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The Great Divide

Race, class, and opportunity in our schools

Woburn schools to remain closed today amid teachers strike

Woburn schools will remain closed for a second day Tuesday as a teachers strike continues, despite a court injunction and a cease-and-desist order from the Commonwealth Employment Relations Board, the Woburn School Committee and Mayor Scott Galvin said late Monday.

Busing doesn’t improve academic outcomes for Boston students of color, study finds

Not everyone is convinced by the research — which looks narrowly at test scores and college enrollment — but for others, it serves as further evidence that it may be time for Boston to consider abandoning the busing system.

Boston Teachers Union is calling for audit amid payroll debacle that is short-changing thousands of teachers

BPS owes about 9,000 current and former union members a hefty sum of money — totaling more than $16 million — but hasn’t cut the pay checks yet.
State education leaders question teacher payroll issues in Boston Public Schools

Consultant says Boston should consider bringing back school police, among other safety recommendations

Boston Public Schools should consider forming an internal police department that would place officers back on campuses, according to a recommendation made by an outside consultant that is likely to draw strong opposition.

In Woburn, a diversifying school district works to become more welcoming

For Kafui Kemeh, a Black high school senior in Woburn, life in the suburbs has brought the quality education her family sought, but the isolation and racism she has experienced as one of the very few Black students in her classes weigh on her.

How to get Boston school buses to run on time? Consultant makes several controversial proposals.

Changing school start times, limiting which students can ride buses, and reevaluating whether every student with a disability who receives door-to-door service should continue to do so were among recommendations presented to the School Committee Wednesday.

Here’s what is on the horizon for Boston Public Schools in 2023

It will also be the district’s first full calendar year under Superintendent Mary Skipper, who took charge in September.
It’s been a year since the vote. Where is Boston’s elected School Committee?

City councilors call for police, metal detectors in Boston Public Schools

Massachusetts teachers unions push for the right to strike

Key things to know about the Green New Deal for Boston Public Schools

Visit our archive of all stories from The Great Divide team

A mother's journey, helping families navigate BPS and protecting her own from it

Boston schools lost 15,000 Black students in the past 20 years. Where did they go, and will they ever return?

In a dramatic reshaping of its makeup, Boston Public Schools has lost half its Black student population in the last two decades, as Black enrollment fell from from 29,300 in the 2002-2003 school year to 14,600 last year.

COMMUNITY SPOTLIGHT

‘That looks like what I eat at home’: City Fresh Foods makes meals for BPS students, by Bostonians
The Roxbury-based food producers in May were awarded a $17 million contract, the largest non-construction contract ever given to a certified Black-owned business by the city.

Globe Magazine

‘The Mary Lyon way’: A Boston inclusion school’s successful approach to re-engagement
The full-inclusion school in the Boston system could have fallen apart during the pandemic. Here’s why it soared instead.

Boston Public Schools’ proposed school safety positions draw outcry from juvenile justice advocates

Amid an outcry from juvenile justice advocates, who said the program would result in the over-policing of Black and Latino students, the city is reframing the effort as focused on connecting students with social services and other kinds of help.
How many sexual assaults are reported in BPS? The answer is murky. Here’s why.

Black male teachers can make a big difference in the lives of their students — why are they so rare?

Statewide, just 1 percent of public school teachers are Black men. Even in Boston, which has the highest number of Black male educators, the proportion is just 7 percent.

US Court of Appeals takes up Boston exam school case

The temporary policy increased the percentages of Black and Latino applicants who secured admission to the city's exam schools while the rates for Asian-American and white applicants declined.

New admission process may give more disadvantaged students a shot at Metco

The changes come amid growing efforts in Boston and around the nation to reshape admission processes for public school programs to ensure disadvantaged students have a fair chance against those from more affluent families.

Boston School Committee weighs renaming McKinley Schools after Mel King, barrier-breaking educator and politician

Melvin King, a graduate and former teacher at Boston Technical High School, now the John D. O’Bryant School, was the first person of color to make it to the final election for mayor of Boston

Boston Public Schools’ enrollment drops for 8th consecutive year

This is the district’s eighth consecutive year of decline and brings the total loss of students over the last decade to more than 8,000.

In Mattapan’s Haitian Creole program, a taste of the bilingual education BPS wants to expand

Bilingual education can be a tough sell to many immigrant parents who believe their children should focus only on English.

More school coverage

Woburn teachers union and School Committee make ‘significant progress,’ but no deal yet; school canceled for Friday

“We are optimistic and expect that a tentative agreement and a return-to-work agreement will be reached on Friday,” Woburn Teachers Association President Barbara Locke said in a statement late Thursday.

Mass. vocational schools policy violates student civil rights, complaint says

The complaint calls for the US Office of Civil Rights to withhold all federal funding for the state’s vocational programs until the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education prohibits criteria-based admissions.

Bill seeks to eliminate school takeovers by Mass. education department

Mirror versions of the proposal, which also would end the use of MCAS scores in graduation requirements, have been filed in each chamber of the Massachusetts Legislature.

