Boston Public Schools (BPS) has a bureaucracy problem. The Bruce C. Bolling Municipal building—home to BPS’s central office—houses 587 staff. That makes one central administrator for every 78 students in the district—a greater central administrator-to-student ratio than nearly all districts of a comparable size nationwide.

The central office has been a bureaucratic balloon at the heart of a district in turmoil. Between the 2013–14 and 2023–24 school years, BPS enrollment declined by 8,558 students—a decrease of more than 15 percent. In that same 10-year span, 130 additional employees joined the ranks of the central office. In the face of falling enrollment, the district has shuttered several schools and is now facing the financial pressure to make further closures. Yet the central office has not been tailored to reflect the dwindling size of the district it is meant to serve.

The sheer size of the central office raises questions that BPS families and taxpaying Bostonians deserve answers to—namely, what do all these people do? Unfortunately, only the district itself can answer that, but mum’s the word. BPS did not respond to requests for comment.

Will Austin, former CEO of the non-profit Boston Schools Fund, describes how the behavior of education bureaucracies, if unchecked, can eventually calcify. “These organizations like any bureaucracy over time develop these different stacks of policies and procedures that at some point were based on a law or regulation or a good faith idea but then just become the way they do things.” The result is that districts become driven by compliance rather than outcomes. As Austin explains, “In a compliance mindset, the best thing you can do is have more inputs—let’s hire more people, let’s spend more money—without really a clear eye about what you’re actually trying to achieve or the outcomes you wish to see.”

Jamie Gass, Director of Pioneer Institute’s Center for School Reform, sees a direct connection between the oversized central office and struggling school performance. “It has interfered with holding schools accountable and interfered with the school-based autonomies that we observe generally drive a lot of big improvements,” he says. Indeed, the central office has simultaneously encumbered schools with bureaucratic red tape and failed to effectively support the schools most in need of assistance. While not alone in its administrative top-heaviness, the bureaucratic bloat in Boston is emblematic of a district that has lost its focus on students. As Gass puts it, “The hiring and administrative habits of particularly large urban school districts have become an employment mechanism for the adults.”

For years there have been serious concerns about accountability, efficiency, and transparency at BPS. The central office was front and center in a damning review of the district released by the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) in March 2020. The report highlighted a lack of trust and confidence in the central office from school leaders. The problem was particularly acute for the lowest performing schools in the district, with school leaders struggling to access necessary support and resources from the central office.

DESE released a follow-up review in May 2022. Despite some progress, including improved instructional materials, significant challenges persisted at BPS. The district remained marred by “entrenched dysfunction” at the central office, with frequent leadership turnover and disorganization leaving schools without reliable support. The report also noted the inaccuracy of data being collected by the district for key metrics such as enrollment and graduation rates.

Education commissioner Jeff Riley did not mince his words when presenting these findings to the state board of education. “There are just a myriad of problems here, many of them emanating from a bloated central office that is often incapable of the most basic functions,” he said. “The result is that students, especially our most vulnerable students, are being denied the quality education that they deserve.”

Ultimately, BPS avoided state takeover. In lieu of receivership, Boston and DESE agreed to a Systemic Improvement Plan to address “significant, persistent challenges in BPS.” The plan focused on student safety, special education, transportation, facilities, English learners, transformation schools, data, and accountability. Despite unequivocal statements by Commissioner Riley laying blame on the central office, the only part of the plan aimed directly at the district’s headquarters concerned data collection.

One can only imagine what change BPS may have undergone had the district been placed under receivership. Prior to his tenure as state education commissioner, Jeff Riley was named receiver of Lawrence Public Schools in 2012. In his first two years, Riley reorganized the central office into fewer departments and cut central staff by 30 percent. He then redirected millions of resulting savings from the central office to the school level. Streamlining central administration gave schools greater autonomy and made the leaner central office a stronger support for teachers and students.

The narrow avoidance of state receivership should have served as a wake-up call for BPS to clean house. Subsequent budgeting says the district didn’t quite get the memo.

BPS has paid little more than lip service to reform. In the budget process for fiscal year 2025, for example, the district adopted zero-based budgeting and claimed to have identified $17 million in cuts at the central office. Nevertheless, the budget for central administration came out to $109 million—a 20 percent increase from the year prior. At the same time, $421 million was allocated for school services budgeted centrally, such as transportation and facilities maintenance.

Granting that there will always be administrative costs and that some services must be coordinated from the central office, the daunting figures found in the BPS budget still deserve scrutiny. Every dollar spent or mismanaged at the central office is a dollar that does not go to a classroom. As more and more funds go to and through the central office, the question ought to be whether they are being efficiently spent. With Boston chasing New York City for the highest per-pupil spending in the nation—over $31,000—for less than satisfactory results in student achievement, the answer appears to be no.

Gass attributes Boston’s continued bureaucratic burgeoning to a lack of political will. “There’s been very little willingness on behalf of the mayor’s office, which controls the school committee, or the central office, or the various superintendents to face the calcified bureaucracy that really is a big part of the Boston Public Schools,” he says. For there to be fundamental change at BPS, “The first thing you’d have to have is a mayor and a superintendent who would want to do it and be genuinely interested in devolving authority back down to the schools.”

Administrative excess is not a problem confined to Boston—there are plenty of local leviathans to be found in districts across the country—but it’s well past time for the oldest public school system in America to cull the administrative herd. Doing so will require strong leadership, both at the Bolling Building and at City Hall, and tough decisions made in the interest of Boston’s public school students.

Thomas Huska is a student at Harvard College concentrating in government.