As federal COVID-era emergency funding comes to an end and enrollment declines, the “transitional” BPS budget proposal would continue big investments in inclusive education and long-term planning while cutting back on staffing and classes.

“My colleagues around the country and state are in a situation of all cut, and there is no investment,” said Superintendent Mary Skipper of the cut off of COVID-era federal ESSER funding Wednesday. “That is not where we find ourselves. We find ourselves is with a mayor and a city that is willing to continue to make education a priority and to invest as such.”

Under the proposed BPS budget released Wednesday, the district’s general fund and remaining ESSER dollars will drop to $275 million dollars for fiscal year 2025. The district’s budget last year was $351 million.

The federal ESSER funding plunged from $170 million in FY 2024 to $13 million in the new budget, offset by about a 45% jump, $81 million, in the general fund.

As the funding drops, the district is continuing to put money into long-term planning and investments — centering inclusive education in Wednesday’s budget presentation — but facing “trade-offs” on a school-by-school basis, Skipper said.

In terms of trends for those trade-offs, Skipper briefly cited cuts to field trips but focused on chops to staffing positions.

The superintendent said many of the staffing cuts will be to positions created during the pandemic with federal emergency funds that were intended to be temporary and a wide number of those — 600 as of last year — were never filled.

The cuts broadly focus on positions like instructional and inclusion coaches and social workers, Skipper said. There will still be at least one social worker and nurse per school, she added, and schools currently have an educator to student ratio of one to 10 and an adult to student ratio of one to five.

The budget also cites cost-saving mergers and consolidations. Schools across the district will lose 68 classrooms across 36 schools and add 16 new ones, resulting in $7.4 million in savings. Nine schools will be add and remove grades and shift staffing, the budget notes, and UP Boston and UP Dorchester will be merged.

The budget cites a 14% decline in enrollment in the last seven years, tapering over the last two years, and a 46% increase in per pupil spending over the last years, up to over $30,000 per student.

The proposal centers a $20 million investment in inclusive education, which is intended to move the district to a “team based approach.” The model grants every additional resources to every classroom serving students with disabilities and/or multilingual learners.

In the FY 2025 year, the district will implement the model for kindergarten grades, seventh grade and ninth grade, expanding to all other grades over the next three years.

“In the past, if you were a student on an (Individualized Education Plan), you may have been told these are the only schools you can attend because they’re the only ones that have your program,” said Skipper. “That is not the case. We’ve opened up across the district, across all of our schools.”

The district will add in “at least 150 ESL, English as second language, special education, certified inclusion coach kinds of positions,” Skipper said, emphatically inviting educators with such training to apply to the district.

The superintendent also called the budget “transitional.” The district will shift away from a per-pupil funding model, in which schools are funded based on enrollment, towards a new funding model assessing schools’ and students’ needs and strategic investments.

“What we’re trying to do here is kind of build toward a value budget where inclusive education is the centerpiece,” Skipper said.