Building a strong future for Boston Public Schools
Boston’s students are the best and brightest. And our students deserve the best resources and tools to match their potential. That’s why we are committed to building active, student-centered, accessible spaces, connected to worlds of knowledge far beyond their walls. Boston continues to grow as a global hub for technology and innovation. Our classrooms must prepare students to thrive in that world.
I’m proud to say that over the next 10 years, we will invest $1 billion in the facilities of the Boston Public Schools. At my annual address to the Boston Municipal Bureau, we released the report that guides that investment. It’s called BuildBPS.
BuildBPS took a deeper dive than ever before into the facilities where our 56,000 students learn. We found that our current buildings can house about 69,000 students — if we do nothing to update their space or curriculum. But if we provided every student with the full range of resources we envision — like libraries, art rooms, STEM labs, and gyms — current capacity would be just under 56,000. If anything, we need more space. The challenge is not a history of declining enrollment. It’s a history of neglect.
That’s why BuildBPS will more than double our typical capital allocation for schools. We are able to do this for two reasons. First, our perfect bond ratings unlock unprecedented access to capital. Second, we have forged the City’s first strong working relationship with the Massachusetts School Building Authority.
The MSBA is the agency set up by the Commonwealth to help fund public school capital projects. Boston is the leading source of the sales taxes that fund the MSBA. $1 billion generated in our city has funded new schools in the suburbs and across the state since 2004. But despite being the biggest funder, and despite having the state’s biggest school district, Boston never drew in a significant way on MSBA funding.
Starting in 2014, we changed that. We focused on Boston’s next flagship school, the Dearborn 6–12 STEM Academy in Roxbury. This is a project the local community wanted for years. We moved it forward by allocating $36 million in City funds and securing a matching amount from the MSBA. And we made the community a partner in the process. We agreed the Dearborn should keep its identity and its students, as it expanded from a 6–8 middle school to a 6–12 high school. We also restarted projects with the Boston Arts Academy and the Quincy Upper School, along with $23 million in repairs and updates citywide.
In total, the $61 million we have tapped since 2014 is more than the entire amount the City received from the MSBA in the 10 years prior to that. In the next 10 years, BuildBPS will combine $730 million in City bond proceeds with a target of at least $270 million in matching funds from the MSBA. I look forward to working with the City Council to get the ball rolling with a new capital budget this spring.
The foundations of every investment decision will be the educational vision of Dr. Tommy Chang and the Boston Public Schools; the planning principles outlined in BuildBPS; ongoing community input; and rigorous data. But as these projects begin to unlock new learning spaces, we want BPS to be free to do what it does best, which is educate students.
So we will move construction responsibilities into a new schools unit in the City of Boston’s Public Facilities department. This unit will be dedicated to building, renovating, and upgrading schools. It will consolidate resources and expertise that are currently fragmented. And it will provide a single point of contact for private and public partners. This focus will allow us to finally put schools on a regular investment cycle, so they will never be neglected again.
BuildBPS is going to transform the process of school building in Boston. It’s also going to improve the politics. Decisions on which projects to prioritize will never be easy. But the scale of our investment allows us to move forward together as a district.
Just as important, we’ve made transparent engagement and dialogue central to the process. Today’s report reflects over a year of community surveys and site visits. Now we’ll embark on a new chapter of engagement: to hear what every community envisions for their schools, neighborhoods, and the District as a whole. In addition to releasing the BuildBPS report, today we’re launching a first-of-its-kind online digital tool, the BuildBPS Data Dashboard. This tool allows students, parents, teachers, and administrators to understand the data on their schools and use it to help decide what comes next.
BuildBPS depends on continuous and deep public engagement. Through the spring and fall, we’ll hold community workshops to develop and prioritize the first round of capital investments. As that first round of projects moves forward, the BuildBPS report will be updated. It’s a living document that will reflect the knowledge and innovation in the community.
In addition to long-term projects, we want to provide our schools the resources they need so they can focus on teaching and learning. So as the long-term BuildBPS plan develops, we will help every school with projects they need right now. This year, we will launch a $13 million 21st-Century Schools Fund. Every school will have the opportunity to receive funding for new technology, new furniture, or whatever they need to modernize their learning spaces.
One of the planning principles of BuildBPS is to create flexible space that will allow our district to meet new potentials as our city and our world evolve. But to truly make our schools part of that evolution will require permanent, deep connections with the world beyond school walls. We need every university, hospital, business, and cultural institution in our city to be extensions of our classrooms — welcoming, inspiring, and training our students to participate fully in our city’s success.
To make that vision a reality, we’ve put a premium on building partnerships. We created InvestBPS, an adopt-a-school program with an easy-to-use online portal. We secured new corporate partners like General Electric and Lego Education. We’ve expanded partnerships with philanthropies like EdVestors and the Eos Foundation. And we’ve grown our Summer Jobs program to get young people experience in Boston’s workplaces.
We can’t do this without the broader community’s help. Good public education doesn’t just help students. By producing a better prepared workforce, it helps employers and strengthens our economy. So together, let’s build a strong future for Boston Public Schools. Let’s move forward together as a city whose highest priority is meeting the needs of its young people.
