Community & Data
BPS By The Numbers
Boston has two official school counts. The state says 105, the district’s own materials say around 125, both are official, and nobody has reconciled them. That belongs in the first sentence rather than a footnote, because you are about to read a lot of numbers about your own education, and knowing exactly how each one was counted is what turns a statistic into something you can use.
The district, according to the state
Sources: Massachusetts DESE, school and district profiles · US Census Bureau (data.census.gov).
- The graduation rate is an all-time high. 81.3 percent of the four-year cohort graduated, the best number this district has ever posted.
Who is actually in these buildings
- From low-income families: 68.3%
- Learning English: 33.6%
- Students with disabilities: 24.2%
- Classified high needs: 80.9%
- Hispanic: about 44.6%
- Black: about 28.2%
- White: about 14.8%
- Asian: about 8.3%
Read the second column first, because it describes the job. One in three BPS students is still learning English, nearly one in four has a disability, and four out of five are classified as high needs. Any honest conversation about Boston’s schools begins from those three figures, because they are the conditions under which every other number on this page was produced.
Now set the racial figures beside the city’s own. Boston is roughly 44.5 percent white, while Boston Public Schools is 14.8 percent white. That gap is enormous, it was produced by decisions, and it starts on the busing page.
The money
- Per pupil, in district: $35,083.89
- Per pupil, total: $33,854.18
- Total BPS budget: $1.7 billion
- Share of the whole city budget: about a third
Boston spends about $35,000 a year on each student in its own schools, among the highest figures in Massachusetts and far above the state average. That fact cuts both ways, and you should let it. The money is there, and money by itself has demonstrably not been the whole answer, because the gaps described below survived that spending. Anyone who tells you Boston’s schools simply need more money, and anyone who tells you money makes no difference, is skipping past a number that refuses to support either of them.
Those per-pupil figures are from fiscal year 2024, while the enrollment and graduation numbers are from 2025 and 2026. Mixing vintages is normal in public data, and every year is labelled here so you can weigh each figure for exactly what it is.
Where the sources disagree, and how to read them
Two of the most basic questions you could ask about this district have two different official answers each. That is simply what real public data looks like, and learning to read it well is worth more to you than any single statistic on this page.
- How many schools? Counting by state organization code, the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education lists 105. BPS’s own published materials say roughly 125. The likeliest explanation is that they are counting different things, such as programs housed inside other buildings. Nobody has published a reconciliation.
- How many students? DESE reports 44,416. Budget and press documents from the district and the city have used figures from about 48,000 to 50,343. These may count different populations, for instance including students the district pays for but does not house.
We publish the DESE figures throughout this site, because DESE is the state’s official reporting system, applies the same rules to all 396 districts, and can therefore be compared across them. The disagreement is real, and it is printed above in full. When a number matters to you, ask who counted it and what exactly they counted.
The improvement plan has expired, and the next one is being written
This is the live, unresolved part of the story, and it is the part with room in it for you.
In June 2022 the state declared Boston Public Schools underperforming. The district was never placed in receivership, which is the step where the state takes a district away from the city entirely. Instead BPS operated under a DESE Systemic Improvement Plan, a binding agreement to fix specific things: buses, buildings, programs for English learners, data reporting.
That plan formally expired on June 30, 2026, which is roughly two weeks before this page was written.
Real things got better under it. Buses run more reliably, facilities got money, programs for English learners are stronger, and the graduation rate is the highest it has ever been. At the same time, the gaps between groups of students remain wide, and 44 individual schools remain exposed to state intervention. The plan has ended while the problems it was written to solve are still on the table, which is exactly why whatever replaces it matters so much.
You are living inside the part of this story that is still being decided. The people deciding it meet in public in Roxbury, and they are legally required to let you speak.
Where these numbers come from
These details were pulled from official public sources, and you can read every one of them here.
Enrollment, graduation and student population figures: Massachusetts DESE, district code 0035. Per-pupil expenditure: DESE, fiscal year 2024. BPS also publishes a budget for every individual school, so the number attached to your building is public, and so is the number attached to the building across town.
Boston spends about $12,700 more per student, every year, than the average Massachusetts district. That single number refuses to support either side of the usual argument: the money is there, and money alone is demonstrably not the whole answer.
Source: Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, in-district expenditures per pupil, FY2024.
Boston just posted the highest graduation rate in its history, 81.3 percent, while carrying one of the hardest jobs in the state. The plan that governed your school has expired, and the plan that replaces it is being written right now, in public, by people who are legally required to hand you a microphone.
Photos: “Boston Latin Academy front entrance, Boston MA” by John Phelan, CC BY-SA 3.0. Via Wikimedia Commons.