The Brookline School Committee took the controversial step Thursday night of eliminating the district’s Office of Educational Equity as it looks to close an $8 million deficit in next year’s budget.
The 5-4 vote is viewed by community advocates as a setback for equity programs that Public Schools of Brookline had previously embraced and that provided protections and support for students from diverse backgrounds.
School Committee member Carolyn Thall voted in favor of eliminating the OEE office and said it was a practical decision, not a political one.
“It had nothing to do with the Trump Administration or any politics at all. And certainly not the current politics,” Thall told GBH News.
Administrators have said eliminating the office would save the district about $337,000 a year. Thall said the school committee was able to further reduce the budget gap to $4.3 million with other cuts.
“The budget in Brookline is perennially stretched. We were running on fumes,” Thall said. “We were running on one time ARPA [American Rescue Plan] funds that were inevitably going to run out. We have structural deficit problems. So, it happens that budget season in Brookline is coinciding with a new presidential administration.”
The Brookline Asian American Family Network or BAAFN issued a statement expressing disappointment that Public Schools of Brookline is eliminating its sole office devoted to diversity, equity, and inclusion.
“This decision appears to be a retreat from PSB’s commitment to combat educational disparities by race, disability, and other inequitable factors, as well as a diminishment of its support to students from marginalized communities, including Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) students.”
BAAFN cited the loss of the position of Assistant Director of Educational Equity with elimination of the office, which it said was created in part to help support AAPI students, families, and staff.
In addition, the group said the decision “will also mean the loss of two women of color as administrators from PSB, in a school district where there are already too few staff and teachers of color.”
BAAFN said it had hoped Brookline would be free of the “anti-DEI hysteria being stoked from Washington DC.”
School committee member Jesse Hefter said the decision to eliminate the OEE office was one of a series of options presented by the superintendent.
“I think that the timing in terms of the optics is unfortunately, you know, poorly timed,” Hefter said.
He added that he understands how the public might conflate the school committee’s decision with the Trump Administration’s efforts to outlaw DEI programs.
“It’s just unfortunate that this is happening at the same time that people are seeing the federal government make decisions, and then they’re looking at the school committee in Brookline and they’re saying this seems like, you know, sort of another domino falling, of things that the federal government’s doing.”
Last month, Governor Maura Healey and Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell reaffirmed the state’s commitment to equal access to education and encouraged educational institutions to continue to support and foster DEI programs within schools.
Thall, who is also a Brookline town meeting member and mother of two PSB students, said the district is top-heavy with administration, and cuts needed to be made without harming the quality of education.
“Everybody on the school committee is committed to keeping the cuts that we have to make away from classrooms, educators, hopefully away from special educators,” she said, while keeping “the initiatives and programs that were being run out of this office.”
Hefter pledged that the district and school community will continue to embrace a culturally diverse environment even though the office no longer exists.
“The parent body, the students, the faculty and staff on their own believe in fairness, dignity and respect to everyone. And that even now, in the absence of this educational equity office, the drive and the commitment that the Town of Brookline and its citizens have towards justice for all should continue.”
