Ep. 88, Last Night @ School Committee: 6/21 Meeting Recap

Last Night At School Committee

Last night was the last School Committee meeting of this academic year, and it was an unusual one. There were no reports on the agenda (other than the Superintendent’s Report), and the meeting came in the wake of multiple controversies in the BPS community.

The meeting began with an update from Chair Jeri Robinson on the new admissions policy for Madison Park proposed last month. Chair Robinson shared that this policy created unintentional barriers for students, and that BPS will be reconsidering the policy and coming forth with a new recommendation in the fall. Next, School Committee member Lorena Lopera announced that she will be stepping down from her position after this meeting in order to take a new job and spend more time with her family.

The meeting continued with the Superintendent’s Report, which began with an acknowledgement of the recent news story concerning an adult woman who fraudulently impersonated a student at three separate BPS schools over the past year. Superintendent Skipper did not provide any further information about this fraud but said the Boston Police Department is investigating the matter. She then provided an update on BPS summer learning opportunities, sharing that enrollment data exceeded the goals set for this year with over a thousand more spaces filled than last year. After a short discussion of MassCore and a recap of accomplishments from the past year, the remainder of the Superintendent’s Report was devoted to a state-mandated update on transformation schools. This report contained only a brief mention of attendance trends among the 30 transformation schools and did not delve into any further data on performance or outcomes. School Committee members expressed frustration at the lack of content in this update, pointing out the stark contrast to the hours spent discussing the three exam schools. Members also raised the recent Boston Globe article about disparities among BPS high schools and pressed for the Superintendent and her team to develop a resource for parents that outlines the academic and extracurricular offerings at every school (similar to what was included in the Globe story).

The majority of the meeting was devoted to public comment, in which dozens of commenters testified against moving the O’Bryant School to West Roxbury, and others expressed their opinions on the personnel controversy at BLA. The lack of information about the O’Bryant announcement was a consistent theme throughout the meeting, and the meeting ended with a plea from the Committee for a more defined and robust public engagement strategy.

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