Mary Skipper

The College Board and Boston Public Schools have just concluded their first year of piloting Advanced Placement African American studies courses in 10 Boston schools, with plans to add the curriculum to four more schools in the 2024-25 school year.

Boston Mayor Michelle Wu has backed off from plans to move the O’Bryant School from the heart of the Black community to West Roxbury, meaning that the city’s premiere academy of science and mathematics will remain, at least for now, on Malcolm X Boulevard in Roxbury.

The Boston Public Schools has told the City Council that the district does not maintain a list of people who shouldn’t be hired or rehired, a practice that a former employee and the teachers union indicated they suspected was in place.

On June 6, Mayor Michelle Wu and Superintendent Mary Skipper announced their proposal to move the John D. O’Bryant School of Mathematics and Science from Roxbury to the West Roxbury Educational Complex. We understand many students, staff and families have conflicting feelings about this proposal, but as longtime Boston school teachers, we believe moving the city’s most diverse exam school to the least T-accessible neighborhood in the city is not in the best interests of our students.

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.

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 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

During an Oct. 27 City Council hearing on violence in the Boston Public Schools, Councilors Michael Flaherty, Erin Murphy and Ed Flynn questioned BPS officials on increased reports of violence in the schools.

Demanding an end to the pattern of racism targeting Black and brown Boston Public Schools central office leaders, 15 retired high-ranking BPS leaders of color sent a letter to new Superintendent Mary Skipper on Aug. 24, 2022.

Fifteen retired high-ranking Boston Public Schools leaders of color are demanding that Superintendent Mary Skipper put an end to what they see as a pattern of targeting Black and brown central office leaders.