Dearborn School to be run like charter, but without usual citywide admission lottery
WBUR reports on the BPS decision to cede much control of the Roxbury STEM school to the operators of the Dudley Street Neighborhood Charter School in an attempt to stave off a state takeover over its standardized-test scores.
One key difference: Unlike other charter schools in the city, admission to the Dearborn will remain based on BPS elementary schools that already feed into the Dearborn and BPS's existing school-choice system.
However, BPE wants to turn the Dudley Street school into one of those feeders, which could open the Dearborn to citywide enrollment, since that school does have a citywide lottery. Doing that would require School Committee approval. Also, BPE wanted a five-year contract; BPS gave it a three-year contract.
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Comments
Wow what an innovative approach to
have a neighborhood school responsible to meet reasonable educational expectations. It only took 40 years to figure this out.
They still need to bulldoze
They still need to bulldoze the building to line the pockets of developer friends and contractors........... I mean save the school.
Your comment
reflects how we got here.
Yes it does. That it's more
Yes it does. That it's more important to destroy a building for cronyism than it is to provide a functional neighborhood school. At least in this case the pressure has forced the administration to promise to provide a replacement neighborhood school. But there is no need to tear down the building in the first place.
So many of the city's neighborhood schools have be demolished or sold off to developers at the expense of our children. It's hard to have neighborhood schools when the city keeps selling off the buildings or dispatching bulldozers.
Well if you can agree to get Boston homeowners to foot 100% of
the bill for rebuilding a 40 year broken school system then good luck. Creative people develop and build a better mouse trap.
Barros
Given that Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative is a partner to the DSN Charter school and that John Barros ran the DSNI for a while and he's now a high ranking member of the Walsh team, this should get through city government easily now, right?
John Barros
is a gifted problem solver and by his own experience understands what has to be done to fix broken schools. His input can only help. If you are a Boston school parent you should not just want your child to get a good education you should expect and demand it. Schools should expect and demand parent accountability. If we get both then its win win.
I like Barros
He should be a great asset to the mayor's office. I was making the point that this deeper connection should help smooth this plan, not that there's anything corrupt or anything negative.
Would love to know
where the STEM expertise is coming from b/c as far as I know, DSNI does not possess any.
Hiring?
It's going to be a new program regardless of who runs it so either way the STEM expertise will be hired from somewhere, right?
Given how BPS has handled Madison Park, I'm not sure there's a lot of talent over there to implement specialized education anyways.
If the school committee votes
If the school committee votes on it, it will get approval. They never vote on anything unless they are ready to pass it. Also, Barros was a member of the school committee once too. I voted for him in the primary so nothing against him, but the connections run deep. Guess you can expect that from someone who has lived and worked in the city for a long time and has hundreds of family members in and around Boston.