Boston Public Schools is axing nearly 570 jobs and shutting down campuses as families flee the system, yet the district still demands a staggering $1.7 billion budget—proving the education monopoly will bleed taxpayers dry even as the students disappear.
When the kids leave, the money should follow. Instead, the establishment just demands more of your cash to prop up empty buildings. As reported by the Boston Herald, BPS is facing a massive enrollment collapse, with 3,000 fewer students expected this year alone and a loss of 10,000 students over the past decade. The district is closing Lee Academy, Another Course to College, the Community Academy of Health and Science, and part of the Henderson Inclusion School. Superintendent Mary Skipper admitted the obvious: "we now have, as a reality, far more seats than students."
Mayor Michelle Wu called the job cuts a "necessary" tradeoff to save $75 million. But a $1.7 billion budget for a shrinking district isn't a tradeoff; it's a racket. The Herald notes this is a demographic cliff hitting nationwide, worsened in Massachusetts by a mass exodus of 182,000 residents to lower-tax states like Florida and Texas between 2020 and 2025. People are fleeing unaffordable housing and high taxes, taking their families—and future students—with them. The establishment press frames tax cuts as "breaks for the wealthy," but ordinary working Americans know the truth: they are fleeing a system that prices them out while failing to educate.
While the public school monopoly collapses under its own weight, students who escape the pipeline are finding success on the outside. Take Logan Galarza, a Hart High School alumnus who, according to the Santa Clarita Valley Signal, just secured a highly competitive paid internship with the Television Academy Foundation at ABC7 Eyewitness News in Los Angeles. Galarza bypassed the traditional academic stagnation, telling the Signal he was "most excited to get experience and make connections in the news industry" after working at a nonprofit news production company. He didn't wait for the education bureaucracy to save him; he built his own network.
The education monopoly will blame demographics and demand more tax dollars to fill the void, but families are already making their choice. Until the system reckons with why parents are pulling their kids out, those empty seats will just keep multiplying.
