Framingham School Committee Bends to Mayor’s Budget Cuts Despite Teacher Exodus and Declining Student Results

Note:

This article has been corrected. It was originally thought that there were major cuts to the Thayer program, but that was not correct. Apologies for that mistake.

In its March 4, 2026, meeting, the Framingham School Committee voted 7-2 to approve major cuts to the Framingham Public Schools (FPS). The Mayor had wanted 116 staff cut, and the School Committee cut about 80 positions in the end.

Some of it was justified by the drop in student enrolment, especially at the high school and middle school levels where most of the student loss occurred. The secondary principals also seemed to have a good handle on scaling down the size of their operations while preserving programs.

However, a broad, ongoing major concern is the neglect of low income students, students with disabilities, and students not fluent in English, which this FY27 budget makes worse, , especially at the elementary school level.

This is the 5^th budget in a row which institutionalizes this neglect.

The Systemic Neglect of Disadvantaged Students

Pre-K instruction is well known to get youngsters on the right path to a productive experience in kindergarten and later grades, and this is especially true for children who don't speak English at home, students with disabilities, and low income students.

This fact seems to have constantly escaped the School Committee’s attention for the last 5 years, as they passed up the obvious opportunity to use boosted Chapter 70 state Student Opportunity Act money to build out pre-K for all 4-year-olds, not just the 40% covered by current FPS programming.

I am sure that every School Committee member, every City Councilor and the Mayor made sure their own children went to pre-K. Yet they refuse to extend that support to all the city's most disadvantaged children.

This has now emerged as a crisis with moral overtones, as alongside Marlborough, which has a similar student demographic to Framingham, Framingham did the most, in the entire state, to divert Student Opportunity Act (SOA) money away from its disadvantaged student targets in the last 4 years.

390 school districts out of 440 increased their local education funding when boosted SOA money rolled in from FY22 to FY24. 50 districts cut local education funding.

Framingham and Marlborough cut the most.

Framingham used the money to boost the city cash position by $40 million from FY22 to FY24. Marlborough used it to cut property taxes. Its tax levy dropped from $110 million/year to $104 million/year in FY24.

Both cities improved their financial position or cut taxes on the backs of disadvantaged children.

This was explained in detail, based on ‘gold standard’ data from the Department of Elementary & Secondary Education, in a prior article:

Framingham & Marlborough Take the Prize for Blocking Increased State Aid from Reaching Disadvantaged Students (March 2, 2026)

Anyone can look at the state data and verify the conclusions in that article.

During the months of School Committee discussion of the FPS FY27 budget, the giant elephant in the room for the entire budget process was the certainly that this FY27 budget was going to make things significantly worse for Framingham students and teachers.

There was no airtime given to this central problem in the entire budget discussion.

There was no discussion of:

1. The massive exodus of 300 experienced teachers from FPS over the last 3 years (not retirements), and the fact that this FY27 budget encourages further teacher flight. The Mayor and the School Committee are indeed ‘hoping’ that a further 100 experienced teachers will leave for other districts at the end of this school year. If they don’t leave, the FY27 budget will have an additional $4 million gap, as the turnover savings from such departures will not be realized – and that savings is built into the FY27 FPS budget. [An experienced teacher replacement by a new, inexperienced teacher yields a savings of $40,000.]
2. The rapid drop in student achievement over the last years, especially in K-8 which now places Framingham at the same underperforming level as Fall River and New Bedford, communities where the average household income is around $50,000, compared to Framingham’s $100,000.

The factors driving these teacher and student problems are quite clear:

1. Lack of pre-K capacity, as detailed above.
2. Underpaid classroom aides

Just as pre-K for all 4-year-olds improves student performance, and makes classrooms much more manageable, so does ongoing classroom support provided by a sufficient supply of skilled aides supporting students with disabilities and students not fluent in English.

Yet an aide pay scale 20% below market had produced shortages of capable aides which leaves classroom teachers and their students struggling. Many aides hired have been fired a few months later for poor performance. That is shown in the sharp rise in city unemployment costs.

Investment in pre-K for all 4-year-olds, and decent pay for classroom aides would bring enormous classroom improvements, including much improved student performance and much higher teacher retention. That would also greatly reduce the need for downstream remedial support.

But the Mayor and the School Committee will not do the obvious.

Teachers are struggling, and voting with their feet as their classroom support drops year after year, and students are less and less well prepared to learn.

Students are suffering and seeing their educational prospects die, as FPS cannot prepare them for kindergarten learning with pre-K, and shortchanges them on aide support in later years.

It’s dead obvious what the problems are and the fixes that are needed.

Teachers, parent and students have done their best to advocate for change in the prior budget cycle, and now this one. They might as well have been talking to the wall, where disadvantaged students are concerned.

The School Committee has forgotten that it is an independent branch of local government entrusted with good stewardship of the schools, except for Kyle Shepherd, District 7, and Lorena Tovar, District 2, who voted against the FY27 budget, and seem to be the only elected officials able to see the fundamental problems, and act accordingly.

The rest of the School Committee is ‘owned’ by the Mayor, and their actions in this disastrous FY27 FPS budget are entirely consistent with their unprecedented endorsement of the Mayor in his recent run for re-election.

The ‘Education’ Mayor was Charlie’s campaign message, and we all thought that the 6 members of the School Committee who went along with that false advertising, must have aligned with the Mayor to bullet proof the FY27 FPS budget, and finally get the right support for students and teachers.

But it seems that the Mayoral endorsement by the those School Committee members came with no commitments from the Mayor.

What a remarkable School Committee sellout for students and teachers.