85000000/50000=1,700 If you can find teachers to work for fifty thousand. That's a lot off staff you could hire. 

BPS parents from across the city have been sending the EAC a loud and clear message for many months: what matters most to us is sending our kids to a high quality school. Parents aren't happy about putting their little kids on buses, but we'll do it if it means our children go to a good school (just ask the parents of kids in METCO).  

Menino wanted "neighborhood" schools, which sound great and call to mind sweet images of schoolchildren walking down the road to the red brick schoolhouse.  Well, for some families in Boston, there isn't a single road in their neighborhood that leads to high quality schoolhouse.  What are these families supposed to do?  The Globe thinks that families in primarily low-income neighborhoods should just sit tight and wait for the Boston Public Schools to fulfill promises of change.  In the meantime, families in primarily white, middle class parts of town won't have to sit for anything; their chances of getting into the best city schools would be enshrined by a neighborhood-based assignment policy.  

Improving all of Boston schools has to be our focus, along with making sure all children have an equal shot at getting into the best schools. 

Thanks Lawrence Harmon for pointing out that the three EAC members who have not been interested in equity. Does any other parent find it disturbing that one of these EAC members is also an appointed school committee member and according to Harmon is not concerned with equity? YIKES!

Harmon's simplistic answer to changing school quality is to start bussing teachers - brilliant for a man who finds school assignment too complicated and can't figure out that 30% of the transportation budget goes to bussing non BPS students including those attending private schools and that 50% of the transportation budget is for bussing SPED students.

If Globe columnists took the time to attend community meetings they might learn a few things. For example that many of Boston's neighborhoods do not have enough space for all the children in the neighborhood so they have to be bussed out. One need only look at all the schools in East Boston that do not have room for all the children from East Boston. The BPS solution? to open up a citywide school in Brighton, a neighborhood with too many seats and not enough children.

The Globe has missed an opportunity to be part a rich and deep dialogue about Boston’s schools and those of us whose children attend them. The Globe’s opinion page could have been demanding a comprehensive capital plan to dovetail with the assignment process. Or it could have assigned journalists to investigate if past editorials and City promises have come true. Instead the Globe remains stuck in the 1970’s, incapable of moving beyond the concept of neighborhood schools and treating education as a privilege for some neighborhoods opposed as a right for all.

I continue to be shocked at how remarkably ill-informed the Globe is on school subjects. The Portland Press Herald just one a Polk award for investigative reporting on charter schools and poltical influence in Maine. Here in Boston, the Globe prefers to peddle its own politics rather than engage in substantive coverage. It has lost its soul and its civic role.

Every school should be a high quality school.  Those that are not will change fastest with parential pressure applied to school, officials and city politicians.  However, the farther the school is located from the child's home the less involved in school meetings parents become.  Travel to and from these widely dispersed schools becomes difficult especially when siblings may be in different schools and at different school levels. Finally there was a chance to better the system but as usual those charged by the mayor with the task have failed to look at the problem in a comprehensive manner.  We all want equity and the ability to have children attend high quality schools.  Why is this at odds with neighborhood schools?  Build more schools, hire more teachers and get away from the ideas of the 1970s that served no child but left many behind.

Harmon is right: Timidity appears to be the end product of the original call for bold change. 

Why such a monumental decision for Boston's future was entrusted to a group of people accountable to no one is beyond me. 

The families and the children in the neighborhood are the true determinants of the "quality" of the school. Until people understand and acknowledge this truth, no progress will be made. 

Earth to Larry. There is quick fix. DUH!

No quick fix.Could the Globe please fix it's IPAD interface.

In the 1970’s a bunch of Harvard social engineers simplistically theorized that busing kids around town would create equal educational opportunities. 41 or so years since, here we are promoting plans that are based upon the same (and since proven) flawed premise; if it were only that simple. The school system consumes about a third of the overall city budget.  So while everyone would take more money, funding is not an issue.  Among the untouched issues are work rules and antiquated seniority rules that protect individuals who may not be suitable to teach.  Also, there has been a succession of mediocre to poor superintendents who make matters worse by perpetuating novelty based “education complexes” and exhibit outright incompetency in matters of personnel management.  It’s no wonder the union fights school based management.  Would you want your career harmed by a principal who is a tax cheat or an abusive spouse? So while the unions and administration do nothing but rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic, city property taxpayers and the students are getting the short end of the stick.

The premise that schools will change when a high percentage of students come from the neighborhood is a completely faulty one.  Right now, in many of Boston's elementary schools over 70% of students are from the neighborhood and this has had little impact on the success of those schools.  In some neighborhoods it may be a positive influence, one of many, but not in all.  Particularly when the families of certain neighborhood are working multiple jobs, or are faced with other pressures that don't exist in wealthier neighborhoods (unsafe evening travel, a language or culture divide between the school and themselves, different ideas about the challenging the authority of principals and teachers,etc.), it will certainly not be the fix some envision.  If it truly were a fix, why are so many urban school districts with neighborhood schools such a mess?  

The bottom line is that the thing that fixes schools are strong leadership, good teaching, solid curriculum, resources (financial and otherwise), and a dedicated commitment of both stakeholders, politicians and community leaders.  Parents absolutely play a part, but they can't and shouldn't be expected to take the lead.

Its a poverty problem, and until people are willing to talk about that, nothing is going to change. Good teachers certainly help, but all of the research shows that the chronic stress brought on by poverty and the lack of early literacy for children growing up in poverty results in low achievement. Bring in all of the best teachers, extend the school day, strip all the union rights of teachers (so good luck getting anyone other than 20 year olds with no experience or committment to the long haul), relabel schools as charter or innovation or turnaround--none of it will make a major impact until we start talking about and taking action on poverty. 

What DOES help students coming from impoverished families is being in a socioeconomically diverse classroom with many children from families with resources. So far, BPS and this process has done very little to keep families with resources from fleeing the city when their children turn 3 and 4. Why would someone with resources gamble on this system when it could result in their child being in a classroom where 80% of the students are on free or reduced lunch, given everything we know about the effects of poverty on learning development of small children? Until BPS can make a compelling argument for people to keep their kids in the system, this will go on forever. 

"Meanwhile, the door is closing on the best opportunity in many years for Boston to join the ranks of normal cities and towns where families can expect their children to attend the school closest to home."

Is the point of this exercise for our city to be "normal?"  Or is it to be sure that all kids in the city have equal access to a great education? 

In addition his not very subtle racial coding of "normal" as white and suburban, Harmon gets how students are assigned in those "normal" suburbs wrong. Parents in Acton, for example, as an EAC member pointed out today, can choose any elementary school, and many, as in Boston, choose further from home.

Boston schools are terrible so let's put some more lipstick on the pig.