Dec 07 2022 · Last Night @ School Committee Recap · Ep. 75
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 five hours long, beginning with the Superintendent’s Report, the majority of which celebrated the district’s Educator of the Year award recipients.
The first Committee report last night was on union contracts for food service workers, police patrolmen, and custodians. All three contracts were approved. The second report was a presentation on school and spaces renaming projects, including the renaming of the McKinley School to the Melvin H. King South End Academy. The third and final report of the evening was an annual presentation from the Office of Equity, which focused primarily on significant increases in bullying and sexual misconduct complaints. While there was information in the report about proactive trainings held this year, the report did not go into detail on what steps are being taken to address the concerning rise in misconduct. Several key topics in the news and on parents’ minds were not discussed at last night’s meeting, including continued issues with on-time arrival of school buses, steep declines in enrollment, insufficient support systems for addressing the impacts of the pandemic on student learning, and continued teacher staffing shortages.
The next School Committee meeting will be held next Wednesday, December 14 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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