An outside audit of Boston public schools finds that even with school closings in recent years, there are way too many empty classrooms in BPS schools.
According to the audit, highlights of which BPS released this morning, BPS enrollment this year is 54,000 in a system with 90,000 seats.
The audit potentially paves the way for BPS to begin closing more schools - but also suggests that the $1.7 million to $2.2 million that could be saved from each school closing be used to boost after-school programs, add electives across the remaining schools and even build the "state-of-the-art high school" that outgoing City Councilor Charles Yancey spent 20 years unsuccessfully fighting for.
Officials did not identify any specific schools they feel should be shut. Separately, BPS is conducting its own review of school facilities to come up with a ten-year plan school-building plan and said:
Additional, targeted analysis would be required to confirm specific opportunities, as well as public engagement and strategic evaluations to weigh the costs and benefits of the different options.
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Comments
elephant in the room
By Bob P
Fri, 12/18/2015 - 3:09pm
I live on WR and the elementary school is 2 blocks away. My neighbor’s id had no chance to go there after not getting in for Pre K or K1. Now what choice did they have? The closest option was only a 30 minute bus ride away. Great options to send your 5 year only a bus for an hour each day. Can we look and see the system is broken. School choice doesn’t work and the find a plan that does. Charter Schools, closing schools is all a smoke screen obscuring the bigger problem
AirBnB?
By Lunchbox
Fri, 12/18/2015 - 9:08am
Seems like the obvious solution for all that extra space
time to get creative
By hydeparkish
Fri, 12/18/2015 - 9:48am
First the lottery system needs to end and go back to neighborhood schools.
Second the admin. Needs to identify larger empty or partially empty buildings near well performing schools to add capacity to the better schools. The other day I was driving by the large empty school in logan square in hyde park....relocate the nearby Roosevelt school which I hear is great and really hope our daughter gets into.
Third sell off vacant buildings or rent empty space to increase revenue.
There are alot of parents in our neighborhood that send their kids to private schools, paying to do so...perhaps there is a way to increase revenue by allowing donations to bring back the neighborhood system if cost is an issue?
Everyone we ask says elementary school and high school are good but middle school is the problem. So focus efforts on middle school and how to resolve behavioral issues.
The school lottery
By Will LaTulippe
Fri, 12/18/2015 - 10:22am
Doesn't that just make you queasy?
Surely
By Sock_Puppet
Fri, 12/18/2015 - 10:25am
You must know Jack, son.
No, I know plenty
By Will LaTulippe
Fri, 12/18/2015 - 7:50pm
Some schmuck lawyer from Wellesley who wormed his way into becoming a judge decided to ignore the prerogative of people living where they want to live, and tell Bostonians that they simply couldn't walk to the closest school, and that they had to board a bus instead.
One of the biggest "do as I say, not as I do" pieces of garbage who ever walked the Earth. Really, the least he could have done was grandfather it in so that you didn't get ripped out of your neighborhood's high school after 9 years in that school system.
And I didn't even grow up here, but I did grow up in Vermont, and I know what (expletive) smells like.
Cool story bro
By Sock_Puppet
Sat, 12/19/2015 - 8:34am
Apparently they don't read it in Vermont
Lease to Brookline?
By Brooknon
Fri, 12/18/2015 - 10:36am
Why is the Town of Brookline looking to build a new school? We should look to lease an existing school from Boston.
Brookline eyes possible sites for new school
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/regionals/west/2...
Seems like a win-win outcome to me.
Oh, God
By adamg
Fri, 12/18/2015 - 11:44am
Can you imagine the reaction among the good parents of Brookline at an idea like that? The public hearing would go on for a week and you'd have to wear ear protection for all the anguished cries about violence and cooties and stuff.
If this were even possible, that is. Aside from what ultimately became the failed MDC experiment, eastern Massachusetts has always been far more resistant to any governmental efforts that stretch across municipal lines, even something as relatively benign as your idea.
Indeed.
By erik g
Fri, 12/18/2015 - 12:17pm
I know exactly what that fracas would look like... I was a public school kid in a 99% white Connecticut suburb when Sheff v. O'Neill came down in 1996. From the public hearings, I learned how this was all a nefarious plot by "those people" in the lawless inner neighborhoods of Hartford to expand their drug dealing and human trafficking operations into new markets, while also adopting a ruthless (though economically questionable) strategy of tying down innocent middle schoolers and employing used needles to inject heroin directly into their unwilling veins.
Which is to say, I think we need to enact this policy yesterday, and Adam should have exclusive reporting rights to the ensuing Town Hall meetings.
The McKinley School on St. Mary's St.
By Pete Nice
Sat, 12/19/2015 - 8:13am
Is as close to another city as you will ever get for a school property. If Brookline said they were going to pay Boston rent for this building isn't that crazy of an idea.
The Baldwin School on Corey/Wash is also real close to Brookline.
Hilarious
By Sock_Puppet
Fri, 12/18/2015 - 11:49am
I think that's a great solution. All the people who leave Boston for the schools get to Brookline and end up having their kids bused back to Boston to school. Brilliant.
One problem is that it's not the schools near Brookline that have the empty space. I could see them hauling kids a few blocks across the border, to say Mission Hill or Brighton, but not all the way down to Hyde Park.
But if we're going to assume the other problems with the idea are resolved, we can assume that one is resolved too.
Way to bump enrollment by 3,000 students
By anon
Fri, 12/18/2015 - 1:13pm
Drop METCO, and Boston will get back 3,000 students and end the most absurd busing program in the state.
I think the City itself has the most absurd busing program.
By Pete Nice
Sat, 12/19/2015 - 8:52am
That much is pretty clear.
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