Ep. 87, Last Night @ School Committee: 6/7 Meeting Recap

Last Night At School Committee

Last night’s meeting began with a discussion of a big announcement made the previous day by Mayor Wu and Superintendent Skipper regarding changes to several BPS high schools. On Tuesday, these leaders announced a vision that included relocating the O’Bryant School to the vacant West Roxbury Education Complex in a new, state-of-the-art facility and expanding the Madison Park School to fill the space vacated by the O’Bryant, allowing Madison Park to double its enrollment. Superintendent Skipper reiterated this vision in last night’s meeting, and members asked about timeline, budget, and public engagement, noting that members of these communities and School Committee members themselves were not briefed prior to this announcement. The Superintendent’s team shared that this work will not begin until 2025 and that a more comprehensive plan will be presented at a later date.

The meeting moved on to public comment, where 61 speakers signed up to testify. The majority of comments were from teachers and community members asking the School Committee to support a comprehensive ethnic studies curriculum in the district (School Committee Chair Robinson later noted that she has not seen any written materials on this and requested that these materials be made available prior to the next meeting). Additional testimony was given on four other topics. Many parents testified about Boston Latin Academy Head of School Gavin Smith, whom the Superintendent noted has been the target of complaints from the school community. Others testified about the O’Bryant School announcement, with teachers at the school expressing frustration about not being consulted in the decision. Several parents from the Shaw School spoke about their dissatisfaction with the ongoing merger with the Taylor School, despite the fact that this merger was approved by the Committee last meeting. And several parents and students testified in favor of amending the current exam school policy by changing the allocation of bonus points, adjusting the number of invitations in proportion to the number of applicants per socioeconomic tier, and adding more overall exam school seats, in order to solve for the many qualified students denied a seat under the new admissions protocol.

This was the focus of the remainder of the meeting, beginning with a presentation from BPS on data from the recent exam school admissions cycle. The report recapped the reasons for the adoption of the new policy and demonstrated that the policy did succeed in expanding exam school access to a broader array of BPS schools and neighborhoods. At the same time, the data showed that exam school admission was determined primarily by the socioeconomic tier in which a student was placed, with all students in lower tiers accepted compared to less than half of students in higher tiers. Similarly, students in lower tiers were accepted with a composite score as low as 64.8/100, while students in higher tiers were rejected with near-perfect (or, in one case, perfect) scores. Parents have repeatedly testified at School Committee about flaws in the setup of these tiers, with same streets divided into two tiers and vast income disparities within single tiers. Last night, members pressed for reconsidering certain elements of this policy – including awarding bonus points on an individual rather than a schoolwide basis – and for expanding seats so that every eligible student can be awarded an exam school seat, but BPS leaders held firm that they would not consider any changes to this policy for at least five years.

The next School Committee meeting will take place Wednesday, June 21 at 5pm on Zoom.

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