Vice Mayor Says Federal Funding Cuts May Pose Long-Term Challenges for CPS Budget

Vice Mayor Marc C. McGovern warned that the budgeting process for Cambridge Public Schools could be more difficult with recent threats to federal funding at a joint roundtable between the CPS School Committee and Cambridge City Council.

The Monday night meeting brought both bodies together to discuss the CPS budget for Fiscal Year 2026. While federal funding is projected to account for less than three percent of the budget, McGovern said Cambridge will “have to be smarter” about how they budget their funds.

“All the things that sort of drive this economy in our city are squarely in the crosshairs of this White House,” he said.

McGovern said that in his 20 years as an elected official, the district is usually able to meet additional budget requests from parents. But as the city tightens its belt, McGovern said this might not be possible.

“We are not going to be in that situation for a few years,” he said.

McGovern assured members, however, that the district is not “at a crisis level.”

“We’re not at the point where we're talking about laying people off or cutting a bunch of programs,” he said.

Several School Committee members and Councilors also raised concerns about how the district evaluates the success of current programs to determine what should be cut or added from the budget.

School Committee member Elizabeth C.P. Hudson said that while Cambridge has made “historic investments” in education, most of them have “gotten us nothing in terms of educational achievement.”

“We built middle schools, and those got us basically nothing. We do programs like OEIB that have gotten us basically nothing. We have new curriculum that nobody can show us the cold hard data that’s made a difference,” she said. “What’s not working, and what are we cutting or changing because it's not working?”

Interim superintendent David G. Murphy said that Hudson’s concerns represent the “hardest question that’s asked in every budget meeting.”

Murphy said it was “too soon to say” that the new curricula is ineffective, noting that CPS is in its third year of a new math curriculum and the first year of a new English Language Arts curriculum.

“It is, in my view, critically important that the district stay the course with regard to those investments,” he said, noting that department heads are “scrutinizing” its implementation of the programs.

McGovern agreed that it is important to stick with the curricula, and said that the district often suffers from the “whiplash” of abandoning programs after they do not immediately produce results.

“People say we got to get rid of it, so we change to something else, and then we change to something else,” he said. “It doesn’t give you a chance to actually evaluate.”

McGovern added that investing in the curricula’s longevity is often a hard pill to swallow for parents who are concerned at the lack of immediate results.

“The hardest thing to say to a parent, I think, is ‘We have a five year plan, and in five years we're going to be great,’ because your kid might be out of the school district in a couple years,” he said.

Councilor Patricia M. Nolan ’80, who previously served on the School Committee, was skeptical of Murphy’s claim that it’s too early to evaluate the effectiveness of new curricula.

“I lived through several iterations of bringing in new math curriculum, new ELA curriculum. I don’t think it was a lack of staying with the program that hurts us,” she said. “It was a lack of actually, deep analysis of why your program isn’t working that hurts us.”

“We’ve all seen new curriculum brought in — and even tried for three to five years — and yet we’re still struggling with different levels of achievement that are embarrassing within our community,” Nolan added.

In response to committee members’ concerns to make cuts where the budget has not been effective, Murphy referenced the December decision to close the Kennedy-Longfellow elementary school as a recent example.

“I would say this school committee has already identified a very specific, very large chunk of the budget that was not working well for students,” Murphy said. “It took one of the more significant and consequential acts that a school committee can take in the closure of the school.”

“That is not saying that the K-Lo itself was the source of the problem,” he added. “The problem was that this district was operated in a way and did not take account of all of the variables that are in the formula that determines how do we serve students well.”

Member Richard Harding, Jr. pointed to the closure of the Kennedy-Longfellow school as the type of difficult decisions that are “critical to the success and health of the schools and the district.”

CPS leadership will present the finalized budget to the School Committee on March 12 for an April 1 vote.

— Staff writer Ayaan Ahmad can be reached at ayaan.ahmad@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @AyaanAhmad2024.

— Staff writer Claire A. Michal can be reached at claire.michal@thecrimson.com.