Mom Hustle reports:
My 5 year old BPS student does "quiet drills" where the children sit in their cubbies silently. My daughter said she just snuggles her stuffies. They aren't told what it's for.
Part of a longer discussion on crazed-killer drills in Boston schools.
The state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education today formally blasted Boston Public Schools, saying they need "immediate improvement," especially in the ways the system deals with special-education and ESL students and transportation and with the fact its central administration is pretty dysfunctional. Read more.
A 13-year-old and a 17-year-old were arrested today after Charlestown High School officials and police found two guns at the school. Read more.
WCVB reports on the contract with City Fresh Foods, the largest non-construction contract the city's ever awarded to a Black-owned business, and part of Mayor Wu's pledge to increase the number of city contracts that go to minority-owned businesses.
Mejia argues against state takeover.
The City Council voted overwhelmingly today to fight to keep local control of BPS in the face of possible state receivership, saying a new mayor and a new superintendent deserve a chance to finally bring the sort of change BPS needs and that the last thing Boston - where voters strongly supported an elected school committee in the fall election - needs is an outside commissar screwing things up even more. Read more.
Jonathan Mulhern, associate head of school of Boston Latin School, is leaving to become a middle-school principal in Canton.
Read more.
The committee agreed with Superintendent Brenda Cassellius that the school was too far beyond hope, WBZ reports.
WFXT reports a bag of bullets was found on a Boston Latin Academy loading dock around 1:30 p.m. today.
City Councilors Ed Flynn and Michael Flaherty want answers after they learned from a parent that a live .45 round was found in a restroom at the Condon K-8 School on D Street, just a few days after a "a piece of paper or literature was also found at the school earlier this week displaying Nazi swastikas." Read more.
School Superintendent Brenda Cassellius today recommended that the School Committee vote to permanently shut, rather than try to fix, the Mission Hill K-8 School. Read more.
It's mostly over but the waiting now: The state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education has completed intensive audits and one-on-one interviews in Boston on the state of Boston Public Schools and is now compiling a report that could determine whether its board votes to take over Boston schools, a BPS official told city councilors today. Read more.
The Herald reports Garelick Farms sent BPS some 1,000 milk containers that were filled with a sanitizer solution instead of milk - and that BPS learned of the problem when a student gave his back to a cafeteria worker because it neither looked nor tasted like milk.
A worker at TechBoston Academy, 9 Peacevale Rd. in Dorchester, was arraigned today on two counts of lascivious posing a child in a state of nudity, the Suffolk County District Attorney's office reports. Read more.
Rachel Skerritt today announced her resignation at the end of the school year as Boston Latin School head of school.
In e-mail to BLS students, families and staff this afternoon, Skerritt wrote, first of the challenges of Covid-19 atop the challenges of life at the exam school, then continued: Read more.
Mayor Wu and School Committee Chair Jeri Robinson today announced a nine-member search committee and a process for finding a replacement for current BPS Superintendent Brenda Cassellius, starting with a series of "public listening sessions" and the hiring of a search firm to help manage the process. Read more.
Why BPS isn't lifting its mask requirement just yet.
Boston will lift its indoor mask requirement in most public spaces effective Saturday, because Covid-19 rates have dropped significantly, Dr. Bisola Ojikutu, the executive director of the Boston Public Health Commission said today. Read more.
BPS not to blame for what Harrison, at the back of this line of people, would do moments later.
A federal judge today dismissed a former English High School student's suit against BPS for the injuries he suffered when a counselor at the school shot him in the back of the head and left him for dead on Magazine Street in Newmarket Square in 2015, saying that BPS did nothing that would have led to the attempted murder. Read more.
Boston Police report arresting a student at Excel High School, 95 G St. in South Boston, after school staff members doing "a routine security check" Friday morning found a gun in his backpack.
Upon its discovery, the student ran out of the school. Police say officers found him later in Dorchester and arrested him on a charge of unlawful possession of a firearm.
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