Three years after the state declared Boston was failing to serve its most vulnerable students and brokered a deal with Mayor Michelle Wu for the district to fix its schools to avoid a state takeover, the agreement is being allowed to expire — despite problems the district has yet to resolve.
The state, in 2022, charged Boston Public Schools with fixing chronic dysfunction it had outlined in an audit just weeks prior to the agreement, which included the district’s failure to provide adequate services to English learners and students in special education. The plan was sweeping in that it also identified needed improvements outside the classroom, such as more buses running on time and better long-term planning for the future use of its facilities, for which the state reports incremental growth.
But the district hasn’t fulfilled all of its commitments under the agreement, including for special education and English learners.
The deal expires in June despite widespread gaps remaining between Black and Latino students, compared to their white and Asian classmates. Critics, including some education and policy advocates and district families, argue that BPS students deserve heightened state oversight of the city’s schools. There must be greater focus on improvements to teaching, said those critics, including Marty Walz, the interim president of the Boston Municipal Research Bureau.
“The operational improvements since 2020 do not justify the state scaling back its role, especially when one considers the district’s academic performance,” Walz said. “More, not less, state oversight and accountability for Boston Public Schools is required.”
Wu and Superintendent Mary Skipper, in an interview together with the Globe on Monday, both argued the district has made significant progress since the deal was signed: the district is no longer in the category of schools eligible for receivership, like it was three years ago, nor is it in the bottom 10 percent of districts in the state, they said. (While the district as a whole is not eligible for receivership, 44 individual low-performing schools are vulnerable to state intervention, according to state school accountability data.)
They point to progress in other areas, such as an improved district transportation system that has led to fewer late buses. Administrators are rolling out programs for English learners and special education students. BPS has published a long-term facilities plan.
That progress, they argue, shows now is the time for that plan to end and for the district to take charge of itself.
“We won’t rest until we’re the best district, and we have to own that ourselves,” Wu said. “We can’t . . . again delegate change, especially on longstanding, tough issues.”
But some parents, such as Suleika Soto, who has two daughters enrolled at TechBoston Academy and a is member of the Boston Education Justice Alliance, which advocates for families, said Wu and the district have fallen short. Wu launched a divisive plan to close about one-fifth of school buildings — a process that sparked outrage and complaints that families are not being consulted.
Soto said Wu pledged to fix the schools in the state agreement, and has not followed through.
”In reality, what I feel like they’ve done is ignore the community in all areas of the improvement plan,” Soto said.
State and BPS administrators have acknowledged Boston has much work ahead, but most appear to be OK walking away when the agreement ends.
“We’ve seen mixed results, but definitely much effort, really concerted effort on behalf of the school district, the School Committee, and the mayor to meet the requirements,” said Russell Johnston, the state’s recently exited acting K-12 education commissioner, during the state board’s most recent discussion of the plan last month.
Some members of the board, including Michael Moriarty, said during that same meeting that there needs to be a plan for how Boston will follow through.
“I’m just gobsmacked that there’s no discussion about what happens next,” Moriarty said in a subsequent interview. “ ‘It’s just good enough, and we’re moving on.’ I can’t even believe it.”
The state’s K-12 Education Department will continue working with Boston, and all school districts, to ensure all students receive a high-quality education, according to Jackie Reis, an agency spokesperson.
Skipper, who joined BPS shortly after the agreement was signed, said administrators see it as imperative that every student has access to an experience that includes academic rigor. The plan, she said, helped the district build infrastructure for supporting student success.
“We are owning our accountability. The [state plan] was a great starting point, but that’s really what it was intended to be — a starting point,“ Skipper said. ”We’ve come a long way in three years, but we know we have a long way to go."
Wu acknowledged that progress under the state plan may not be felt by all families in the district.
“All the numbers show that we’re moving in the right direction. However, as I know from being a BPS mom, none of that matters if you’re not feeling it for your child when you drop them off or when the bus comes to pick them up, if the bus is late, or if something happened at your school, or if the school yard doesn’t feel like it has everything that it needs,” Wu said.
Among the changes, BPS has ramped up its inclusion efforts, educating more special education students alongside their typical-learning peers in general education classrooms. BPS also is using the inclusion model to place English learners into English-only inclusion classrooms, a move advocates have fiercely opposed since the plan was introduced.
Rosie Brenes has seen the model rolled out in real time, as her 13-year-old daughter, who is bilingual, is educated in an inclusion classroom at the Joseph Lee K-8 School, and often must translate to a Spanish-only speaking classmate.
“She’s not getting the education she needs,” Brenes said. “She’s falling behind.”
There has been other progress, to be sure.
There is a new Office of Emergency Management to support districtwide safety measures; improved data collection for state reporting; and the creation of a team to ensure additional resources are made available to the district’s most underperforming schools.
The district also received state approval from DESE on 17 English Learner Education programs since the plan’s start, according to the district. Administrators are also creating additional programs, including what the district says is a first-in-the-nation Cape Verdean Creole Dual Language program expected to launch in the 2026-27 school year.
But deep problems persist. The plan did little to narrow the vast student achievement gaps. One-third of Boston’s roughly 48,000 students continue to attend some of the state’s worst-performing schools, according to state data.
Maria Gomez, whose son needs a speech pathologist who speaks Spanish at the Blackstone Elementary School in the South End, said he’s been forced to make do with an English-only provider. There need to be more therapists who speak Spanish, she said.
“He gets very frustrated,” Gomez said in Spanish through an interpreter. “Sometimes he doesn’t understand what they’re saying.”
When the improvement plan was rolled out in June 2022, it was a last-ditch deal brokered between Wu and then-education commissioner Jeff Riley, an appointee of Republican governor Charlie Baker. Boston, Riley said, needed "immediate improvement.”
But progress under the plan was slow, and several deadlines were missed.
Transportation remained a source of frustration for many families across the city. BPS was supposed to reach a monthly on-time performance target of 95 percent or better for its bus transportation by the fall of 2022. In April, when the district announced it would cut bus services to inconsistent riders, it noted it narrowly missed the mark at 94 percent.
The district’s long-range facilities plan — a guide for future use of Boston’s more than 100 school facilities — was released early this year, as the schools announced the need to shrink the district’s footprint by one-fifth by 2030. But the document does not spell out which school buildings would need to be closed, or the timeline to do so.
Edith Bazile, a retired BPS educator and a past president of Black Educators’ Alliance of Massachusetts, argued Boston missed out on a historic chance to improve its services for students.
“The district lost an opportunity to do something innovative and great,” Bazile said. “It was that opportunity, and BPS passed on it.”
Mandy McLaren and Christopher Huffaker of the Globe staff contributed to this report.
The Great Divide team explores educational inequality in Boston and statewide. Sign up to receive our newsletter, and send ideas and tips to thegreatdivide@globe.com.
John Hilliard can be reached at john.hilliard@globe.com or on Signal at john_hilliard.70. Follow him on Bluesky at iamjohnhilliard.bsky.social.