A New Superintendent
A New Superintendent/24 February 2022/Lawrence S. DiCara
Boston will soon appoint a new Superintendent of Schools, given the unanticipated announcement by Superintendent Cassellius that she will be departing at the end of the school year.?This provides Mayor Wu with an opportunity to reinvent our school system and make it work for all of Boston’s children.?Here are a few thoughts from someone who has been focusing on these issues for many decades.
As the school population has decreased, precipitously, and the budget has increased, annually, Boston now spends in excess of $27,000/student, which puts us right up there with high performing school systems in the western suburbs and second to only New York City for large school districts.?Yet, despite these resources, which we did not have 50 years ago when the school budget was approximately $1,000 per child, the results are abysmal and have been declining, even more rapidly than in other urban school systems in the Commonwealth. We are no longer a poor city. We should not be reluctant to take advantage of our AAA bond rating and borrow the money needed to upgrade our facilities, while interest rates are low.
I bear the battle scars of the 1970s.?I had people yell at me and spit at me just as did Ted Kennedy, Kevin White and Ed Brooke. The goal of busing was simple: to desegregate our schools and to undo the racist school districting brought about by the school committee.?The goal was also to equal the playing field so that young children of color would have a better chance.?As John Barros commented in the last mayor’s race, that goal has failed.?We have to totally rethink busing.?We have to take a look at why so much money is being spent to transport so few children.?I would suggest that we start from scratch, with the goal being of minimizing miles traveled.
Boston must have the political courage to take children out of schools which are non-performing – approximately 1/3 of the schools in the city - and send them to schools which are performing well and where in most cases there are some empty seats.?
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Shut down schools which are not working.?Don’t mothball the real estate in anticipation that there will be some sudden burst in the public school system.?Those predictions are all folly.?Sell the schools, whether it be for housing for the elderly or for another good purpose.?Take the resulting funds and spend them wisely, so that children will have access to art and music and tutoring, as do children elsewhere in Massachusetts.
Something must be very wrong when there is a waiting list at METCO and a waiting list for charter schools and thousands, probably 30,000 empty seats throughout the system.?If one looks at the numbers, one sees that 12% of our children go to exam schools or to the Boston Arts Academy.?Those schools must be doing something right if every seat is filled.?Nurture those schools.?Do not try to micromanage them.
The new Superintendent must partner with non-profit organizations, experts, and others who are doing some very solid thinking outside of School Department Headquarters which has as many bureaucrats today as it did when the school system was significantly larger.
Examine every contract with an outside vendor, even as simple as rock salt. Lastly, Boston is in a race with time, given the agreement entered into with the state two years ago, Is this but an academic discussion if the State Board of Education pulls the pin on the grenade known as receivership?
Retired
3 年Is this a full throated recommendation to lift the Charter cap?
Marketing And Public Relations Consultant & Premier Ghostwriter at Stanley Hurwitz / Creative Communications
3 年Kids should attend their local schools. Busing wastes time and money. Great teachers can teach anywhere. Do we have great teachers??! The schools MUST be improved. Some objective truth-tellers need to investigate how Boston can spend as much as Newton or Wellesley per student and still find themselves so poorly run, with terrible language and math skills. And the worst graduation rates and lousy college acceptance records. Who is surprised at the quick departure of the current Superintendent??!
Senior Advisor/Board Chair/Senior Director/Private Investor
3 年Larry - spot on recommendations and solutions to correct the continued horrific underperformance of the BPS K-6 public school system. We tried to create a path towards excellence back in the 1990’s when I served on a Blue Ribbon panel for Mayor Menino that designed a 40 year plan for building new city schools with embedded Community Centers that fostered disciplined after hours tutoring for BPS students to improve academic performance - none of the recommendations were adopted due to tabling of the proposals by several groups, including members of the Boston Teachers Union. Let’s recycle the busing dollars to extend school hours and tutoring to K-6 underperforming schools - too often the Boston School Committee has applied “tourniquets” to the wrong “wounds” (e.g., attacking the entrance exams at the Exam Schools versus fixing the continued K-6 feeder schools underperformance). Thank you for a lucid and cogent argument as always.
Executive Chairman, Advanced Cyber Security Center, Chairman, CEO & Founder, Mass Insight Global Partnerships
3 年Larry - Your most compelling column yet. In 2003 Mass Insight Education published a list of the 100 lowest performing schools in the Commonwealth to focus Governor Romney’s attention and the legislature’s on failing schools and the urgent need for radical action to provide the children and families trapped in them with options. 1/3 of those 100 schools were in Boston - almost 20 years later, that remains the case. For Mayor Wu, this may be the most important test of her willingness to take bold steps to support equity and inclusion by giving all minority children in Boston the opportunities they deserve.