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Meeting between mayor, BLS teachers ends badly

Peter Kadzis basically livetweeted an angry meeting of Mayor Walsh, Superintendent Tommy Chang and BLS teachers. Teachers demanded Walsh and Chang refuse resignations from Headmaster Lynne Mooney Teta and Assistant Headmaster Malcolm Flynn, Walsh got mad, Chang told teachers not to pull that sort of thing in front of the media but they did anyway.

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Either by being defeated in the next election -- or (maybe even better) forced out due to the (alleged) criminal conduct of his top staffers.

He gets mad REAL easy. And he makes bad decisions routinely. I have never been so sorry for a vote cast.

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One word: Unions

He's got big union support.

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... his "support" for unions might get him indicted.

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...will welcome our first female mayor...and am damn thankful Linehan isn't the council president.

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... on both counts.

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I'll welcome anyone, male or female, black, white, or other, just as long as he/she is qualified and not a tax and spend, special interest liberal.

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Maybe it's just an echo chamber in here and it's blinding me to reality in the rest of the city, but I don't think I know much of anyone who isn't pissed off at Marty for one reason or another. When it came down to Connolly/Walsh at the last election, I didn't have any strong feelings about either one. I broke the tie by voting against the guy who rang my doorbell right after my 4-month-old fell asleep. Now that there's a face to the name, I think he's going to have a harder time against a challenger.

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... largely because of his ties to groups favoring (in essence) privatization of public schools. As it turned out, Walsh (after getting elected) made it clear that he was, in fact, also a big fan of charter school expansion. Nice little bait and switch Walsh pulled there.

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Hit the nail on the head.

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His stated positions on charters wasn't any different than Walsh's though so I think that fear was way overblown (in general, not picking on you.)

Anyways, Marty is not a world class mayor. I do think there are a lot of good, smart people working for him, in and out of BPS, but there's a veneer of hackery floating on top of their good works.

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Heard so many people claim they were voting for Walsh just on that issue and then they were shocked, SHOCKED that it turned out he held the same views since he wove and dodged during the whole campaign. Connolly, with several young kids, had skin in the game and what seemed to me a pretty good understanding of the complex issues around charters, etc, whereas I never heard Walsh speak a convincing word about his school plans.

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... pumped a lot of money into his campaign hurt him. Had they not done so, Walsh bobbing and weaving might not have worked so well.

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When every union in the nation is sending you $10k checks weeks before the election.

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...when Walsh got $500k in gray money from out of state education unions via Roslindale's own Jocelyn Hutt, that didn't give you any pause? Connolly's $ from GOP and charter folks was nickels and dimes compared to that.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/12/28/american-federation-teacher...

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... that gave me pause. I wasn't particularly happy with either choice. In retrospect, perhaps I should have voted differently.

P.S. Your link indicates that the source of the money came out only _after_ Walsh had already been elected.

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The fact that outside interests saw fit to shovel $500k in anonymous funding to support Walsh was hugely concerning to me SPECIFICALLY because these backers felt it was necessary to do this in a back-channel way.

Connolly didn't try to hide that people like Jane Swift gave him $500 because that's all small time stuff. $500k is a lot of dark money in a mayoral election.

anyways, I think barring an indictment, Walsh gets re-elected in a walk. Wu and Pressley don't seem opposed enough to run against him and Tito doesn't have the support.

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... something like $1.5 million from education privatizers -- which is hardly chump change.

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"To date, super PACs and labor unions have poured $2 million into Boston’s mayoral race. The vast majority of that money — $1.65 million — has been spent on Walsh’s behalf. By contrast, outside groups have spent less than $190,000 promoting Connolly’s candidacy. The pro-Walsh tally rises daily."

http://commonwealthmagazine.org/politics/003-big-dark-money-flowing-into...

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... is read the very end of the Globe article you linked. It has the figure I mentioned.

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With both candidates I guess the question is if that money was contributed in exchange for specific promises or if it was more aspirational fund-raising. Obviously the teacher union PACs can't be happy with all of Walsh's moves in spite of their heavy spending. I suspect Connolly wouldn't similarly have been the creature of the charter folks.

I guess we'll never know...

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I started off working on Felix Arroyo's campaign. Crossed my fingers that at least we'd end up with someone to protect the schools against charter encroachment. Walsh never took a strong stand,was merely less vociferously pro-charter.

