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Split city council votes to ask state legislature for permission to return to an elected school committee
By adamg on Wed, 02/15/2023 - 8:57pm
The Boston City Council voted 7-5-1 today for a home-rule petition to restore an elected school committee.
In a separate measure, the council also voted 11-2 for a request to give a student member of the school committee a vote.
Both measures need Mayor Wu's signature before they can be forwarded to the legislature for possible action. Boston is currently the only community in the state with an appointed school committee; the city made the switch in 1992 after the legislature passed a home-rule measure sponsored by then Mayor Ray Flynn.
Councilors Ricardo Arroyo and Julia Mejia, who sponsored today's measure, were joined by Councilors Liz Breadon, Gabriela Coletta, Tania Fernandes Anderson, Kendra Lara and Ruthzee Louijeune in voting yes. Councilors Frank Baker, Michael Flaherty, Ed Flynn, Erin Murphy and Brian Worrell voted against. Councilor Kenzie Bok vote present.
Councilors Baker and Flynn voted against giving the student representative a vote.
Under Arroyo and Mejia's proposals, the city would phase in an elected committee starting in 2024, with a new eight-member committee of both appointed and elected members - and a voting student rep. By 2028, the city would have a 13-member elected school committee, with nine members elected from the same districts as district city councilors, three citywide at-large members and the student member, appointed by a student committee.
In 2021, voters approved the idea of an elected school committee in a non-binding referendum.
WBUR has more.
| Attachment | Size |
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 Proposal to restore an elected school committee | 174.23 KB |
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Comments
Louise Day Hicks is looking
Louise Day Hicks is looking up and smiling.
Whose interests are they going to represent?
A majority of my students' parents were not born in the United States and cannot vote. A majority of voters in the city of Boston do not have children in the public school system here. I do not see how an elected school committee can be representative of the interests of BPS's students and their families.
Whose interests do the mayor
Whose interests do the mayor and city councilors represent by your logic?
The more checks there are in
The more checks there are in the process the more difficult it is for disgruntled elderly/childless voters and private school parents to highjack the committee like they often do in other cities and towns.
I hope Wu vetoes this
We have HAD an elected committee and it didn't work. (I'll readily admit that the schools haven't rushed to excellence under the appointed committee either.) Yesterday's Globe story had an excellent recap of why they moved away from an elected body. Basically, the Mayor has the power to make change happen, and 13 bureaucrats will not be able to find consensus and make things better.
agree
A large, 100% elected committee will be a circus. Imagine how the "weston whities" incident would have played out among a dozen elected officials, each eyeing higher office. Appointed officials would wait for the Mayor to step in. Elected officials would do the opposite and amplify it.
That is why Arroyo and Mejia sponsored it. It will create mayhem for Wu.
It was sponsored and filed
It was sponsored and filed before Wu became Mayor, before that election was even over.
An elected school committee got 79% of the vote. It won EVERY SINGLE PRECINCT in the city.
To frame it as some weird conspiracy theory about harming Wu that all her allies voted for.
Arroyo, Breadon, Coletta, Lara, Ruthzee, Mejia, and Anderson.
Is peak conspiracy.
But sure Baker, Flynn, Flaherty, and Murphy famously love Wu and thus here voted...oh wait.
That said
All of the committee members involved in that incident were ultimately unaccountable to anyone but the mayor. If he wanted them to stay, they would have been reappointed.
Of course, the elected council did have similar issues back in the day, which is why, in the end, we have an appointed board today.
I'm on the fence on this one. It does seem bad that we're the only community without an elected board, but as Gary C pointed out...
compromise then
Keep the committee half appointed, half elected. Wu messed up by not proposing that earlier.
Good thing an unelected
Good thing an unelected committee WORKS.
And we have an unelected and
And we have an unelected and that doesn't work either.
She should
But will she…
The buck should stop with the Mayor. After all, BPS and other departmental policies/ agendas should be the Mayor’s vision. That’s the main reason a majority of residents voted for her and the future Mayor. But this would give her and all future mayors plausible deniability- politicians really like that