On Monday, March 11, The Braintree Public School committee held their monthly meeting. During this meeting, it was expressed that officials will have to cut $8 Million from their 2024-25 school year budget.

At a meeting held last month, it was shared that the system was short $10 million of hitting their budget goal for the 24-25 school year. Since said meeting, Schools have found slightly over $1.5 million in savings – This will help their cause, but there is still approximately $8 Million needed to reach their budget goal.

There was no word on exactly what areas would get cut until another meeting was held a week later [March 18th]. This meeting gave insight to what we can expect to see cut from the district’s spending.

During this meeting, BPS Superintendent James Lee gave a presentation discussing all different factors of the budget. This presentation told us that we can expect to see many big cuts from all schools around the district.

As you can see, there will be approximately 100 personnel from schools all over Braintree layed off. 18+ from BHS, along with 15+ from middle schools and 28+ from elementary schools. There is a possibility of a redistrict occurring too, effectively removing 1-2 elementary schools from the district. As well as higher fees for transportation, and athletics.

Another big reduction is mainly art based electives and AP courses being cut from the High School curriculum, also causing the art elective to be taken off the BHS graduation requirements

This is a huge cut for Braintree and will greatly affect students, teachers, parents and families all over the town, Causing elementary students to have to move schools, High and Middle school students not being able to take the classes they want, and of course many staff members across all schools to lose their job.

The BPS Committee will now be holding annual meetings every week to further work on lessening the budget gap.

Full BPS Committee Meeting recordings on – https://www.youtube.com/@braintreepublicschools3202