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There was no viable choice in the last election. I voted for the guy who would do less of a bad job. I still think Connolly would have been worse, but I do wish there was somebody better than Walsh to vote for.

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I was at a community event a few weeks ago when His Honor arrived, and no one really gave much of a hoot. They had to repeatedly ask people to come over on the PA system so he could give a few words, when no one really wanted to.

But again, could be the echo chamber.

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Walsh will win re-election easily and he knows it.

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The Mayor failed to fix the Captions on City videos, City cable/webcasts for hard of hearing folks, for The Deaf Community, for ESL English as Second Language folks. A transparent background is needed for Captions on video from Boston City Hall. The black background on Captions for hard of hearing folks, for The Deaf Community, for ESL English as Second Language folks on Webcasts/Cablecasts of Public Meetings of Boston City Council... the black background obscures the video, for example nameplates of City Councilors and Officials Testifying.

Four Offices involved with City video haven't changed the black background to a transparent background for the Captions...

Boston City Council Programming Manager
http://www.cityofboston.gov/citycouncil/live.asp

Mike Lynch, Broadband & Cable
Boston Dept. of Innovation and Technology (DoIT)
617-635-2737
email
mike.lynch at boston.gov
http://www.cityofboston.gov/cable/

Boston Community Access TV
https://www.bnntv.org/about/board

WGBH Access Media Group
http://main.wgbh.org/wgbh/pages/mag/services/captioning/

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This is deeply unfair. Walsh hasn't fixed anything, so of course he hasn't fixed closed captioning.

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Cityofboston.gov is inaccessible to the Blind.

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Sure Michael you remember the thin skin of the guy who he replaced.

I'm not with Walsh on this issue, but if you ever read Menino's book (which, even though it had the bias of being autobiographical, contains an admission that he kept Brook Pharmacy or whoever from the Square solely to protect his buddy at Sullivan's Pharmacy) you'll see that aside from the criminal probes, Walsh is right where Menino was at this point in his 20 year mayoralty, specifically on the issue of education.

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I mostly liked Menino and I mostly dislike Walsh. Irrational? Perhaps. But I've had more than enough of Walsh already.

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As irrational as most of us are. If you need an example, here's 2- the race for the White House this year and the quest to fill a vacant Supreme Court seat.

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Menino got mad real easy and made bad (corrupt) decisions all the time.

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I thought the mayor's email this morning said the meeting would be "private" and then have a media event after??!!!

"10:00 a.m.
Mayor Walsh meets with staff at Boston Latin School. (CLOSED PRESS)
*A Media Availability will be held outside of the school following the meeting
78 Avenue Louis Pasteur, Boston"

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Teachers text journalists who then Tweet.

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... the near-total gag order that applied to BLS administrators to the entire staff?

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technology as the conduit not the Constitution.

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The monster these teachers created will come for them next.

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How did "these teachers" create the monster that caused LMT (and Flynn) to resign?

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Conformist panic
Unexplained natural phenomena
Jealousy
Confess or death justice
Hysterical teenagers

It's all there!

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... what makes no sense is your slamming of BLS's teachers as being "creating" the current situation. The people creating and manipulating the situation have had the BLS teachers as targets from the start (not diverse enough, fire a bunch and then hire the right kind of teachers in their place).

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Are you crazy or something? What is wrong with you? Am I even here? What are these strange lights and sounds all around me??

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the Cultural Revolution in China generally. A few kids decide they want to be stars, and decide they don't like the teachers and headmasters, so the kids assert that their targets are insufficiently politically correct. One by one, the targets fall, and so do those who disagree, or who try to defend the targets. Maybe they'll set up a re-education camp for these administrators (and teachers). I think Nazi Germany did this, too, when they were taking over German society.I wonder if the mayor and Chang are so desperately afraid of being called racist that they're going along with this, or if this is part of their agenda.

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They are fed up with the culture and want to change it to be more fair for all.

I'm sure you have recently graduated and lived as a minority person, so you know what you are talking about. Yup.

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Teachers are very willing to say it's racism if they are getting evaluated. They don't like when they are on the receiving end though!

As soon as these accusations were made, she was done.

And the follow up is just vultures trying to get somebody's sister-in-law a city job. It's just scratching for real estate as usual.

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The way you are condemned as soon as you are charged.

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during Summer.....someone get Tito on the phone.

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Pulling "that sort of thing in front of the media" is what started this whole overblown story off in the first place.

