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Councilors, state reps would ditch school assignment zones - but add citywide magnet schools

ConnollyConnollyRather than simply expanding the number of school-assignment zones, two city councilors and four state representatives today proposed giving elementary students seat in a school in their neighborhood - but with a network of citywide magnet schools for parents dissatisfied with those schools.

The plan is an alternative to plans now under discussion by Boston school officials to expand the current three assignment zones to six or nine (school officials have also published maps of zones with 11, 23 and no zones, but have said those would fail to allow for school choice in a system that continues to have educational inequalities). City Councilor John Connolly, who chairs the council's education committee, Councilor Matt O'Malley and state representatives Linda Dorcena Forry, Nick Collins, Ed Coppinger and Russell Holmes unveiled their proposal this morning at the State House.

The plan also calls for the city to find a location in the Back Bay or Beacon Hill for a new school to serve the growing numbers of families who calling for a public school - and to grandfather not only existing students, but their siblings, in their current schools.

Connolly, whose own daughter was initially unassigned in the kindergarten lottery, said the goal is to not only improve current schools but to draw more parents back into Boston Public Schools. Parents would be guaranteeed a kindergarten seat at one of the four schools closest to their home as well as gain the right to have their student placed in a K-8 school - even if that means renting modular classrooms in the short run. Groups of parents would be allowed to bulk enroll their kids in an underserved school, in an attempt to use parental involvement to improve that school.

Holmes said all the current BPS proposals would cut his constitutents' access to quality schools - only one of the elementary schools that do well on standardized tests are in the current East Zone, he said. Forry said she and her husband failed to get their choices for schools and and so enrolled them in Catholic schools. She said her family is lucky - it had options - but that not everybody is that lucky.

Holmes explains a problem with current BPS proposals.

Under the plan, BPS would supplement the Hernandez - open to students from across the city - with 15 other magnet schools open to any student, through a lottery system.

The representatives and the councilor also propose dedicating extra money and resources to 59 elementary schools that serve mainly poor students, including guaranteed space in after-school programming and "academic coaches" for students in English and math.

The councilors and representatives called on BPS to create eight "fully inclusive" schools for students with and without disabilities. and nine dual-language schools.

Connolly said Boston already spends $1 billion a year on 56,000 students and that that money, combined with roughly $6 million in annual savings from busing should be enough to start the plan. "This forces BPS to be better with the money it has," he said. He added that an increase in enrollment would bring additional state aid, which is based in part on the number of students.

The elected officials say they have forwarded their plan to School Superintendent Carol Johnson and are hoping the advisory committee studying assignment zones over the next month will include their plan.

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Comments

This plan is head and shoulders above anything the BPS came up with.

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I appreciate them proposing this and I'm having a really positive overall response as well.

If nothing else my God the intelligence of saying straight-off "students currently in the system will be grandfathered, ditto for sibling preference".

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in a system that continues to have educational inequalities

And why does the system continue to have 'educational inequalities?' Who, exactly, is to blame for such inequalities? Louise Day Hicks? John Kerrigan? Or is it James Michael Curley? Somehow, the inequalities of the 1960s system was blamed on a racist School Committee - to the point of tearing the entire system apart - but the inequalities of today are treated like an Act of God. Wikipedia tells me Mumbles has been in office since 1993. Given that the School Committee now consists of his stooges, tell me precisely why these inequalities do not sit on his table?

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.

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This report on changing school-assignment policies could have been released within the past couple of weeks - but was released in 2004.

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I like what I'm seeing so far from this group's proposal. They're a good representation of the city's younger leaders and whatever differences they may have, it seems they've been put aside to get this plan pulled together. Refreshing.

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