Add Brookline to the communities considering laying off public school staff to meet budgets squeezed by inflation and the loss of federal COVID payments.
The Brookline School Committee was to explore a proposal to lay off about 20 employees at its regularly scheduled meeting Thursday night, according to the committee calendar. Other school districts around the state are also struggling to balance budgets hit by inflation and problems with the state’s school funding formula.
If the Brookline plan is approved in its current form — and left unchanged through the ongoing townwide budget process — the world language program in grades K-5 would be eliminated along with 12 teachers, according to town documents and Justin Brown, president of the Brookline Teachers Union.
Advertisement
Additionally, four literacy coaches and four educational technology specialists would also be laid off, according to Brown and school department records.
“These are programs that are integral to the success of our educators and therefore our students,” Brown said in a telephone interview Wednesday.
The K-5 world language program offers students classes in Mandarin and Spanish, he said.
“In the instance of our K-5 world language program, this is a program that has been incredibly successful,” he said. “It’s wildly popular with the community.”
The layoffs were proposed by Superintendent Linus J. Guillory Jr. when he was instructed by the School Committee to identify about $3 million in cuts so the department’s budget would cap out at $136 million, according to town records and Brown.
“The challenging realities regarding our school district’s operating budget are pressing,” Guillory wrote in his update to the school community on March 14. “We are not immune to economic difficulties faced by many municipalities and school districts across the state. ... These recommendations will unfortunately involve difficult decisions and choices, including programmatic adjustments, shifts in services and staff layoffs. I understand that this news is distressing and unsettling.”
Advertisement
In addition to the layoffs, Guillory recommended savings of $935,000 by other means, including cutting spending on supplies and subscriptions by $220,000, reducing transportation costs by $100,000, and other measures, according to budget documents.
In budget documents, Guillory wrote that shifting away from world language in grades K-5 would boost classroom time on two other critical educational fronts for children in that age group.
The school system would add 36 hours to “early literacy instruction” for students in K-2 and 54 hours of science and social studies for students in grades 3-5, according to the documents.
Guillory wrote that the loss of the four educational technology specialists would have no impact on students.
“Their time is not built into the student schedule therefore students would not experience the loss of a special subject,” he wrote. “We have a partnership with the town help desk to assist with technical issues.”
He also said current staffing levels for the literacy coaches are too small to “fully offer impactful literacy coaching to our staff.” Remaining personnel could work with staff in all eight elementary schools, he wrote.
Brown vigorously disagreed with the recommendations, saying all 20 employees are “student-facing” during all or some of their workdays, and that students will suffer from a weakened educational system.
“This is about fully funding our system,” he said.
John R. Ellement can be reached at john.ellement@globe.com. Follow him @JREbosglobe.