John 'frozen food' Connolly shows that he has more brains than anyone else on the City Council. Just ask him. A man who would be mayor, who outshines his colleagues, John knows more than anyone else. Just ask him. There's John hiding in the bushes waiting for another bus to be late. That'd give him another headline at the expense of his colleagues. But of course he deserves it. Just ask him.

The BPS consumes over 30% of the city's budget and it is a mess.  The people who run it are in over their head.  The BTU do nothing but behave like the UAW.  Not only do the students get short changed, but taxpayers are are as well. If this school administration can't do simple things like getting buses where they belong on time or manage a school kitchen, how can we expect them to be successful at the real hard stuff, like eductaing kids? 

John Connolly is a self promoting opportunist.  A big believer in charter schools he seems to want to bash teacher unions to promote himself as some kind of savior when all he really cares about is positioning himself to run for mayor.

If you want to make a case for school assignments making a real difference in the quality of schools, you might try and explain how switching the students around will change anything.

ggod for connolly. ma

Connolly is campaigning for mayor at the expense of our public school system. If the problem is, as he acknowledges, the fact that 74% of the school families live in poverty, why doesn't he propose a plan to alleviate the poverty? It's easier (and more politically palatable) to blame teachers and their unions, exploiting jealousies of private-sector workers who have lost jobs and benefits and implying that taxes would decrease (they would not) if we had cheaper labor up in front of the class. Connolly is a demagogue, the type of pol who thrives on crises and misery. For his purposes, shuffling the kids around to re-segregate educational opportunity (such as it is here) is the perfect answer. If that's what you want, you could stick with Menino.

Its been a while since I read an entire article that never actually got around to saying anything about the topic.If the topic is a suggested change to the status quo, then where is the specific recommendation by the author?I'm baffled.Make sure all the schools are good? OK-Let's go with that.But of the suggestion is to go back to neighborhood schools, then by all means come out and say it!

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The BPS sets up traditional public schools to fail.  When that happens, the BPS qualifies for more federal and state money, then targets traditional schools for pilot, in-district charter, and “innovation” schools.  Examples of this include, the Emerson, Clap, Gavin, the small schools at South Boston High and Hyde Park Education Complex and Madison Park. You can tell which schools are on the BPS “Office of Strategic Planning” hit list because they are saturated, inequitably, with an inordinate percentage of Special Education and English Language Learners that does not reflect the district as a whole.  Look at the data from Co-Pilot, now Turnaround and spinning, English High: 35% SPED and 66% ELL- the highest percentage of ELL in a Massachusetts high school!

“The pervasive inequities across our school system” that John Connolly speaks of, are instigated by the BostonPublic School system!  If you took all the students from the BPS exam, in-district charter, pilot, Horace Mann, and innovations schools and salted them throughout Boston’s traditional schools, all traditional schools would be making AYP!  To bring back “high quality schools” for all families, it’s time to change the law and evaluate “school districts” for making AYP, not individual schools!  

These BPS “special schools” are really segregation academies paid for with Boston taxpayer dollars! These BPS segregation academies should be required to backfill any empty seats in all grades, and their schools population should reflect the demographic, especially the SPED and ELL populations, of the BPS system.  They should be part of the BPS school registration process along with the traditional BPS schools, no gate-keeping applications, no special “lottery,” all BPS schools should go to ONE “showcase of schools.”   These are Boston Public Schools, paid for with Boston taxpayer dollars, let ALLBostonPublic School students have fair access to them!

http://www.fenwayhs.org/sites/fenwayhs.org/files/Application_Fenway_2012-2013.pdf

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Communities, that do not have a “Portfolio of Schools” like the Boston Public Schools, always seem to make AYP? Why? Have you ever heard of schools in Lexington and Wellesley not making AYP? No! There is a reason for this, and it not that kids in those communities are smarter, or that their teachers are “newer, better, innovative, creative, younger,” and cheaper, “Teach for America” or “Boston Teacher Residency” teachers!  Unlike the Boston Public Schools, in the communities making AYP, all students attend traditional “heterogeneous” schools.  Advanced students are offered Advance Placement (AP) courses, or have International Baccalaureate (IB) programs within their regular schools.  These communities don’t separate and send students to separate exam, in-district charter, or “beacon of light” pilot schools!

The BPS “Portfolio of Schools” is comprised of 128 schools, 75 are traditional schools that take everyone, and the rest are “special schools” which include 3 exam schools, 21 pilot schools, 6 in-district charter schools, and 3 innovation schools.  These BPS “special schools” get to cherry pick 10,000+ students, by exam or by a gate-keeping application process required to participate in a lottery for a seat!  Now, segregation is when you impose the separation of a race or class of people from others or from a main body or group.  That is what is happening in Boston Public Schools.  Only this time, the segregation is happening to Special Education students, English Language Learners and students found “not to be the right fit” for the schools philosophy (read behavior problems).  These BPS “special schools” get to return students to BPS traditional schools if “they are not the right fit!”  In addition, here is a little BPS secret (tell no one), these “special schools” do not have to “BACKFILL” empty seats!  Backfilling “would change their community,” So they do not have the revolving door found in BPS traditional schools.

Students should be able to go to the school closest to where they live. If that school is substandard, then fix it. Don't tell us that the tax base in that area is too low to support needed improvements. Go after the slumlords who are collecting market rents, often from the city itself. Take the money that would be saved by eliminating busing and use it to fix the schools. That's right- I'm a liberal/progressive who opposes busing. It's stupid idea.