boston public schools

On a frigid morning in 1964, students crowded into the assembly hall at St. Mark’s Social Center in Roxbury. Bundled in winter coats and boots, some students wore excited smiles while others stayed straight-faced, waiting. Outside, school buses carrying suburban students waited among piles of snow.

As a student in the METCO program, Nicholas Vance used to wake up at 5:30 every morning to prepare for an hour-long bus ride from his home in Mattapan to school in Bedford. Now an education specialist and strategic initiatives manager at the National Grid, Vance said the “academic rigor” his suburban school offered was worth the hassle.

Boston Public Schools parents, students and educators are led on a dizzying merry-go-round when it comes to their schools.

Opponents voice concern over lack of parental input, limited transportation options

After teaching in the Boston Public Schools for four years, I left the system this summer. I witnessed how the system poorly responded to students during a pandemic that led to unimaginable loss, hurting communities that had already been dismissed for too long.

Boston Mayor Michelle Wu has announced an expansion and enhancement of the city’s mentoring program, with a goal of pairing 1,000 Boston Public Schools students of color with adults.

Before federal Judge W. Arthur Garrity’s school desegregation order in 1974 led to an explosion of white opposition in some Boston neighborhoods, Black leaders had spent about a decade trying just about everything they could to secure a better education for their community’s children.

The mayorally appointed School Committee gave Superintendent Mary Skipper a mark of “proficient” upon completing her first year. But the formal evaluation’s results did not incorporate the many voices who testified to the broken promises of communication and community engagement, rash building decisions, persistent transportation disasters and a budget process that was embarrassingly uninformed.

MIT Professor Karilyn Crockett was just born the year before federal Judge W. Arthur Garrity ordered the Boston Public Schools to desegregate, but noted her grandmother joined the lawsuit because she felt even the separate but unequal schools back in West Virginia served Black students better.

A prolonged investigation into allegations that a dozen Boston Public Schools administrators of color have been pushed out of their jobs has left the former administrators and their allies frustrated and concerned.

As a longtime teacher who has taught in both Boston and the suburbs, I have seen from all sides that MCAS has not equitably served the students of the Commonwealth and actually harms the vulnerable students the test purports to serve.

School safety in the Boston Public Schools (BPS) is not as simple as taking a stand on police or metal detectors in schools. The real problem is that Superintendent Mary Skipper and Mayor Michelle Wu do not see schools as distinct communities.