So we're gonna have to start with the name of John Kia.

I'm an at-large city counselor, and I'm also the chair of the Boston School Council Committee on Education.

Oh my goodness, my daughter's calling me.

Hold on one second.

I'm gonna pick up where I left off.

Okay.

Um, so for the record, my name is Julia Mejia.

I'm an at-large city counselor and the chair of the Boston City Council's committee on education.

Today is September 22nd, 2026, and the exact time is two.

In accordance with chapter two of the acts of twenty twenty-five modifying certain requirements of the open meeting law and relieving public bodies of certain requirements, including the requirement that public bodies conduct its meetings in a public place that is open and physically accessible to the public.gov slash city dash council dash TV and broadcast on Xfinity Channel Eight, RCN channel eighty-two and files nine sixty-four.

Written comments may be sent to the committee email at ccc.education at Boston.gov, and it will be made part of the record and available to all counselors.

Public testimony will be taken at the end of this hearing.

Individuals will be called in the order in which they have signed up and will have two minutes to testify.

If you wish to sign up for public testimony and have not done so, please email Central Staff Liaison, Megan.cabinoff at Boston.gov for the Zoom link, and your name will be added to the list.

Today's hearing is on Docket 0406, an order for a hearing on the transparency and accountability of private fundraising in our Boston public schools.

This matter was sponsored by yours truly, Counselor Julia Mejia, and was referred to the committee on February 25th, 2026.

Today I am joined by my colleagues in order of arrival with perfect attendance, as always, Counselor Flynn, District 2.

And we have one letter of absence from Counselor District 5, Counselor Engrique Bipang.

So I'm going to just quickly start off with my opening remarks after my council colleagues go first.

So counselor Flynn, you now have the floor.

And thank you, Madam Chair.

I want to say thank you to you, Madam Chair, for bringing this forward.

I also want to say thank you to the people that are about to testify their important work as well.

I'm here to learn more about the subject.

And we'll hold off on giving a formal opening statement.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Counselor Flynn.

So I just want to thank everyone for joining us today, especially the experts, the advocates, and members of the administration.

As we know, the BPS budget has increased every year, yet many schools and educators continue to struggle getting basic supplies in their classrooms.

The district claims to ensure that students have equitable access to quality education and experiences.

And yet we have seen again and again how BPS budget does not reflect that.

We have schools that receive hundreds and thousands of dollars more than other BPS schools across the street.

And this is not equity.

Furthermore, many of these schools receive little to no supplementary budgetary support and are already under resourced and have high number of high need students.

We cannot claim to be equitable if if these disparities in private donations and fundraising alone automatically contradicts this.

We recognize the way that the new reimagined school funding formula has tried to become more equitable, but it is not perfect.

When educators resort to donor choose or go fund me for teachers and schools asking for school supplies and knee pads for volleyball teams, it's obvious that there's a serious discrepancy between what the district believes is equitable and the lived experiences of our students and educators.

Today, we hope to get a better understanding of how the district considers private dollars in our schools when thinking about funding schools and how we can better support our schools and families in under resource schools.

We also must be more transparent around private funding in the district.

We appreciate additional funds from community members and donors, but we need to have a better understanding of how those finances support each school.

Today we'll have three panels in the following order experts, advocates, and the administration.

And since there are three panels, we'll only have one round of questions per panel.

The hearing will finish with public testimony so that they can respond to everything that we have heard today.

Thank you to the administration for being here.

And we look forward from uh from hearing um from you today and working together alongside you.

And I'll just say, as a BPS graduate and as a BPS mom and as a BPS advocate, uh, I think this is one of the most important issues when we're thinking about funding because there's this mentality of the haves and the have nots, and the students who are in under-resourced schools are the ones that are experiencing the greatest um need.

And so my hope is that we can figure out how we can get a handle on this, and more importantly, what we're going to do to fix it.

So, with that, I am going to uh turn it over to Council Mejia.

Sorry, Madam Chair, I just wanted to announce that I I've also been here from the beginning, and Councillor Weber.

Council Weber is also here.

So I don't need to give an opening.

Just wanted to mark my presence.

Thank you.

Same here, Chair.

I just wanted to feel free to move on to that openings from me.

Okay, sorry.

I was on my phone.

I I did not notice.

I didn't scroll down.

Um so thank you, Counselor Weber, um, and Counselor Louis Jeanne for joining us.