Boston Public Schools: A $1.7 Billion School System Still Failing Black Students

“[T]he Foundation Budget tells only part of the story. … It does not tell us how resources are experienced by students”

Photo: Katerina Holmes via Pexels

by Edith Bazile Recent discussions about whether Boston “spends too lavishly” on its schools often begin with the state’s Foundation Budget, the formula used to estimate the minimum cost of providing an adequate education. The recent article *Does BPS Spend Too Much?* contributes usefully to that conversation.

Measured against the Foundation Budget, Boston’s spending is not dramatically out of line. At about 141 percent of the state minimum — compared with a statewide average of roughly 129 percent — Boston falls within the range of what many Massachusetts districts spend above the formula. In that sense, the article clarifies an important point: Boston is not an outlier when viewed strictly through the lens of the state funding formula.

But the Foundation Budget tells only part of the story. The formula sets a minimum spending level. It does not tell us how resources are experienced by students or whether those investments are producing equitable outcomes.

Racial disparities in Boston

Nearly four out of five Boston Public Schools students are classified as high need, including students from low-income families, multilingual learners, and students with disabilities. These categories carry additional funding weights under the state formula. Yet they are not simply technical classifications. In Boston, these groups disproportionately include Black students, making any discussion of funding inseparable from questions of race and educational opportunity.

Boston now spends more than $30,000 per student each year, among the highest levels in the country. That level of investment should prompt a deeper examination of how opportunity is distributed within the system.

Despite decades of struggle for educational equity, Black students remain the only group consistently over-represented across every major indicator of educational exclusion, including special education identification, substantially separate placements, suspensions, physical restraints, and seclusion. This pattern reflects longstanding policies and practices that continue to deny Black students equal educational opportunity.

Source: BPS data for the 2024–2025 school year. “Seclusion” means a student was placed alone in a room or space where the student was physically prevented from leaving. BPS used seclusion 104 times in the 2024–2025 school year.

From the earliest days of public education in the United States, Black students were systematically denied equal access to schooling. The struggle to dismantle that exclusion was led by Black families and Black civil rights leaders who fought segregation in the courts, in the streets, and in their communities. The promise of Brown v. Board of Education and subsequent civil rights protections was not simply about access to school buildings. It was about equal access to educational opportunity.

Yet in Boston Public Schools, that promise remains unevenly realized. Black students continue to be concentrated in lower-performing schools and have less access to high-performing schools, exam schools, advanced coursework, and other programs that shape long-term academic outcomes.

Disparities persist in special education. Black students are disproportionately identified in certain disability categories and remain overrepresented in segregated special education settings.

These patterns raise longstanding concerns about racial bias, access to rigorous instruction, and the long-term consequences for students’ educational trajectories.

These realities illustrate the limits of formula-based funding comparisons. The Foundation Budget is designed to allocate additional resources to districts serving students with greater needs. But the success of that investment cannot be measured by spending levels alone. It must be measured by whether the system dismantles the structures that have historically limited opportunity for Black students.

Addressing these disparities is not secondary. The gap in educational opportunity for Black students sits at the center of the broader equity challenge in public education. Until Boston Public Schools closes that gap, other groups facing similar structural barriers will continue to experience unequal outcomes.

Boston Public Schools already knows one of the most evidence-based strategies for addressing the long-standing opportunity gap: hiring and retaining Black educators. A widely cited John Hopkins University study on Black teachers found that Black students who have at least one Black teacher are significantly more likely to graduate high school and consider college. Exposure to a Black teacher in elementary school increases the likelihood of high school graduation and college enrollment.

Yet in 2026, the district continues to fall short. Recent projected layoffs tied to the upcoming budget will disproportionately impact Black educators, underscoring BPS’ failure to retain Black teachers. The 1974 Morgan v. Hennigan desegregation order was issued in part because Boston Public Schools systematically failed to hire and retain Black teachers, reinforcing a segregated and unequal system.

The Foundation Budget may be a useful starting point for understanding school finance, but it is not the end of the story. The real measure of investment is not how much Boston Public Schools spends. It is whether those resources change outcomes for Black students who have historically been denied equitable access.

BPS’ longstanding failure to provide equitable educational opportunity to Black students is real. It is not a failure of students. It is a failure of the system, and it must be corrected now. Who will stand up for Black students in Boston Public Schools?

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Edith Bazile is the founder of Black Advocates for Educational Excellence (BAEE). She is a former BPS special educator and administrator and a member of the Boston Teachers Union. Bazile was a presenter at the 2021 American Educational Research Association (AERA) Annual Meeting Power and Possibilities Series speaking about “Educators as Advocates for Justice in Education.”

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