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>"I often appreciate your input on Uhub, but your recent comment in the article "Meeting between mayor, BLS staff ends badly" was off-topic and not helpful to furthering the conversation."

It relates to...

>"...Walsh got mad, Chang told teachers not to pull that sort of thing in front of the media."
http://www.universalhub.com/2016/meeting-between-mayor-bls-staff-ends-badly

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as a one term Mayor 5 times.

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Just keeps going:

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SHUT IT DOWN! What's the point? Close every school and fire every teacher on Friday. Take the summer to rebuild the whole thing. Hell, take a year if you have to. A year off from school would be better for these kids than the absolute garbage education they get now in this city.

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... other times I am sure.

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We're already up to four. Five? Six? How much longer is it going to keep sucking? Maybe hire back the good people, but for now, maybe a purge is best.

Get the best educators on the planet and pay them to run the schools. Harvard, Oxford, Johns Hopkins. We pay, what $1.3 billion now? Hand them the billion and see what they can come up with for getting kids educated well.

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... are really good at educating people who gravitate towards academics. The curriculum is more or less designed to train future professors, which is kind of funny given how few college graduates go into academics as a career. This has bugger-all to do with running an urban school system.

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Are you implying that one of Tulip's proposals is impractical and unrealistic?

I'm going to have to sit down.

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Hire them.

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n/t

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People often seek employment elsewhere if offered more money for the same job. This is the best place to live on Earth in 2016. They will come.

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This is the best place to live on Earth in 2016

Riiiiight.

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Yes, BPS has problems. Lots of them. Some intractable. But it's a better system than it was 20 years ago, even 10 years ago and there's a lot of good stuff that happens in it - and, well, you basically don't know what you're talking about.

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if any other Boston schools that attract and keep families engaged. Brockton has as many challenges as Boston however they have outstanding schools. The have strong leadership and they push students to excel and push back against those that attempt to degrade education through politics. Walsh should take note.

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Boston Arts Academy (which, granted, is a kind of an exam school - it requires an audition) and even places such as, yes, Jeremiah Burke (no longer in danger of being taken over by the state) and that program at Charlestown High School for kids who need extra help to get enough credits to graduate (which, naturally, BPS wanted to shut but then got a $400,000 grant from Liberty Mutual and then the director won a $100,000 prize).

I'm not trying to be Pollyanna here - as I mentioned above, the system still has some major issues - but compared to other large urban school districts, BPS is doing pretty well.

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You're just not thinking big enough. Decisive actions! For instance, we just found some asbestos up in the attic of my house. You might argue, "Well, you should probably get it removed," or "If you leave it alone, it'll probably be fine. Me, I'm a man of action. The minute I get home, I'm planning on burning that fucker to the ground.

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You wild and crazy guy, the joke is on you, you will be left with a burnt house AND a pile of asbestos! Because it does not burn. You would feel bad because no house, only superfund site to live at.

Oh, you were showing how silly these comments full of hyperbole are? Never mind.

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Didja hear him waxing philosophical on the radio last Saturday?

Great interview. Impassioned defense of the progress that can be made by working incrementally within the system. Pisses off the revolutionaries but gets stuff done.

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For the "right" people - the ones who already have power and control of the system.

Sadly, Barney is but a power bottom for the banking industry these days.

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These kids get a real education at most BPS schools and I believe Adam has a child in a BPS school also and he would attest to this.

This isn't trivia night or some drinking game. Rebuilding the 'whole thing' is not a trivial matter that you are accustomed to - it takes real thought and decisions that have a real impact on the real world and actual children.

Your comments are usually recognized as trolling and I shouldn't feed you but seriously.... give it a break w/ your knee-jerk Trump-esque responses. Save your energy for Trivia night.

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What exactly are you mad about here? You want to fire all the teachers in one of the best public schools in the country? Because they expressed their displeasure with the questionable handling of this incident?

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... not just at BLS.

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Yep, just get those teach for america youngsters in there and turn it all around, right!?

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If they're any good, hire them back for when you reopen.

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They are good. The number of teachers with unsatisfactory reviews is really quite small. But that's aside the point.

You're mad and want to fire all the teachers, because these particular teachers don't agree with the dismissal of their principal. Which has absolutely nothing to do with teacher quality. How did you get from the premise to your solution?

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Almighty Ruler of the World Will knows exactly how to fix problems. He doesn't need to be bothered with actual "details" or "follow up questions" or "facts."

