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Students and staff urge Board to protect arts, student support teams amid proposed cuts
Summary
At the March 18 Buffalo Board of Education meeting, students, teachers and counselors urged the district to preserve arts programs and school-based student support teams, warned that proposed swaps of counselors for social workers would harm students, and pressed for alternatives to suspensions following an Attorney General report.
Hundreds of community members filled the meeting as teachers, counselors, parents and students told the Buffalo Board of Education that proposed budget moves could strip vital arts instruction and core student-support services from schools.
Music teacher David Aquilina told the board instrumental programs should be funded centrally rather than from fragile school discretionary budgets, and shared attendance and discipline data from his School 72 band: “My band students at Lorraine have less than half the daily absences of the rest of their peers,” he said, reporting an average of 7.8 absences for band students compared with 17.1 for other students. “Everything we do in our schools is predicated on students being there.”
Why it matters: speakers said arts and building-based Student Support Teams (SSTs) — counselors, social workers and psychologists — are not extras but mechanisms that improve attendance, behavior and academic outcomes. Several SST members spoke about cases where counseling and social work services directly improved students’ academic trajectories.
Counselor Maureen Utech McNamara and social-worker co‑chair Jamie Paolini urged the board not to treat positions as interchangeable. Paolini said the budget process currently projects cuts that would remove 13 building social workers from school-based budgets and asked the board to ‘right‑size’ staffing by enrollment and needs.
Students and parents also tied the staffing discussion to broader discipline reform. Multiple students said suspensions have disproportionate effects and urged restorative practices. Jessica Bauer Walker, a parent and organizer who cited the Attorney General’s findings, said the AG’s review found Black and Latino students and students with disabilities face disproportionately high suspension rates for minor infractions and that families have reported retaliation when they speak up.
District response: Superintendent (transcript spelling varies) told the room that the budget process is ongoing and that no final cuts to art, music, or counselor positions have been decided. He said district leadership is protecting counselors at the central level and that only “five or six” schools had proposed swapping counselors for social workers at the school level; those local choices could be reviewed. The superintendent said the district is revising its code of conduct, will revisit alternative‑to‑suspension training, and will require any suspension exceeding 30 days to be brought to his office for review.
What happened next: the board did not adopt any policy changes at the meeting. Speakers asked for concrete commitments to preserve SST capacity and to restore centralized funding for arts; district leaders asked for time to complete budget reviews, promised follow-up training and signaled plans for a superintendent retreat to address implementation.
Ending: Board members said they would consider the testimony as the budget moves through levels of review and requested additional engagement with staff, students and families as proposals are finalized.
