Somebody's Daughter reports her father's house is right next to the John Marshall School in Dorchester, where an alleged gang member was shot the other night. She says he was confused because he didn't hear anything - no gunfire, no screams, no ambulance. She says she's confused, too, but for a different reason:

... I sat at my son's mini desk in his mini chair and tried to process it all. Shot inside a school? An elementary school? What do these parents tell their babies? How do you explain to your six year old why the media is outside of his school? While most six-year olds grapple with the concept of death, for too many kids, death via violence has become the norm.

So the small place where children can escape the struggle that is their life, get fed regularly, get heat and an education, is now tainted. A crime scene. They'll run around and laugh in a gym that was filled with running and screaming of a different kind merely hours before. ...

Details.

"Turnaround" schools that will face "serious consequences" if they don't shape up:

• William Blackstone Elementary School in the South End
• Paul Dever Elementary School in Dorchester
• Ralph Waldo Emerson Elementary School in Roxbury
• Elihu Greenwood Elementary School in Hyde Park
• Curtis Guild Elementary School in East Boston
• John P. Holland Elementary School in Dorchester
• John F. Kennedy Elementary School in Jamaica Plain
• William Monroe Trotter Elementary School in Dorchester
• Orchard Gardens K-8 School in Roxbury
• Maurice J. Tobin K-8 School in Roxbury
• Henry Dearborn Middle School in Roxbury
• Harbor Middle School in Dorchester
• The English High School in Jamaica Plain
• Odyssey High School in South Boston

This cannot possibly be true, can it?

Via Sambot.

Geeky Mama takes a look at "student mobility" rates in elementary schools in West Roxbury, Roslindale and Jamaica Plain - she figures that the fewer students move from a school, the happier parents must be with the education their kids are getting. The top two: the Kilmer and the Lyndon. The bottom two: The Ellis and the King.

Geeky Mama visits the Boston Teachers Union pilot school in Jamaica Plain (so for West Zone kids), explains why "there's still work to be done, but it seems they have a decent foundation for a school."

Geeky Mama, in the middle of that pre-lottery school hunt unique to Boston parents, is impressed by the Curley School in Jamaica Plain.

Today's the day when sixth graders across Boston take the ISEE, which will help determine whether they get an invitation to one of the city's three exam schools (it counts for 50% of the decision, with the rest based on their last fifth-grade marks and their first sixth-grade marks). Here, kids - and their parents - wait in line at the West Roxbury Education Complex for check in. They had to show both an acceptance letter for the test and a passport or birth certificate - nobody was going to pull a Curley today.

The Supreme Judicial Court today ruled a judge who participated in cases in which a mother had her first two children removed from her custody was wrong to order her third, newborn daughter immediately taken from her last year.

They don't get much younger than this.

Rebecca wonders why it's there after her son picks up a copy while they're in line:

... T: Okay, well what about "the sexy (stressing the word "sexy" ) ass workout?

Me: Don't say that word!! (*thinking of a good answer...coming up with nothing....* )

T: Why does a person's butt (again, stressing butt) have to be sexy?!? That's disgusting! See, I told you it's about S-E-X. ...