In the 1970s, strife over the Newton Public School budget intensified as the 1970 recession deepened, enrollment continued to decline, teachers gained collective bargaining rights, and the State changed educational mandates and funding. The battle moved from City-versus-School Committee to school-versus-school.
“Education as a right to be claimed, not a service to be begged”
Hubert Jones was a Newton parent, the husband of Newton’s METCO director, Katherine Jones, and the director of the Roxbury Multi-Service Center in Boston. Parents at the Center came to him reporting that their children had been turned away from public schools because they “were too retarded or too disruptive, et cetera, et cetera, to be in school.” In 1968, Hubert Jones organized, chaired, and found private funding for a Task Force on Children Out of School.
The task force’s 1970 report, The Way We Go to School: The Exclusion of Children in Boston, found that thousands of children were being turned away because they didn’t speak English, were pregnant, or had learning, emotional, or physical disabilities. Public outcry “led to the groundbreaking, first-in-the-nation enactments of two landmark laws in Massachusetts designed to include previously excluded populations of children: the special education law and the bi-lingual education law.”
The Bilingual Education Law went into effect in 1971. It mandated bilingual instruction when there were 20 or more children whose native language was not English. Classes for Italian-speaking children began in 1972 at Lincoln-Eliot and Carr. The State law did not require teachers to be fluent in English.
The Special Education Law (Chapter 766) was enacted in 1972 and guaranteed a “free and appropriate public education” for Massachusetts children with special needs aged 3-21. David Liederman of the Massachusetts Office of Children wrote about it in a journal article, Chapter 766: Education as a Right to be Claimed, Not a Service to be Begged.
Before the Special Education Law took effect in 1974, Newton Public Schools (NPS) had several programs for exceptional students, including a reading disabilities program in every elementary school, separate classes for children with intellectual disabilities, and the Peabody School for children with multiple disabilities. Tuition costs for low-income children at special schools, such as Perkins School for the Blind or Horace Mann School for the Deaf, were covered by the State. The education of many other exceptional students was left to their families.
In 1969, Mr. and Mrs. Lloyd, the parents of a girl with cerebral palsy, appealed to the School Committee to cover the costs of transporting her to a private school in Sudbury. The girl had been attending her neighborhood school, “but the program had not been successful.” (SC Minutes 6/2/69) The school psychologist, Dr. Landy, had concluded that “no school in Newton” could meet her needs, but the School Committee said no. The State required only that the City cover transportation costs for public and private school students who lived in Newton and attended schools more than 2 miles from their homes.
After the Special Education Law took effect, Newton was required to cover both tuition and transportation costs for students whose Individualized Education Programs (IEP) placed them in a special school outside of the City. The education of exceptional children became a right rather than a charity, and the cost shifted from the State to the school budget. By 1975, outside placements in Newton had doubled to 100 children, and 13 families had filed complaints with the State, stating that their child’s instruction was out of compliance with special education laws.
The new law gave parents input on their child’s IEP, and, for the first time, allowed parents to see their child’s assessments. Before 1974, students could be labeled and moved into special education classes without parental notification.
School assessments made by the State were made public, and Newton parents discovered that while the average Newton student was above the norm, school scores varied widely across the city. Some schools, like Beethoven, Mason-Rice, Pierce, and Ward, were in the 99.9th percentile; others, like Davis, Lincoln-Eliot, and Williams, were below the 50th percentile compared with national norms.
Teachers gain collective bargaining rights
“In light of today’s economic crisis and federal wage guidelines, the Newton Teacher Association proposal is neither reasonable or attainable.” Newton SC Sub-Committee for Negotiations, December 27, 1971
In the fall of 1969, the Newton Teachers Association invoked the right to collectively bargain “wages, hours, and other conditions of work” (Hansen, p. 66) with the School Committee. One of the Newton Teacher Association’s first requests was for support for a State bill that would allow them to strike. The School Committee said no in 1970, reiterated its no in 1971, and again in 1972. Negotiations quickly became contentious as student enrollment declined, while costs and staffing continued to increase.
Enrollment declines
On November 25, 1974, Newton’s School Committee voted to accept an additional 100 METCO students in January 1975, bringing the total number of METCO students to 302. School Committee members reported strong community support. Only two members voted against the expansion: Alvin Mandell and Henry Delicata. They “wanted to assure taxpayers that the City was being reimbursed” by the State and to wait until the School Committee “decided on closing elementary schools.” The final report of the Citizens Advisory Committee on Declining Enrollment was due in March 1975.
In 1974, NPS presented the School Committee with a report titled “Declining Enrollment and School District Organization.” By 1974, enrollment had dropped from its 1967 peak of 18,917 to 16,152 students. NPS staff, driven in large part by mandates, had grown by over 200 employees to 1,690. The report examined 11 elementary schools, the financial savings from closing one or more of them, and the impact on enrollment of surrounding schools. It was the task of the Citizens Advisory Committee to develop alternate proposals for the School Committee. Public meetings were held, attended by hundreds of parents, fearful that their neighborhood school would be closed. Thousands more signed “Save our School” petitions.
Newton had 23 elementary schools, 5 junior high schools, 2 senior high schools, plus the Peabody School for children with multiple disabilities, the Murray Road Alternative High School, and a Junior College. During the 1976-1977 school year, the Peabody School and Murray Road Annex were merged into other schools, and the Junior College shut down with limited public outcry.
In March of 1975, the Citizens Advisory Committee released its report, which provided guidelines for consolidating schools operating “below 50% capacity.” It did not specify which schools were included. At its June 23 meeting, the School Committee voted to close the Memorial School in Oak Hill in September 1976. The Memorial students would move into the nearby Spaulding school. Mayor Mann and School Committee members Mandell and Delicata voted against the closure, saying the savings would be paltry. Memorial was in Alvin Mandell’s ward.
“This vote set into motion a political upheaval which, heretofore, had been unknown in the City of Newton. The people in the Memorial School district banded together with other dissident groups to form a political organization known as VOICE. The purpose of the organization was to endorse a set of candidates and help elect conservatives to the Newton School Committee and Board of Aldermen (City Council). VOICE endorsed conservatives who tended to support less spending, neighborhood elementary schools, and the “back to basics” education movement.” (Ash, p. 17)
That November, the School Committee had its largest electoral upset in history. Four incumbents lost their seats to VOICE supporters. The new School Committee reversed the decision to close Memorial School at its first meeting in January of 1976.
City wins school budget suit
Massachusetts law required communities to adequately fund their public schools or risk a lawsuit from 10 or more taxpayers. Previously, when the City tried to cut the School Committee’s submitted budget, a group of school-supporting taxpayers appealed to the State Court and won, requiring the City to fully fund the submitted school budget. In July 1975, the State sided with the City, and the budget for the 1975-76 school year was cut by $500,000, reducing it to $30,850,057 or 46% of the City’s $66.4 million budget. The State, the City, and even the Newton Council of PTAs believed that during a time of declining student enrollment, sensible cuts could yet be found in the School Committee’s budget.
Next: Part 13 – METCO Funding, School Closures, and Election Spending
Works Cited
- Ash, Paul B. Factors Which Influenced School Closings in Newton, Massachusetts: an Analytical Case Study (1974-1978). Newton, Boston College, 1982.
- Citizens Advisory Committee on Declining Enrollment. Summary of Report to the School Committee. Newton, Printed by Commission, March 1975.
- Hansen, Joseph E. Historical Highlights 1933 – 1989. Newton Teachers Association, 1989.
- Newton School Committee. Newton School Committee Minutes. City of Newton, 1969 to 1976.