Because if anybody knows how to run an urban school district (that's already ranked pretty damn high) it's a country bumpkin from Whitesville, Vermont. He went to school so he KNOWS how to run them!

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I'm from Burlington. And I know bad schools, I attended a pretty terrible middle school. I went to a pretty damn good high school, though. They have a good tech program that I should have taken advantage of when it was offered to me for free.

I attended 13 years of public school. I could count on one hand (if ever) the number of times a teacher told me what salaries people make in the field that they were teaching. I would love to teach math to kids. First class of the year would be me telling them "people use this stuff to screw you out of money, so don't let anybody be smarter than you at math."

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So you're an expert on running a large urban school district because... you went to public school in Burlington, VT. Which is pretty much what I just said.

You certainly have strong opinions on how things should be run in the world (thankfully you no longer openly condemn people to death on UHub anymore).

Is it just the lack of people understanding your genius that keeps you from accomplishing those goals? Or is it maybe, just maybe, that your ideas tend to be simplistic and unrealistic time and again?

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No, but I did attend urban schools (which are urban no matter how glib you want to be about BVT). I learned alongside immigrants from five continents, white trash, and the children of Howard Dean. I learned alongside kids who died years ago in car crashes/from drugs/etc, and alongside Harvard alums and kids with doctorates.

BVT might not have the poverty or the percentage of Caribbean immigrants that Boston does, but it does have plenty of immigrants for a city of its size. Surprise, they're having similar problems with their schools, too: The superintendent got hired from Canada and finally arrived to work recently after nearly a year of being held up with visa issues. One of his first acts was to transfer the high school principal of 17 years to an elementary school, a principal who's retiring in a year anyway.

The high school's enrollment has dipped by 25% in the 14 years that I've been gone, but some of that has to do with Burlington, like Boston, becoming a city increasingly for the rich and for the poor. So I see similar problems. And I know my own background as a kid who did very well in school initially, then languished in middle school among classmates for whom material had to be slowed and dumbed down. It's not not my fault at all that I became a crappy student, but at that age, adults need to have a proper eye on reaching kids.

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See, even you can come up with some nuanced and "shades of grey" understanding of the subject if you talk about it long enough.

Which is why when you spout nonsense like you did earlier, no one takes you seriously. This isn't an easy fix. And the fact is, things aren't horribly broken as folks like to believe.

So maybe think a bit before you come up with grand pronouncements that apparently make you feel good but do nothing but clutter the discussion.

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First class of the year would be me telling them "people use this stuff to screw you out of money, so don't let anybody be smarter than you at math."

Don't let the haters get you down, it's high time that Stand and Deliver got a sequel :-p

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That teachers were more forthcoming with kids about adulthood.

I had some of the most boring and condescending science teachers ever growing up, so I never took an interest in the material. Maybe a more interesting teacher, or heck, even one who told me straight up that "guys who work in this field can make six figures and live in nice houses" would have made me care more.

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This plan seems destined for a successful outcome.

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They just jump in the boat on their own accord

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Mahty is in way over his head here. I am wondering how much this shaft of LMT was to bargain with Ms. Ortiz over on Fan Pier?

The teachers at BLS (The Faculty Senate as they call themselves) are a wonderful group of people. This show of support just goes to show you how much they back their leaders. Mr. Flynn has dedicated 2/3's of his life to this school and will call out BS when he sees BS.

LA Chang is on a witch hunt. As in Salem in 1692, as in Washington in 1952, we clearly saw after the fact that is was a naked power play by forces in power and nothing more.

Back down Mr. Mayor. Back down.

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Boston Public Libraries' staff should let Media know more about our libraries as a workplace!
http://bplpsa.info/contents/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/April-2016-Real-S...
http://bplpsa.info

Compare New York Public Library
http://www.local1930.org/

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n/t

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If you have something to say about the state of affairs at BLS in particular or BPS in general, please say it. But you don't need to keep posting stuff that has not the remotest connection.

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.. doesn't mean the links aren't there.

The name of the school is Boston Latin.

Latin was the language of the Roman Empire.

A similarly named state was the Holy Roman Empire (which was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire, but that's neither here nor there.)

The Holy Roman Empire occupied much of the territory now known as Germany.

Germany was where Gutenberg invented movable type, which ushered in modern book publishing.

Book publishing led to increasingly widespread literacy.

