Councilors, school officials to consider educational musical chairs on Thursday

Mission Hill teddy bear explains the problems with moving Mission Hill K-8.

BPS officials are scheduled to explain a proposed $21-million school relocation plan to a skeptical City Council committee at a hearing that starts at 11 a.m. in the council's fifth-floor chambers in City Hall.

Under the proposal, two high schools, including New Mission High School, would be moved to the closed Hyde Park High School - for which state officials are now withholding renovation funds because the money was supposed to be spent only for schools that are open and Fenway High School would be moved into the building that now houses New Mission and the Mission Hill K-8 School, which would be moved into the mold-infested Agassiz School, along with a new high school BPS is opening in the fall.

BPS says the moves would give new room to some of the systems' best performing schools. Some councilors, however, question moving Mission Hill K-8 to another neighborhood, especially when the mayor and the school superintendent say they want to increase neighborhood-based schooling, and say Fenway should move to the Agassiz instead. School officials say Fenway needs to remain close to the Longwood Medical Area because of programs with colleges there.

The city has proposed borrowing money for all of the renovation work required, which needs final approval from the City Council.