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Wu vetoes plan for elected school committee
By adamg on Fri, 02/17/2023 - 6:03pm
The Herald reports Mayor Wu vetoed a city-council proposal that would return the school committee to being all elected.
When she ran for mayor in 2021, Wu had called for a hybrid school committee, with some elected members, but also some seats still reserved to ensure representation of various ethnic groups and people with particular educational expertise.
Seven councilors voted for an all elected committee, five voted against and Councilor Kenzie Bok voted "present." The measure was for a home-rule petition asking the state legislature to let Boston change back to an elected school committee.
Boston became the only municipality with an appointed school committee in 1992.
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Comments
excellent
The Mayor is taking responsibility.
And I have a bridge to sell
And I have a bridge to sell you.
Exactly
She doesn’t want to give up control of BPS and recognize the voters wishes.
Anything and everything is now squarely on her.
Next violent assault. On her. Next strike. On her. Kids graduation from HS reading at a 5th grade level. Yup on her.
Agreed!
I am with you. This is a good thing. There is no evidence showing an elected school board does anything but force yet more politicking into public education. Boston's shameful history of elected school boards enforcing brutal inequality is only part of the story here.
That said, the BPS' accountability remains a major issue here in Boston but that is a fight for the mayor on another day.
yup
The last thing we need is to be attracting monetary influence into the education of our kids
There hasn't been a mayor
There hasn't been a mayor that's taken responsibility for BPS since busing.
Question: Why is having a
Question: Why is having a committee appointed by the mayor better for the community than an elected one?
From what I gather, Boston schools have not been doing so well, wouldn't a committee represented by the community be given a shot at reform?
Yes, that's one way to look
Yes, that's one way to look at the subject but let's look at two examples;
1. Elected school boards around the country do not have a good track record, or at least a track record that is better than BPS' current appointed board. There are plenty of examples at large districts where elected boards become a political stepping stone for individuals, rather than a strong governing body for the school system.
2. Boston already has an elected body with the City Council....and how's that working out for us??? The current city council is the most divisive and incompetent group of individuals we've had in a long time and that's saying a LOT. If we think that same structure will HELP our schools, god help us all.
Answer
History. If you weren't here in the '70s, look up the names Louise Day Hicks and Ted Landsmark, for starters. As great as it is, Boston has a well-deserved reputation for racism.
Very few people thought Hicks
Very few people thought Hicks was competent, very few people ran for School.Council that year either. Neither would you have!! Lol! The white neo liberal Armchair revisionists who never had a bottle or a rock thrown at them, never threatened in school, never watched their neighborhood go up in smoke. The 70s were the end of the 50's not just a Boston Townies Brawl!
As if Racism disappeared after you stepped into Cambridge or Quincy!
I said none of that.
I answered the question of why an appointed board is better for Boston. Whether anyone at all thought Hicks was competent, she was elected. And re-elected. Nobody said Cambridge or Quincy are less racist (although neither of them had court-ordered busing to integrate their schools, IIRC), but the subject is Boston, and when people say "Boston is racist," they aren't excluding other parts of the area.
Elected vs. Appointed
One of the problems Boston (and other cities) have faced is that people use an election to the School Committee as a stepping stone to other offices. There is no true commitment to the office. The other problem is that often those elected are people who talk a good talk or have a standing popularity in some circles, but totally lack any knowledge base of how schools work nor any ability to formulate plans to fix problems. They simply take up space and collect a paycheck.
Having an appointed school committee offers some level of ability to review a person's resume and determine if they have skills and experience that will benefit the position and the team.
Boston's School Committee faces a no-win situation. It seems no matter what they recommend it is opposed by the administration, the teacher's union, or parent advocates. An example is returning metal detectors back to schools in view of the increase in school violence and that continues to be opposed.
I had a child in the BPS system that was assigned to the Burke. That child was threatened daily with no assistance from anyone. My child dropped out as a junior. The principal called me and opposed this action which I had no recourse except to support in light of my child's safety.
I squarely asked that principal if they would personally guarantee my child's safety and I was met with double talk. I then posed the same question over and over pointing out the rhetoric was not answering the question was a simple yes or no. Finally they stated they could not guarantee my child's safety. I countered with the decision to drop out was one of self preservation. We ended the call and I never heard from that person again.
My child was a focused person, got a GED, has an excellent job, and is now working on their masters, and that was no thanks to BPS. It was all about their own perseverance and family support.
You need solid people in the school committee that can contribute and try to evoke change. That will be a hard position to fill. The school committee should not be populated with the loudest month that plays to the emotions of a population, or has a war chest to slam advertising down the throats of the public. That may also need to step on some toes that does not like some things, but at this point things have degraded to a point where you can no longer assure your children that they will be safe, or get a decent education.
Electric buses do not do that. Nor does opposition to metal detectors and school police.
My child's experience was some 30 years ago. No changes since. That is not the fault of a school committee but administrations, city councils, parents, and teachers that fail to understand that this is not a new age pink bubble situation. Hard times require some hard solutions and that may have to be in place for a couple of generations. The failures of our society at large adds to this.
