Last Night At School Committee

Last night’s School Committee meeting began with remarks from Chair Jeri Robinson in which she addressed her comments at the  last School Committee meeting  on the troubled state of Boston Public Schools. In her remarks last night, Chair Robinson claimed that her unscripted comments were used to promote a negative image of the district and that public criticism of the district following her remark...

Last night was the first School Committee meeting held in-person since the start of the pandemic, and it was conducted in a hybrid format with both in-person and remote public testimony. The meeting began with the Superintendent’s Report, which featured a number of positive back-to-school updates, including a low number of teacher vacancies, a high number of schools with fully operational kitchens...

Last night was the first School Committee meeting of the new school year, and it began by introducing the Committee’s newest member, Chantal Lima Barbosa. The first report of the evening was on the results of an external investigation into allegations that BPS leaders discriminated against administrators of color , which concluded that there were no findings of racial discrimination. The meeting c...

Last night’s School Committee meeting was a special meeting with only one agenda item: Superintendent Skipper’s self-evaluation of her performance over the past school year . Superintendent Skipper framed her evaluation in four standards: instructional leadership, management and operations, family and community engagement, and professional culture. For each standard, the Superintendent provided a...

Last night was the last School Committee meeting of this academic year, and it was an unusual one. There were no reports on the agenda (other than the Superintendent’s Report), and the meeting came in the wake of multiple controversies in the BPS community. The meeting began with an update from Chair Jeri Robinson on the new admissions policy for Madison Park proposed last month. Chair Robinson sh...

Last night’s meeting began with a discussion of a big announcement made the previous day by Mayor Wu and Superintendent Skipper regarding changes to several BPS high schools . On Tuesday, these leaders announced a vision that included relocating the O’Bryant School to the vacant West Roxbury Education Complex in a new, state-of-the-art facility and expanding the Madison Park School to fill the spa...

Last night’s meeting began with the Superintendent’s Report, which started with a moment of silence for the recent loss of two students. The Superintendent then discussed a recent Boston Globe article on chronic absenteeism , noting that BPS has seen a 7% improvement in its chronic absenteeism rate but still has a long way to go (chronic absenteeism is currently around 40%). School Committee membe...

Last night was a short School Committee meeting beginning with the Superintendent’s Report, which focused on summer program enrollment. School Committee members pressed for details on exam school admissions, a topic notably absent from the Superintendent’s Report despite students having just received invitations last Friday, and multiple parents joined public comment to express frustrations with e...

Last night’s meeting began with the Superintendent’s Report, which focused on acceleration academies and summer programming. The Superintendent discussed the district’s expansion of summer learning seats, announcing that BPS now has the capacity to serve 17,000 students this summer, with about 4,500 students already enrolled. There was no discussion of the process for choosing and enrolling in spe...

Last night was a short School Committee meeting, with only one report on transformation schools. The meeting began with the Superintendent’s report, in which she touched on two issues. First, Superintendent Skipper discussed an error in the exam schools admissions process that led to the miscalculation of student GPAs , affecting eligibility for dozens of students. The exam schools admissions proc...

Last night, the School Committee spent the majority of its time discussing and voting on the Superintendent’s final budget recommendation for the next fiscal year . The School Committee was split on the budget: some members expressed hesitance about adding to the district’s hundreds of vacancies and creating a fiscal cliff in future years, while others applauded the investments in the budget and e...

Last night’s meeting began with a one-hour budget hearing, followed by a lengthy discussion of three main topics: budget, transportation, and school mergers. Superintendent Skipper began her report with an overview of a new organizational chart for BPS , increasing the number of department chiefs reporting to three deputy superintendents. School Committee members raised questions about the number...

Last night’s meeting began with the Superintendent’s Report, the majority of which focused on transportation and transformation schools. Superintendent Skipper discussed the recent controversy over a pending RFP for management of the bus system that received only one bidder – current management company Transdev. She also celebrated the addition of new electric buses to the BPS fleet, the beginning...

Last night’s meeting marked the beginning of the annual BPS budget process. The meeting began with the Superintendent’s Report, in which Superintendent Skipper discussed the district’s progress in implementing contractually-obligated back-pay for educators and new developments in the school merger process. The Superintendent noted that she has added staff to ensure employees receive appropriate pa...

Last night’s meeting focused primarily on three policy areas. The first dealt with contractually-obligated back-pay for BPS staff. Despite agreeing to pay increases in the most recent union contract, BPS has yet to implement these increases, with Superintendent Skipper noting they hope to have the issue sorted by mid-February. BPS teachers and staff members, including the Boston Teachers Union pre...

Last night was the first full School Committee meeting of 2023, following last week’s annual Organizational Meeting in which the Committee approved their 2023 meeting schedule and reappointed Chair Jeri Robinson and Vice Chair Michael O’Neill to their leadership positions. The meeting began with the Superintendent’s Report, where Superintendent Skipper provided updates on COVID-19, school safety,...

Last night’s meeting was the last School Committee meeting of 2022, and the School Committee spent the majority of the meeting kicking off the process for next year’s budget discussion.  The meeting began with the Superintendent’s Report, where Superintendent Skipper discussed student safety, transportation, and rising COVID-19 cases in Boston – an issue raised by several public commenters last ni...

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 pro...

Last night’s meeting began with the Superintendent’s Report, the majority of which focused on transportation. The Superintendent reported that on-time arrivals for morning buses increased to 89% in November, up from 88% the previous month. School Committee members asked questions about how many students are actually impacted by these delays and how students are being tracked, and district leaders...

Last night’s meeting began with the Superintendent’s Report, in which Superintendent Skipper covered student safety, transportation, absenteeism, and teacher diversity. The Superintendent highlighted the impact of social media on student behavior, noting that tense online conversations often spill into in-person interactions and calling on everyone to come together to help students re-engage with...

Last night’s meeting was four hours long, with the School Committee hearing only one presentation after deciding to delay their report on hiring and diversity to next week’s meeting. The Superintendent began with her report with updates on enrollment, transportation, and test scores. Superintendent Skipper informed the Committee that, as of this month, there are 48,734 students enrolled in the dis...

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 stu...

Last night’s meeting was Mary Skipper’s first as BPS Superintendent. The School Committee welcomed Superintendent Skipper back to the district and also introduced and welcomed new student representative Diego Mehta. The meeting began with the Superintendent’s Report, in which Superintendent Skipper discussed her vision for “getting back to basics” on transportation, attendance, school food, and st...

Last night’s meeting was the first meeting since the start of school and the last for Dr. Drew Echelson as Acting Superintendent before Mary Skipper starts on September 26. The meeting began with Chair Jeri Robinson announcing that a report on the Mission Hill School would be postponed to the next meeting. Although there was no presentation during the meeting, the Boston Globe reported yesterday t...

Last night’s meeting was the last School Committee meeting of the summer – the last meeting before students go back to school next week. However, for the second time in a row, there was no quorum. For much of the meeting, there was only one other member besides the Chair. The official meeting lasted just fifteen minutes, with a quorum of members voting on a few action items before continuing to ot...