Literacy led to libraries.

And there we are. No matter where we go, there we are.

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Sir.

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Or compare labor relations, collective bargaining tactics and a Mayor as former representative for collective bargaining
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_bargaining

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you don't need to keep posting stuff that has not the remotest connection.

Ohhhhhhhh yes he does. He needs to do that like flowers need the rain.

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Copied from comment section in Herald, I couldn't write it any better so i copied it....

there is a direct and deliberate plan to social engineer the students of BPS. It comes from the leadership of BPS and most residents are not aware of it.

The make up of BPS students is 86% minority and has been a minority majority school system for years. Yet, all we hear is charges of racism. The last Superintendent of BPS was a black woman.

There was a task force created in 2015 called "Opportunity and Achievement Gaps Task Force".

The quote below is directly from a task force update in January 2016.

"Acknowledge the impact of entrenched and institutional racism and
poverty, and explicitly address it"

This task force has taken it upon themselves to declare that there is institutional racism in BPS. Was this a unilateral decision? What is the racial make up of the task force?

Boston Herald please do the public a service and initiate an investigation on this task force. Please ask Mayor Walsh and Superintendent Chang to comment on the task force and their declaration of institutional racism. If this is true, does this mean that Mayor Menino and prior Democratic mayors allowed the institutional racism to exist all these years? Does this mean the prior Superintendent allowed the racism to exist during her tenure as a black woman?

Taxpayers of Massachusetts and Boston this is what your tax dollars are paying for....a task force that can unilaterally declare BPS is full of institutional racism.

We should demand from Mayor Walsh, Tommy Chang, and this task force specifically, a full explanation and examples of the institutional racism that they claim exists.

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Is that it's turned into a race thing. If you're black, 2+2=4. If you're white, 2+2=4. If you're Asian 2+2=4.

I don't accept that education has anything at all to do with race. Well, there's probably a few differences between the way a white guy and the way a black guy would tell the story of 1960s America to a history class, but at least for math and science, those are the last languages that the educationally inclined world agree on.

So yeah, somebody go ahead and explain to me how schools are institutionally racist. Do the black kids have to sit at their own table during lunch or something?

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We're talking here about BLS, which, according to state statistics for the school year just ending has a student body that was 47.4% white, 29% Asian, 11.6% Hispanic and 8.5% black, compared to a school system that was 14.2% white, 8.7% Asian, 41.5% Hispanic and 32.4% black.

If you fail to see why that might not be the basis for at least asking questions about why that is, there's not much more to discuss, I guess. But for everybody else, institutional racism is not the same as deliberate racism, and yet can still have the same effect - for example, how the fact that white parents in West Roxbury can afford ISEE prep classes for their kids while schools in Roxbury and Mattapan may not even tell black students about free ISEE prep classes (held at BLS no less) might result in a school that has a way higher percentage of white students.

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... for public schools in Roxbury and Mattapan not telling students about the availability of free ISEE prep classes? My understanding is that these schools don't want to "lose" their own best students to BLS. Possibly due to the legislatively-mandated test-mania that would ultimately punish the schools for preparing a lot of students well enough for them to move on to BLS (thus lowering future test scores at the prior schools).

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Because, as the Globe reported, the guy in charge of the program to try to recruit minority kids for the ISEE tests is a BLS administrator (granted, who gets paid mostly by the BLS Association, not the city) and he basically gave up on the job because - and this was the thing I found incredible in that Globe story - nobody told him to specifically do recruiting.

But, no, I wasn't specifically blaming BLS for that - just giving it as an example of an institutional thing that winds up shunting kids away from BLS that has the same effect as if there were racists involved in the system (which I don't think there are). That's why it could be an example of institutional racism.

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The funding was slashed and the person given the job to oversee things was not told to do recruitment visits (and clearly had neither the time to do a lot of recruitment himself or staff to help do such activity).

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The demographic of BLS should be compared to the demographic of Boston instead. The population of BPS in general not representing the city at large is also part of the problem, and should also be addressed.

Estimated 2013 demographics for Boston as a whole: White: 52.9% (and dropping), Black: 24.1% (and dropping); Asian: 9% (and rising); Hispanic: 18.8% (and rising).

Compared with BLS demographics, the problem is what again? That Asians are taking seats away from Blacks and Hispanics? The white kids have been here all the time; they're just returning to the public system.

