Three BPS parent councils call on Boston College to fund City Connects at their schools
But BC says they’re already doing plenty for Boston
By Alain Jehlen
Parent councils at the Quincy, Winship, and Bates Elementary Schools have sent a joint letter to Boston College asking the college to fund their City Connects programs as part of BC’s Payment In Lieu Of Taxes (PILOTs). But BC says the college is already doing enough for Boston.
Under state law, nonprofit organizations such as Boston College are not required to pay property taxes even if they receive services from the City of Boston. However, a task force convened by former Mayor Thomas Menino in 2009 agreed that the city’s major nonprofits — those with property valued at more than $15 million — should pay 25 percent of what their property taxes would be if their property were taxable. These payments are called “Payments In Lieu Of Taxes.”
Half the PILOT payment could be in “community benefits” that the nonprofits provide to Boston. The other half would be actual money.
Since the program started in 2012, the city’s major hospitals have mostly met the 25 percent target, but the biggest universities have not. The parent council letter says BC is more than $5 million behind in payments since 2012.
One of BC’s programs is City Connects, which provides staff at some BPS schools. City Connects staffers link social service agencies with students who need help. They also personally mentor and guide many students, offering critical support for children who must overcome complex problems in their lives.
But BC does not pay the full cost of the program. Through this year, City Connects has been funded by the BPS central office, meaning that the money did not come out of individual school budgets.
Next year, however, City Connects and most other “partnerships” with outside organizations that used to be funded through the BPS central office will instead come out of school budgets. Some schools received extra money to pay for these partnerships through the controversial new Opportunity Index, but the Quincy, Winship, and Bates Schools did not. The Opportunity Index is intended to measure the extra challenges that schools face in educating their students.
When parents at the Bates School found out they would lose their City Connects staffer, they launched an intensive fundraising campaign, including a GoFundMe drive that has so far come up with $6,340.
According to parent Travis Marshall, the Bates School also cut lunch monitors and will use parent donations that would otherwise pay for field trips. That still leaves them $10,000 short, which the BPS central office is going to lend them: If they can’t raise it, it will come out of next year’s budget.
The three BPS parent councils wrote to BC President Rev. William Leahy last week asking that he make plans to pay the full amount calculated by the PILOT program and that he fund City Connects as part of BC’s 12.5 percent in community benefits.
“You renovate your magnificent libraries, while many of our schools have none at all,” the parent council letter says. “Your sprawling new athletic complex is almost complete, yet our students lack nurses and mental health professionals. Your new dormitories are state-of-the-art, and our students are unable to drink from school water fountains. …
“…Boston College believes ‘a university is a community. It discloses its values by the way it behaves as much as by what it says about itself.’ Please live up to your ideals.”
(Read the parent council letter here.)
Asked to respond, the BC Office of University Communications issued a statement saying, in effect, that BC is already doing a lot for Boston.
“Boston’s PILOT program is voluntary,” the statement noted. “As a nonprofit educational institution and a religious affiliate, we choose not to participate in the PILOT program, but continue to provide more than $335,000 in annual Payments for Municipal Services to the City of Boston for fire protection services through a longstanding agreement established by the City.”
But BC said the college also gives Boston “more than $30 million in community benefits … each year through scholarships, jobs, volunteer outreach, community grants and the public and private funding we procure for Boston’s public and parochial schools.”
The statement also says City Connects will continue at the three schools and 19 other schools this year.
(Read the full BC statement here.)
The Quincy School, with 840 students, had two City Connects staffers last year. This year they will have one. A parent leader reports they will use discretionary funds that would normally have been spent on school supplies.
Parent leaders at the Winship expect to keep City Connects but aren’t yet sure that all the funding is in place.
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