the array of buckets that pop up around the building after rainstorms when the leaking is the worst.
It’s always an interesting surprise where the next one will come from; I entered a meeting room last week and discovered a new, growing water stain on the ceiling tile. The teacher expressed hope that it could be fixed before the tile exploded.
This brought back memories of a couple years back when a pipe burst in the mathematics office, generated a mini-flood, and destroyed almost everything there.
Combined with more typical school building issues such as temperature extremes and wifi connectivity issues, I would argue that South’s building, where we ask our teachers to teach and our students to learn, has room for improvement.
Diverse and Qualified Teachers
This metric is the one I feel the best about. Even as cuts have happened, even as we were treated with derision, condescension, and disrespect by our own leaders last year (I wrote about it here), and even while we were forced to unfairly pick up the burdens caused by a lack of resources elsewhere, the teachers continued to do an exceptional job educating and caring for students. Newton teachers are excellent at their jobs; we have continued to attract great talent and hold high standards for our educators.
Diversity has been an area of needed improvement, but over the last several years, Newton has focused on hiring a more diverse workforce. They’ve succeeded; more than ever, students will increasingly be able to see themselves reflected in the adults who educate them. We certainly have more work to do, but we have made strides in the right direction.
However, because there is higher diversity among the more recently hired educators, if positions are cut, they will likely be the first to go. It was thus that Mayor Fuller’s initially proposed budget would disproportionately impact educators who belonged to minority groups. If we’re not careful in the years to come, we risk running into the same problem again.
Vision
People may disagree on this, but I believe that a great school system has a vision. They have a clear set of values that focus them, and their actions reflect their values.
I’ll be honest: I have no idea what the vision of the Newton Public Schools is.
That’s not to say I don’t know what they say their vision is: “We support all students, we strive for equity and excellence, we value our educators.”
But when you say something and, every single opportunity you get, you do the opposite, the only thing I know about you at that point is that you’re a liar.
Part of this stems from the embarrassing dysfunction of the City of Newton’s leadership. We’ve consistently had School Committees who, rather than playing their role as the superintendent’s collective boss, bend over backward to praise the superintendent for “trying hard,” eat up each sentence in which the superintendent scapegoats his own teachers, and treat the superintendent’s every suggestion as a commandment. There is hardly any pushback; as a collective, the group has abdicated their responsibility of supervising the superintendent.
In December, Superintendent Fleishman sent out a message in which he stated, “Finding staff, not lack of resources, is our primary challenge right now.”
Four months later, in March, Mayor Fuller revealed that the Newton Schools had a massive budget gap, and nearly $5M of positions would need to be cut.
These two positions are obviously incompatible and do a wonderful job of highlighting the dysfunction, lack of communication, and overall confusion that seems to dominate the decision-making of city leadership.
This, of course, takes us to the most befuddling decision of them all: Mayor Fuller’s decision to defund the Newton Public Schools.
This memo by President Susan Albright to the City Council does a good job of outlining the origins of this issue:
“In 2019, a new agreement was reached with the Newton Teachers Association that increased the Newton Public Schools’ annual costs at a level higher than the City’s annual revenue growth.”
“Without an increase in the annual revenue allocation, a large structural deficit has been created. As we have seen by the Superintendents’ recommendations, the only possible way to balance the budget in this situation is to reduce staffing – mostly teachers – by up to $3mm each and every year. Because the deficit is structural, each year the budget must be reduced by another $3mm or more.”
The takeaway: the City of Newton signed a contract with no plan in place to pay for it, which is unthinkably irresponsible. Let me also be clear that this is not because the contract with the NTA was extravagant; it was not, instead being unremarkable to the point of perhaps disappointing. Rather consider the following:
Wellesley has had 21 successful overrides since 2000.
Belmont has had 10 successful overrides since 2000.
Weston has had 20 successful overrides between 2000-2019.
Lexington has had 9 successful overrides between 2000-2017.
Newton has had 2 successful overrides since 2000.
After the second override that Newton successfully passed in 2013, former Mayor Setti Warren warned that Newton would need another within five years.
It’s been nearly ten; in conjunction with rising costs, it’s no surprise that Newton is having trouble paying its bills.
An impending budget crisis that was plainly written on the spreadsheets should have been something that city leadership was aware of and was planning for. Instead, Mayor Fuller was either unaware of it or chose to ignore it up until the budget for the coming year, which has thrown the crisis into sharp relief.
Regardless of the reasons, Mayor Fuller is now aware of the budget crisis. This means we have a year before we go through all of this again, with another $3M in cuts. We have a year to plan a long-term solution, which will likely involve an override.
In the meantime, there is a convenient, free solution:
Mayor Fuller has ~$30M in unspent American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) Funds. It would cost $1.4M to fully restore all cut positions.
This is the bridge that gets us to a long-term solution, but Mayor Fuller has refused to cross it. Why?
I don’t know, and I’m not sure anyone else does either.
Usually when somebody makes a decision, even one you disagree with, you can discern the motivation. When Superintendent Fleishman repeatedly blamed teachers for the problems he caused, it was to protect himself and his position. When Mayor Fuller repeatedly lies about “the education of Newton’s children” being her #1 priority, it’s because she’s messaging and posturing, trying to reassure the voters that she actually does care about the kids.