Institutional racism has a lot of different effects and manifestations; one of these is suppression of white participation in BPS outside of BLS. Pretending that this aspect of institutional racism doesn't exist, as one does when talking about BLS demographics only in the context of the skewed BPS demographics, is a method of preserving it.

Maybe if BPS could provide an elementary education that resulted in minority students achieving Latin entrance at rates closer to their participation in the general population, BPS could also provide an elementary education that more than a small minority of white parents want to send their kids to.

But that would cost more, and it seems like a key aspect of BPS' savings scheme is to provide such a crappy service that few people with a choice take advantage of it. More than a quarter of the kids in this city don't go to public school; if half of them came back, it would be a fiscal emergency.

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The relevant demographic is Boston population, not Boston public school population. However, I suppose one should look at Boston (and compare) _school age_ population figures, not general ones.

Boston's budgeting depends on the fact that it doesn't have to pay a significant percentage of children residing within its borders. To tell parents who _save_ the city a significant amount of money by sending their kids to non-public elementary and/or secondary schools (while paying school-related costs through taxes) that their kids are disqualified (or seriously disadvantaged) from enrolling at the exam schools would be very problematic -- politically and legally.

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This is the part I still don't get. The white kids are coming out of the woodwork to go to BLS, it's true, but not at greater numbers than the Boston demographic would suggest. There's no special ability or test prep needed to reach those numbers, just parental acceptance.

In comparison, Asians are taking up spots at BLS at three times their preponderance in both the Boston general population and the BPS population. This is the group most favored by purely academic entrance criteria, for cultural reasons. If Chang cooks up some kind of flim-flammery to stack the deck racially at BLS, it's the Asians who will be hurt the most.

Maybe this is what happened in those meeting he had with "black community leaders" last year - they asked him if he was willing to screw over his own people for their benefit.

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A really large amount of the problem is while race and education don't have a ton to do with each other, affluence and education are proven to be positively correlated over and over and over again. And, in the United States, due to a long, long history of instutionalized racism, class and race have also become positively correlated. It's hard to educate yourself out of poverty when you come into kindergarden barely knowing ABCs and other kids are already reading. It's hard to educate yourself out of poverty when your parents work two jobs and aren't home to help with homework at night. It's hard when your family doesn't have history of academic success - when your grandparents really were denied academic success based on their skin color, and your family is still playing catch up.

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This is something that universal pre-k would help address. I hate that video that is going around touting how kids in Finland start school later and do as well or better than us. Their socio-economic situation is very different from ours and those kids are more likely to be getting learning at home. Let alone that Finnish is a language which has spelling that matches the pronunciation so it isn't nearly as confusing to learn as English. That's according to an old friend who is from there, he said that there is no such thing as spelling tests in Finland because once you learn the basics "if you can say it you can spell it"

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Except the Dept of Ed has decades of studies iindicating pre k is ineffectual. Quality elementary ed is more important and has longer lasting effects.

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Everything from the funding formula to segregation contributes to a school system in which people of color are disadvantaged. By the way, your question at the end? Hilarious!

A definition of terms is in order. While some people now may not be racist, they do benefit from a system that was set-up to always give them the advantage. It's too long a history lesson to go into here, but you would have to go back to Reconstruction and the attempts of newly freed blacks to build communities, wealth and a political base of power. All crushed by groups like the KKK and apathy from the Feds and local governments. Then, of course, Jim Crow laws codifying that racism. Add to that, firebombing of homes purchased by blacks in places like Cicero, Illinois.

As I've said elsewhere, racism in the country exists on a continuum. There is no such thing as isolated racism. It exists because it was set in motion at some point in our history.

I've also said elsewhere, the BLS situation got out of hand due to a failure of leadership on all sides. This could have been a moment for community instead of division. When a family comes to you with a concern, take it seriously. All of the anger and unity about the headmaster and her deputy among the faculty and parents of BLS could have been really powerful if directed at addressing the concerns of some students. They are part of the community too. At least, they're supposed to be.

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The kids at BLS, black, white, brown, magenta, are focused on learning about the actual Cicero and translating his works, as well as everything else.

For god's sake, Let's not make what happened at BLS a reflection of the entire history of the US. PS - The wealthiest kid in my 8th grade English class at BLS was black and moved to Weston for high school.

Once again - Not every black kid is poor and unprepared and not every white kid comes from a stable home and has a vacation place to run to on the weekends.