Woburn schools closed today as teachers strike enters fourth day

Woburn schools will remain closed for a fourth consecutive day Thursday as a teachers strike continues after yet another round of negotiations stalled Wednesday night, officials said.

BPS leaders unveil $1.4 billion budget, an increase of $65 million. Here’s how they’ll spend it.

The district plans to increase per-student spending to $28,800, up 39 percent since pre-pandemic.

Featured Stories

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Jan. 25: Busing doesn’t improve academic outcomes for Boston students of color, study findsJan. 18: Meet the Great Divide's newest reporterJan. 04: Here’s what is on the horizon for BPS in 2023

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Upcoming and past events

The Great Divide has been hosting an ongoing series of virtual events, with an emphasis on student voices, during the pandemic. Watch some of our past events:
All in this together? How to minimize harm in reopening schoolsGlobeDocs presents: 'My voice matters': Brighton Debate en Español teamThe Digital Divide: Education, Race and Virtual LearningGreat Divide Town Hall: What will it take for you to feel safe when schools reopen?

About The Great Divide

The Great Divide is a reporting effort dedicated to investigating race, class, and inequality in Boston-area schools. It is jointly funded by the Globe and the Barr Foundation, a Boston-based foundation that has prioritized student success in high school and beyond. The Globe maintains editorial control and independence over the project.
THE GREAT DIVIDE

Inside the forgotten story of the Chinatown mothers who mobilized during the Boston busing crisis

The story of Boston’s busing crisis, the one memorialized in books, films, and podcasts, is typically characterized as a Black and white struggle. What is less known is the story of the Chinese immigrant women who organized a three-day school boycott in 1975 that would change the balance of power in Chinatown for decades to come.

Back to (home)school

The number of children homeschooled in Massachusetts soared after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Academics and Learning

MCAS scores for schools across the state

Massachusetts students hit 19-year low on national reading, math exams

Massachusetts is no longer top of the class on national report card, falling behind Wyoming in fourth grade math and New Jersey in eighth grade reading.
Pandemic learning losses could cost Massachusetts students $21 billion in future earnings

Nation’s Report Card spells out urgency for local, state leaders to address learning losses
Reading and math scores fell district, state, and nationwide in the National Assessment of Educational Progress, made public Monday. State and district leaders said the scores reinforce the need to work quickly to catch students up.

Key things that schools can do to fight learning loss, according to experts

New MCAS data underscore missed learning of the pandemic. What if kids can’t catch up?
With the MCAS reinforcing prior data indicating many students are more than half a school year behind, the state and districts risk moving too slowly to make up that time.

2022 MCAS scores show slow progress in student academic performance

Equity and Access

New special education report raises questions about bias against Boston’s Black and Latino boys

The disproportionate representation of Black and Latino males in special education is a symptom of a much larger problem facing Boston Public Schools.
Boston Public Schools seeks to have exam school case tossed out of federal court, arguing ‘the case is moot’

‘I feel like I’m on an even playing field with everybody else’: BDEA 2.0 takes emancipatory approach to educating most vulnerable students
The program, founded in 2018, was designed to help more Black and Latino male students graduate, though a handful of female students also are finding success through it.

More low-income students gain access to Boston’s exam schools after admission policy changes
The introduction of the bonus points has been widely embraced by civil rights advocates and many parents who contend that it helps level the playing field for applicants who don’t have the financial means for test prep and who tend not perform as well on standardized tests.

Race and Diversity

Boston Public Schools launches investigation into allegations of discrimination against administrators of color

The retired administrators contend district leaders appear to be disproportionately placing high-ranking officials of color on leave and subjecting them to a process known as investigatory meetings in an effort to terminate them or force them to resign.

After Malden’s Mystic Valley Regional Charter School handling of student’s hijab, questions swirl over why such incidents continue to occur
Tensions ratcheted higher this month after a Muslim student and her family complained publicly about the way the school handled the eighth-grader’s decision to wear a hijab, a traditional religious head covering.

A Mattapan mother says her son was in medical distress but BPS delayed calling 911
Boston Public Schools said it is examining the school’s response.

Money and Facilities

School bathroom closures statewide drive rising tensions, pushback

Driven by efforts to curtail teen vaping, and prevent outbreaks of vandalism sparked by copycat trends on social media, the widespread crackdowns on bathroom access have left students in some schools with little access.

How have Massachusetts school districts spent their $2.5 billion in federal COVID funds? Mostly, they still haven’t.

Among the 78 districts and independent charter schools that have received over $5 million, the Atlantis Charter School in Fall River stands alone as the only one to have spent more than 90 percent. Only five others have spent even half.
What to know about how Boston Public Schools is spending its federal relief funds

Wu to launch a new era of school construction, pledging $2 billion to revamp city’s school facilities
The facilities dashboard will give each school building an overall rating so that parents can figure out how their children’s school stacks up against others in the city and why some school projects are being prioritized over others.

New Boston city budget includes $788 million for school capital projects over five years — but will it be enough?