By now, we’ve all heard about the budget cuts. In mid-February, Head of School Anthony Meyer sent an email to the entire student body, informing us of the 8.2 million dollar deficit, which he said “will impact Brookline High School.” He went on to write that he was “working with district leaders around potential and actual reductions.”
On March 6, the Brookline School Committee (BSC) voted on initial proposed budget cuts. To name a few, the BSC voted to cut tens of thousands of dollars in funding for school sports, eliminate the Director of Civil Rights and Bullying Prevention and scale back training for teachers, retaining only literacy and mandated training. And more cuts are still to come. Five million dollars more. These were the easiest decisions, the ones that were made first. The hard ones are still yet to come—and they will be detrimental to our school community.
It’s hard to say exactly how we got here. Some point fingers at the BSC, others blame superintendent, Dr. Linus Guillory, and still others blame the Massachusetts state law that prohibits the town from raising property taxes by more than 2.5 percent a year, even as costs may be rising more quickly. Regardless of who is to blame, jobs and programs are being cut at the expense of students and teachers.
The Public Schools of Brookline has a history of budget deficits. Last year, the district laid off over a dozen teachers and eliminated all K-5 world language classes to address a $2.44 million deficit. In 2022-23 there was a $6.6 million deficit. In 2020, the district cut hundreds of thousands of dollars of funding. We could go on and on.
Outside of school expenses, the town budget faces its own challenges. Since 2008, the town has passed four budget overrides, significantly increasing property taxes to close large deficits. Brookline’s town budget is primarily drafted by the Town Administrator, a full-time and fully paid position appointed by the Select Board. The budget is then revised primarily by the Advisory Committee, a volunteer group appointed by the elected Town Moderator. Occasionally, the Select Board—the Executive Branch of Town Government, a group of five members, each paid $3,500 a year—weighs in. Ultimately, the drafted budget is presented to Brookline Town Meeting, a body of over 250 unpaid elected officials—mostly older homeowners—who comprise the town government’s legislative branch.
Town Meeting rarely makes amendments to the budget. But who can blame them? Many Town Meeting Members have full-time jobs. They only have to show up to Town Meeting twice a year. It’s difficult for them to be involved in the complex, often hyper-technical budget-making process—and the same goes for School Committee Members.
With so many people involved in the budget-making process—and people with other professional commitments—it’s hard to know who’s responsible for budget mishaps when they occur. This problem is not new. In fact, it reflects an issue criticized throughout American history. As Founding Father and Federalist Alexander Hamilton notes in Federalist 70, “the restraints of public opinion … lose their efficacy, as well on account of the division of the censure attendant on bad measures among a number, as on account of the uncertainty on whom it ought to fall.” In other words, a weak plural government suffers from a lack of efficiency in crises—and an absence of accountability.
We recognize and are grateful for what the town government has done for us up to this point. But in order to deal with an emergency like the deficit—in order to set our massive budget properly in the first place—the system cannot continue as it does. Let’s pay town workers what they deserve for the important work they do. Appoint fewer elected officials with strong platforms for constituents to vote into office, and hold them accountable when something goes wrong. We, as a town, have outgrown our volunteer government. It’s time to professionalize it.
