Last summer, Mayor Michelle Wu laid out an ambitious years-long proposal for reforming Boston’s high schools, promising tens of millions of dollars in new investments in buildings and programs to create “a generational change” for the district’s students.
But now the city has killed the cornerstone of the plan: moving the John D. O’Bryant School of Mathematics and Science from the Roxbury campus it shares with Madison Park Technical Vocational High School so both schools could accommodate more students and better programming. In an email Tuesday night to parents of O’Bryant and Madison Park students, Wu and district leaders said they were “halting those plans indefinitely” following months of vociferous community opposition.
It’s unclear how this decision will affect the city’s earlier pledge to invest more resources in the O’Bryant School, where students and staff have complained for years about the cramped and crumbling conditions of their classrooms.
Speaking to the School Committee Wednesday evening, Superintendent Mary Skipper emphasized that the district is still going ahead with plans to redevelop Madison Park, with construction slated to begin in the summer of 2025.
”There is strong support for a renovated Madison Park campus,” Skipper said. “I want to assure everyone that we’re moving forward with this project.”
Skipper acknowledged that keeping the O’Bryant at its current location will result in less space for Madison, but said it won’t compromise the district’s plans to create “programs that are essential” to the vocational school and expand its enrollment, which the city hopes to double to 2,200 students. Keeping the O’Bryant at the Roxbury campus will also prevent the district from reinventing the adult education center at Madison Park, Skipper said.
But Skipper had no new details to share with the committee on next steps for the O’Bryant, beyond a planned March 13 meeting. That meeting, previously intended as a “pre-planning community visioning session” for the proposed new facility, will become “an opportunity to have some dialogue,” she said. The future of the O’Bryant and West Roxbury site will be considered, along with other BPS schools, in the annual facilities planning process the district laid out earlier this year.
The city’s plan for overhauling the high schools, unveiled in an elaborate press conference last June, called for relocating the O’Bryant to a completely rebuilt facility at the now-vacant West Roxbury Education Complex on the VFW Parkway, allowing it to expand by 400 students to 2,000, with new spaces for biomedical science, robotics, and engineering. Under the initial proposal, Madison Park would have taken over the entire Roxbury campus, enabling enrollment to grow in addition to creating space for new vocational programs, including a partnership with JetBlue to train students in aviation technology.
But the proposal was immediately met with protest from O’Bryant parents, teachers, and students who said they were blindsided by the decision and their input was ignored. Above all, they feared that moving the city’s most diverse exam school to West Roxbury — a predominantly white neighborhood that is largely inaccessible by public transit — would discourage low-income students and students of color from applying.
Will Austin, CEO of Boston Schools Fund, which funds public, charter, and private schools in Boston, said the fight over the future of the O’Bryant is a precursor of the political challenges the city and district will face when they close and merge schools in the years ahead.
“This is a preview of how hard this work is to do,” Austin said. “It’s an indicator of how strong community voice may be in this process and to make sure the community is engaged, but also, frankly, agrees with the decisions that are being provided.”
School Committee member Stephen Alkins said Wednesday that the district missed an opportunity by proposing the O’Bryant move last summer before it could analyze it using the decision framework introduced last fall to guide future construction, renovations, and school closures by assessing, among other things, student demographics near facilities.
“This would have been a wonderful tool to sort of think about the O’Bryant school,” Alkins said.
Member Brandon Cardet-Hernandez agreed, noting the city made a big press announcement of the move in the middle of developing a broader facilities plan.
“We’ve had a lot of conversations here around [committee] members not wanting to see piecemeal proposals around a facilities plan,” Cardet-Henrandez said. “I appreciate the decision to pull [the proposal] and at the same time I’m curious what do we own that we will do differently moving forward?”
Meanwhile, teachers and students are eager to see the city fulfill its promises to improve the O’Bryant. Jessica Tang, president of the Boston Teacher’s Union, lauded the decision to pull the plug on the move. But the city, she said, should still provide the school with new or upgraded facilities. Moreover, the decision to keep the O’Bryant in Roxbury should not slow down the broader push to revamp the district’s aging buildings, she said.
“It’s one school, and the West Roxbury Educational Complex still can be renovated,” Tang said. “There are some smaller high schools that I think would love a new facility and campus.”
The redevelopment of Madison Park in particular should remain a priority, Tang said, as should other efforts like a new facility for the BCLA-McCormack, a 7-12 school currently split between two sites in Hyde Park and Dorchester. Skipper told the School Committee Wednesday that the district intends to seek state funds for that project.
Aparna Lakshmi, a history teacher at the O’Bryant, agreed the school still needs revitalized facilities. Although she understands the Madison Park redevelopment will come first, she believes both schools could grow if the district made better use of the campus.
“What we’d like to see the district do is partner with [the school community] to think about what a specific plan for the O’Bryant facilities could look like and how that could be done in concert with what’s going on at Madison Park,” Lakshmi said. “There’s a million square feet at that site.”
“There are clear solutions that are cost-effective, equitable, and just common sense,” Lakshmi added, such as tearing down two single-story buildings on the site and building multistory replacements.
Laisha Contreras, an O’Bryant junior, said she hopes both the O’Bryant and Madison Park can be renovated on their current sites. Contreras said current building conditions at the O’Bryant are so bad, it’s difficult for students to learn. Dust falls from the ceilings. Teachers are forced to share classrooms. Classrooms are so hot during the winter due to poor heat regulation that students can’t pay attention.
“I love learning, but when I’m in such intense heat, I cannot focus at all,” Contreras said. “I get exhausted.”
Deanna Pan can be reached at deanna.pan@globe.com. Follow her @DDpan. Christopher Huffaker can be reached at christopher.huffaker@globe.com. Follow him @huffakingit.