Over and over, the City Council asked why Mayor Fuller was unwilling to use ARPA. Constituents have asked, teachers have asked, and the best Mayor Fuller can give is a vague worry that she might need them in the future.
Imagine standing in front of a burning building with the ability to put out the fire twenty times over, but refusing because there might be another fire in the next two years (she has until 2024 to obligate the ARPA funds.)
It’s nonsensical. It is universally opposed by her constituents and the City Council. There is nothing to be gained, politically or materially, by not funding the budget shortfall.
In fact, she is likely to lose quite a bit. The City Council voted NO on the mayor’s budget for what appears to be the first time in history because they were so disgusted by her defunding the schools. Further, the City Council has discovered that they have no power over the budget, which will likely lead them to look for ways to act as an actual check on the mayor’s office. Their success means that Fuller will lose power and have a harder time achieving her other goals. And she is doing this over $1.4M, a drop in the bucket of a budget worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
But I want to zoom back out for a moment and highlight that no matter what happens, kids are going to lose.
I started this essay discussing my thoughts on what a great school looked like, and Newton’s reputation as a great school system. I pointed out that Newton’s been coasting on its reputation for a number of years now, hoping that people won’t notice that it’s no longer doing the things that great schools do.
But people have noticed.
Why don’t we have an interim superintendent? It feels unusual for an internal individual, such as an Assistant Superintendent, not to step into the role. Might it be that nobody wants the job?
City Council echoed this concern during discussion this week. Who would want to take the position of superintendent in a district that underfunds its schools? A district that is so dysfunctional that the mayor ignores the City Council’s requests for money, leading to the City Council to reject her budget altogether? A district where, the next day, the mayor sends out a message bragging that her budget will take effect anyways, as the City Council does not have the legal power to stop her?
Newton was not the only community to experience a spike in students choosing private school during the pandemic; the more important question is whether students will return in light of the mayor’s disdain for funding education.
We’ve also lost many wonderful teachers over the last two years, and it’s not hard to imagine that the dysfunction and disinvestment of the Newton Public Schools contributed to that.
This brings me to the question that I pose to Newton voters: do you actually want great schools?
If you want great schools, then we’re having the wrong argument with the mayor. The question is not whether to cut $1.4M from the school budget or to fund it at the traditional level. The question is instead, by how much do we dramatically increase funding to our schools?
Our students need more support now than they ever have, and we’re ignoring them. Mayor Fuller is outright stealing from them, all while having the audacity to smile, claim that the schools are her #1 priority, and publicly proclaim to the City Council that “I hear you; I’m listening” while she ignores everything they and the voters have said.
She lies that maybe we can restore positions midyear, either not understanding or not caring that the highly trained specialists who run the interventionist programs cannot be quickly and easily replaced.
She lies, from atop her pile of $30M, that she’s done everything she can to close the budget gap, and we simply need to make some cuts.
She lies that the school budget is sufficient while our students attempt suicide and fail to find the resources they need, all while the mayor makes further cuts to counseling.
Mayor Fuller does all this without explanation, without justification, and while executing a bizarre power grab, flaunting to the voters and the City Council that they can’t stop her, despite being united in opposition to her actions.
If you want fine schools, then sure, the mayor should restore the $1.4M for free with the ARPA funds, and then we should find a long-term solution (override) to the structural deficit.
If you want great schools, if you want Newton to live up to its former reputation, then we still need to restore the $1.4M budget gap, but then we need to advocate for a substantial increase in funding for the schools.
This means that you will need to pay more taxes, because greatness costs money. You can either say you want great schools and back it up with the money, or you can prioritize low taxes and stop whining that Newton’s ranking in the latest list of high schools dropped.
You cannot have both.
If I were King of Newton (or just mayor, as Mayor Fuller seems to believe they’re one and the same), I would do the following:
1) Update Newton’s charter. Mayor Fuller has demonstrated just how dangerous the mayor’s office can be. It has unilateral power to budget, and no other group in the city is able to stop her. This is wrong and undemocratic. With her budget, Mayor Fuller is acting against the wishes of her constituents and the wishes of their representatives, the city councilors. We should be able to stop her without having to change her mind; she represents us, and if she fails to do that, there must be mechanisms to keep her in check.
2) Immediately close the $1.4M school budget gap. Since I’m not King of Newton, we need all of you, the voters, to email the School Committee and the mayor and fight like hell for these funds. Our children need them.
3) Advocate for an override large enough to increase funding to the schools. If, as everyone claims, we want great schools, then we need corresponding funding to make that possible.
As multiple city councilors pointed out, budgets reflect our values. Budgets are a way to see, truthfully, what a community cares about. They allow us to ignore the lies of politicians like Mayor Fuller and look at the numbers. If the schools are Fuller’s #1 priority as she claims, then she very much does not understand how to execute on priorities, which is a glaring weakness in a mayor. But more likely, the schools are not her first priority.
But there’s a budget every year, and though this one is getting attention for just how cruel it is, the previous budgets also reflect our values, and they reveal a contradiction. For all the claims that Newtonians want great schools, for all the complaints that Newton’s schools are going downhill, having great schools is simply not a priority. If it were, we would give them the resources to be truly great.
Let’s change that.
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