Boston Public Schools

You'll know immediately what square the new Ferdinand building is in

By adamg - 2/8/12 - 6:39 pm

The Bay State Banner reports on the latest plans for the Ferdinand building in Dudley Square, which will feature a brick and glass extension with "DUDLEY" in giant letters on top.

The long shuttered building will become the new home of the Boston School Department on its upper floors, with stores and community space on the first two floor.

North End musical chairs could mean more space for Eliot School

By adamg - 1/26/12 - 8:10 am

NorthEndWaterfront.com reports on a possible building swap involving the North Bennet Street School moving into two now dormant city buildings and give its current buildings to the Eliot School so it could expand.

The problem with the mayor's pledge to return to neighborhood schools

By adamg - 1/19/12 - 8:26 am

What if the schools in one neighborhood are all part of what BPS once euphemistically called "the circle of promise?" The last couple of BPS efforts to reform busing all foundered on the issue that one of its new zones would have contained pretty much nothing but underperforming schools. WBUR reports, talks to Roxbury City Councilor Tito Jackson.

Menino says he wants to bring back neighborhood schools

By adamg - 1/17/12 - 9:53 pm

Mayor's state of the city address, calls for revamping of Madison Park High School, an all new school-assignment policy at the elementary level, 100 new crime watches, a gambling advisory board and a citywide program to lose 1 million pounds of fat.

Somebody's setting fires at Boston Latin School

By adamg - 1/10/12 - 4:38 pm

UPDATE: Arrest made.

For the second day in a row, Boston firefighters had to respond to the exam school on Avenue Louis Pasteur for what school officials are telling parents was a deliberately set fire.

Yesterday's fire, at lunchtime, was in a trash barrel in a second-floor girl's bathroom. Today's fire was also in a trash barrel, in the basement.

The Boston Fire Department reports nobody was injured in either fire - and that today's, reported around 1:15 p.m., was set under a sprinkler head, which activated - putting out the fire and causing $5,000 in water damage. The school did not have to be evacuated due to either fire, although some students had to be relocated temporarily, the department says.

Some students yesterday did walk outside when the alarms went off; today, eighth graders had to be relocated to the cafeteria because of the water in the basement, where there classes were.

Headmaster Lynne Mooney Teta informed parents of the fires in a robocall this afternoon, in which she asked them to talk to their children to see if they might have any information about the culprit or culprits. The Fire Department is also investigating.

Mayor re-appoints School Committee member who objects to uppity white women

By adamg - 1/1/12 - 11:13 am

MartinezMartinezChannel 25 reports Mayor Menino has given Claudio Martinez of Jamaica Plain another four-year term on the Boston School Committee.

At a School Committee hearing on a school-closing plan in December, 2010, Martinez told a white parent from the doomed Agassiz School to shut up and sit down because if he wanted to hear from a "white privileged woman" he'd let her know.

The mayor also appointed Meg Campbell, founder of the Codman Academy Charter School, to the committee. Until recently, Boston Public Schools basically considered charter schools the enemy, but over the past couple of years, the mayor and school officials have warmed to them; in 2010, Menino made better BPS/charter integration part of his inauguration speech.

BPS had millions of reasons to move something into the old Hyde Park High School

By adamg - 12/1/11 - 9:09 am

36 million, to be exact. Seems the city won a large grant from the state to renovate the school - scheduled to be paid out through 2019 - and the state doesn't like having its money wasted for repairs to buildings that get shut down. Take a look at this letter from the Massachusetts School Building Authority to Boston School Superintendent Carol Johnson back in June, which mentions several schools, but singles out the building last known as the Hyde Park Education Complex:

In 1999, the City received approval for a grant for a renovation project at Hyde Park School. To date, the MSBA has paid $23,383,012 to the City for the Hyde Park High School and there is a total of $12,664,978 remaining in grant payments which the MSBA is scheduled to pay in annual installments through fiscal year 2019. Due to the closure of this facility, however, the MSBA may consider putting a hold on the remaining payments for this project and recouping a portion of funds that have already been paid to the City for this project, pending the City's future plans for the facility.

Read more

Boston Latin Academy student with meningitis not doing well

By adamg - 11/21/11 - 12:08 pm

UPDATE: Channel 4 reports the girl has died.

Dr. Anita Barry on the meningitis case at BLA.

A 12-year-old Boston Latin Academy student is "very, very, seriously, critically ill" with bacterial meningitis, but poses no risk to most other students, a city public-health official says.

A school nurse recognized symptoms of the potentially fatal disease when the seventh grader came into her office Friday not feeling well and had her rushed to a local hospital, Dr. Anita Barry, director of infection control at the Boston Public Health Commission said this morning.

Read more

Hernandez School loses two leaders in same week

By adamg - 11/18/11 - 7:42 pm

Parent Imperfect says farewell to Principal Margarita Muniz and Assistant Principal Ken Larson, both of whom died this week:

At some point last night, Margarita joined Ken, probably to tell him to talk to parents about the problem of late school bus arrivals, or something else.

The School Committee recently approved a planned Margarita Muniz Academy in Jamaica Plain as the city's first bilingual public high school, in honor of Muniz's work in the 1970 to get the Hernandez opened in the 1970s as a bilingual elementary school.