What's Tom Menino afraid of?

Hizzona is all huffy about the proposed $3-billion development near Fan Pier not because it might lead to the accelerated yuppification of Southie but because the proposal includes a private K-12 school.

Only for the rich, he fulminates. A slap in the face at Boston Public Schools, he harrumphs.

Feh, I reply.

Now, as long-sufferingtime readers know, our daughter is in a Boston public school. I have my complaints, but basically, I think she's getting a good education, both in book learnin' and in life (like, she's not going to school with a horde of kids who are exactly like her).

So the developer wants to build a private school? What's the mayor afraid of? That Boston public schools won't measure up? What's that say about the quality of education in those public schools? Boston Latin School and Boston Latin Academy are suddenly chopped liver?

Instead of fulminating about "the grandson of a Boston mayor," Menino and school officials should concentrate on improving public schools (starting with hiring a superintendent already), on continuing the progress they've made over the past decade.

And if they really want to attract the well heeled out-of-towners that would be attracted to the Hynes project, maybe they should come up with a way to make it far easier for them to get their kids into a good school than subjecting them to a system that, in the case of that Hynes project, could wind up with their kids assigned to a school in Hyde Park (nothing against Hyde Park, but that sort of extreme cross-town busing is not what I'd want to subject a first-grader to).