BPS

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.

With each superintendent and mayor comes the fabricated commitments of “transparency,” “community engagement” and “equity.” As we approach Superintendent Skipper’s eighth month on the job and only three short months from the end of the school year, BPS families have continued to wait for quality BPS leadership, visionary goals and transparency.

The Boston Public Schools is way up there among the state’s biggest spenders and must tighten its belt. That’s the impression you get from media reports, and also from top BPS administrators, who often speak of “unsustainable” spending that must urgently be reined in — for example, by closing small schools. But let’s take a closer look.

By now you’ve heard that Mayor Michelle Wu vetoed the proposal to restore an elected school committee and reverse Boston’s position as an outlier with the only mayor-appointed school committee in the commonwealth.

Ten years after Boston Public Schools adopted a new code of conduct that included a framework known as “restorative justice,” which seeks among other things to resolve disputes without punitive discipline, the BPS Office of Restorative Justice team consists of just three full-time staff overseeing the implementation of restorative practices across some 125 schools.

In 2002, when Mary Skipper was appointed headmaster at Tech Boston, the former Dorchester High School building housed two other schools: Noonan Business Academy and Academy of Public Service. When she left 11 years later, Tech Boston was the only community left. Her tenure at the helm of the schools gave her hands-on experience with school closures and mergers.

Boston Mayor Michelle Wu doubled down on her reluctance to shift to an elected school committee Tuesday, setting up potential political friction between her administration and the nearly 80% of voters who expressed a clear desire to do away with a school board appointed by the mayor.

While many headlines will hand-wring over the College Board’s decision to eviscerate its African American Studies curriculum, we as BPS teachers have seen the writing on the wall. Boston families on all sides of the political spectrum should be wary.

The mayor and a majority of city councilors polled by progressive groups during the 2021 election expressed opposition to placing police officers in Boston’s public schools, a position those council members say none has backed down from.

Boston Public Schools Superintendent Mary Skipper announced a $1.4 billion budget for the 2023-2024 school year — an increase of $65 million over the previous year.

The Council of the Great City Schools last Wednesday released a report on school safety recommending among other things that Boston Public Schools convene a focus group of stakeholders and administrators to consider whether the district should form an internal police department.yawu

In their first meeting of 2023, Boston City Council members offered up what amounts to at least a partial agenda for the new year.