boston public schools

The process of replacing Tommy Chang as Boston Public Schools superintendent is ending the way it began: hurriedly, secretively, and with little apparent consideration of either the desires of the BPS community or for the requirements of this job. The superintendent will directly impact the lives of tens of thousands of Boston’s next generation.

Boston School Committee members and community members posed questions to school superintendent candidate Marie Izquierdo Monday. The Miami-Dade County School District Chief Academic Officer was the first of the three finalists for the job to go through nine hours of interviews scheduled this week.

When three finalists contending for the Boston Public Schools superintendent post were announced last week, a process that thus far has been conducted out of public view suddenly entered the spotlight.

City councilors in Boston are working to put a full-time nurse and full-time social and emotional support professional in every public school in the city. At a hearing Monday evening, councilors heard testimony from members of the Boston Public Schools administration and the public in support of their effort.

Boston Public Schools parents and students marched from the Blackstone School in the South End to the School Committee chamber in the Bruce Bolling Municipal Building last Wednesday, where they occupied the seats and tables reserved for the body and the district’s interim superintendent.

At a Boston Public Schools budget hearing last week, during which district officials outlined the Walsh administration’s proposed school budget of $1.139 billion for FY20, students and teachers from the Blackstone Innovation School staged a demonstration demanding an additional $20 million to be added to the budget to improve quality of education.

Boston Public Schools officials last week announced a $1.39 billion budget and highlighted targeted investments in science instruction, supports for schools facing budget reductions and in-class administration of the ISEE exam the district uses for admission to its three exam high schools.

This term, the Boston Latin School theater department tackled “Da Kink in My Hair,” a 2001 play by Trey Anthony about black womanhood. Student directors Samantha Lee and Azhani Duncan-Reese say the show was part of an ongoing effort to perform plays that tackle social justice issues. The play will be performed at the Massachusetts Thespian Festival at Acton-Boxborough Regional High School on Feb. 9.

In what has become a yearly ritual in the Boston Public Schools community, parents, teachers and school leaders are grappling with budget reductions and the hard decisions about which staff and services to do without.

Each student in Elizabeth DiFranco’s eighth-grade English language arts room at the Joseph Lee school has been assigned a number one through four at the beginning of class. As DiFranco faces the jumble of students seated at wheeled desks, she orders them into groups.

There are about 3,500 Boston public school students who have no fixed address. As incredible as it sounds, 6 percent of Boston’s 56,000 students are homeless. They might live temporarily in a run-down motel, move from shelter to shelter, stay in substandard housing or “couch surf” from house to house.

City councilors heard a multitude of perspectives during a hearing held last week by Education Committee Chairwoman Annissa Essaibi-George that probed the ideal structure for the School Committee.