boston public schools

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.

City councilors sent a letter to the Boston School Committee last week urging them reconsider closing the West Roxbury Academy and Urban Science Academy, as laid out in the city’s controversial BuildBPS plan.

For many in BPS, the past two weeks have been disturbing. The announcement of three school closings from one day to another was a deja-vu experience of irresponsibility that BPS families and staff know all too well.

The Boston School Committee is scheduled to vote Wednesday Oct. 10 on who will join the hunt for the next superintendent, while education reformers discuss their ideal candidate for the schools leadership position.

Education, civil rights, and community organizations are demanding that Boston Public Schools Interim Superintendent Laura Perille not be considered for the permanent position, and that a timeline be set to find her successor from a diverse range of experienced candidates.

“[BuildBPS] is about the school system we need and want for the future, one that will meet the needs of all of our students,” Perille told journalists at a sit-down last Wednesday morning at the Bruce C. Bolling Municipal Building, Boston Public Schools’ (BPS) headquarters in Dudley Square.