Oct 12 2022 · Last Night @ School Committee Recap · Ep. 71
What happens at each Boston School Committee meeting has big implications for our students and our city. In “Last Night @ School Committee,” Jill Shah and Ross Wilson recap the highlights of each meeting, provide commentary and context, and shine a light on the decisions our leaders are making.
Last night’s meeting was Mary Skipper’s second as superintendent, and it began with a solemn acknowledgement of recent incidents of violence in the BPS community. Superintendent Skipper continued her report with an update on transportation, in which she discussed continued disruptions for families due to uncovered routes and insufficient bus monitors. The Superintendent next presented data on student absenteeism, which has increased over the last three years, and School Committee members pressed for further detail on this data.
There were two reports presented to the School Committee last night, the first of which was a report on the past year’s MCAS results. The results showed that, while BPS is trending slightly better than the state and other urban districts, achievement gaps persist among certain student groups. There was no discussion about trends at the school level, nor did the School Committee hear from teachers or school leaders to understand what is working. The last report of the night was a presentation of a strategic plan for the Office of Multilingual and Multicultural Education. The report outlined an ambitious goal of providing multilingual education to every student in every school for whom English is not their primary language, but it lacked clarity on strategies or action steps for achieving this vision.
The next School Committee meeting will be held on Wednesday, October 26 at 5pm on Zoom.
We want to hear from you! If you have concerns about how BPS is serving your child or your family, please send us an email at podcast@shahfoundation.org. And if you’d like to share a thought that we may use in a future episode, you can leave us a voicemail at 508-261-5904.
Ways to Engage and Resources:
Continue to demand accountability from our school system by emailing the Mayor and School Committee members:
Mayor Michelle Wu: mayor@boston.gov
Chair Jeri Robinson: grobinson@bostonpublicschools.org
Vice Chair Michael O’Neill: moneill2@bostonpublicschools.org
Quoc Tran: qtran2@bostonpublicschools.org
Lorena Lopera: llopera@bostonpublicschools.org
Rafaela Polanco Garcia: rpolancogarcia@bostonpublicschools.org
Dr. Stephen Alkins: salkins@bostonpublicschools.org
Brandon Cardet-Hernandez: bcardethernandez@bostonpublicschools.org
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