A friend of mine ran for a
A friend of mine ran for a committee position in Lakewood, CO. Great guy, extremely intelligent, JD degree, founded a non-profit dedicated to providing mental health counseling to students struggling with suicide, his wife is a highly respected and recognized teacher in the district.
But the committee races were targeted by conservative groups as an opportunity to advance their anti-education, anti-science, anti-pretty much everything agendas. Koch brothers funded the campaigns and the crazies won. My friend was devastated. They immediately started breaking state laws and punishing students and faculty who spoke out against their policies. The community was in an uproar.
Before the school year had completed there was a recall, all the Koch-funded crazies were ousted and a new board was elected.
Greed
She has already loaded up the school department with her friends and has created many positions that never existed before. She hates to give that up.
Such as?
Would love to hear some specific examples.
Seconded
That's a bold, anonymous accusation with zero evidence cited.
Deven?
Deven?
Fixed
Who put the D key so close to the S key?
That was
me.
Small Correction
This required a Home Rule Petition, which is what this was.
Home Rule Petitions require Mayor's signature. Period.
This isn't technically even a Veto as those are only for Ordinances. This is a "disapproval.
So Council, like for every HRP a Mayor refuses to sign, can't overturn that decision.
im sure
that our local (and not so local) Christian Nationalists and pals were frothing at the chance to put extreme weirdos on the committee or at least start fights.
Who is Deven?
And why should we be surprised that the mayor won’t cede power?
She honed her craft under Menino, and it shows.
Typo and ...
It's not like she didn't say when she was running for mayor that she opposed a purely elected committee.
This is no basis for a system of government.
Who decides which ethnic groups get to have a representative on the board?
She decides who sits on the school committee, yes
Every mayor since Ray Flynn has had that right.
Yeah, but assigning the
Yeah, but assigning the positions based on race is problematic.
Who decides?
Some watery tart I'd imagine.
Bps is one of the top 3 issues facing Boston
Along with teen violence and the MBTA, hopefully she has the right candidates in mind , as the system needs a major shake up!
If it keeps
what is happening nationwide and particularly in the south with the anti-science, anti-liberal, anti-education zealots banning books and enforcing their authoritarian wishes on the curriculum, it's reason enough.
Who wants to give the clowns, idiots, assholes, and hucksters who listen to Howie Carr any vote on how children are educated? Maybe they can home school (in their septic tanks). They don't deserve input and for my part I'm willing to trust educated professionals.
I don’t care
because I do not send my kids to public schools. But what I do find amusing is I’d be willing to bet 50% of you people who supports Wu’s decision probably don’t even live in Boston and out of that 98% of you couldn’t name one current school committee member.
This is the mayor taking away representation from the minority neighborhoods who really need an elected official in this position.
BPS parent checking in
I'd guess you're wrong. BPS parent who is against elected school committee because, unlike in smaller towns, election to citywide office favors those with name recognition who can raise money . . . not someone purely interested in education. This isn't Melrose. Or Beverly. Or Marshfield.
80% of voters
passed this referendum question that was on the ballot, and now Wu just ignores the people. Hints of communism if you ask me.
The underlying problem seems
The underlying problem seems to be that no matter how the members of the school committee are chosen, they're likely to include people who have the wrong goals/priorities--and there's a huge amount of disagreement about what the right goals are.
Even if we can all agree that the priority should be giving every child in Boston a good education, we'll still disagree about what that means: what subjects should be taught, and when and how, as well as things like appropriate class sizes and how to decide which children attend which schools.
And that's before we get into budget problems, or how to avoid having decisions made by people who don't agree on that basic priority, who will cut useful programs to save money because they don't have children attending the local public schools, or who are ideologically opposed to the existence of public education.
Is curriculum a sticking point?
I only follow BPS from Uhub stories but unlike other parts of the country there doesn't seem to be serious disagreements about what actually gets taught. It's more the overall management of the schools in regards to procedures, facilities, personal, etc.
I'd be interested in parents thoughts about curriculum deficiencies in regards to the school board and if that's a major problem.
I'm not envious of anyone on the school board or really anyone in the system. The problems seem incredibly difficult and the resources always lacking.
Curriculum is dictated by the
Curriculum is dictated by the state to a huge extent. Kids have to meet certain statewide standards so at a minimum topics taught have to cover that. So that takes a certain amount of leeway out of the discussion.
Why is Boston
the only city/town in Massachusetts that doesn't vote for its own school board?
Because it couldn't elect one that could get the job done
I'm over-simplifying the factors that lead to a change that happened before my lifetime but from a recent Globe story, the elected members of the School Committee had all the power and lacked the will to solve real problems plaguing the school system.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/02/13/metro/explainer-how-bostons-mayor...
So the decision was made to put the committee under the control of the mayor, with the thought that any failure of the committee could be squarely blamed on the mayor that appointed those members.
A hybrid elected and appointed committee was the alternative proposal to a fully appointed one.
See answer above
https://www.universalhub.com/comment/922480#comment-922480
Those of us who lived here in the 1970s understand exactly why elected racist School Committee was replaced.