It is incredibly disingenuous that you don't account for the hard work done by the young men and young women there regardless of the color of their skin. Your assumptions that all non-white people have been given the shaft from the get go makes you an outstanding race baiter and your comments meritless.

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You either didn't read my comment or you are actually engaging in race baiting by conflating a simple discussion of the history of race in the country into an act of racism. Who's being disingenuous? Granted, I wasn't at BLS, but I did to go BLA. I grew up in the projects with three siblings. I was fortunate in that my parents were married and stoked an interest in reading. A lot of kids who grew up like I did don't even have one book in the house.

I and many of my peers have worked hard for every opportunity we have. Attitudes like yours really puzzle me. I feel like most of my remarks were conciliatory. But, if that's lost on you, sorry. Clearly someone feels I have something to contribute. In the interest of being fair, (though I've received no such courtesy from you) I would suggest you read my comment again. If you still somehow come to the conclusion, that I'm some radical racist agitator just because I want to give some context as to why our radar pings when incidents like this happen in a city that has not acquitted itself well in matters of race, there is not much else I can say.

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Will, there is a magical button called Google where in under 5 minutes you can read all the accusations against BLS and racism. Maybe you should have taken those tech classes at cow pie high, you may have learned how to use a search engine. See you just type in Boston + Latin + School + racism or in my case typing in "Boston Latin" autofilled to racism. Then you actually can read about something and get informed before your cromagnon hands slap the keyboard.

Here's a quick rundown:

-White students are accused of being racist to black students.
-One white student threatened a black student with no punishment.
-The black students tried to start basic initiatives to curb racist behavior and the school has not been working hard to let students know about it or doing much in general to work on student racism.

Oh and yes they have been seperating in the lunch room and having meetings about racial issues and the recently resigned headmaster didn't bother to show up to any of them.

It's clear you didn't know any of this basic info so maybe start with the story you are commenting on before armchair fixing a schooling system you never went to.

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I wish that people who do not have children in BPS would refrain from stating as fact their uninformed opinions of BPS. I wish that more comments in this stream would acknowledge that the perspective of the students of color and their experiences of racism is the only perspective that matters in this situation. They are talking about their experiences. We do not get to tell them they are wrong, or misinterpreting the situation. I wish that more people would acknowledge the point that Adam has made repeatedly -- BLS is an imperfect institution, and wanting to change it does not mean you want to blow it up, or that you need to blow it up. I wish BLS teachers and administrators would simply mention the students more. Finally, I wish someone would acknowledge at the school, city, and community level how much more difficult it must be to be a student of color at BLS these days?

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You hit the nail on the head. While some may disagree about the remedy, I've read too much venom toward the children who are students at the school.

If you don't want the NAACP or Tito Jackson or the Feds to get involved, maybe listen to students who are actually part of the school community. Studies have shown people don't go for the nuclear option if they feel heard. Listening doesn't mean lowering standards. It's listening. Something in very short supply in this affair.

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The teachers and administrators are under a gag order directed by BPS, that is why they aren't talking about the students.

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That's failed leadership. BPS should have been out in front of this story. I'm not comfortable with Black at BLS and the faculty being left out in the breeze. There are ways to handle incidents like this effectively. Instead, everybody has to fend for themselves while acrimony and charges and counter charges of racism and race baiting fly publicly and in forums like this.

You seem to know more about the particulars of this situation than most of us. Is there something I'm missing?

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... were disproved (like the teacher supposedly addressing a student as "my nigger") -- and BPS even sent out a press release -- which the press apparently completely ignored.

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I have a kid not currently in BPS who will likely attend an exam school for 7th grade. We've lived in Boston for my kid's whole life and were BPS parents through 2nd grade. I have exactly as much 'right' to weigh on on the future and purpose of BLS (or really any BPS school my kid could attend) as someone with a 5th grader currently in BPS.

There are problems with the test prep and how minority students aren't encouraged to attend BLS, given. However as noted above by other posters, while BLS doesn't reflect the city demographics neither does BPS. Go to any Rosi K-5 and you'll see a much less diverse population of kids than you'll see around town. Only one of those issues is being politicized though because, of course, Boston needs middle class families to opt out of BPS and pay their own way for private/parochial schools otherwise the budget would be so, so much worse.

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Tito and his band of racial arsonists won't be happy until this school goes from being one of the most prestigious in the country to the equivelant of a Baltimore public school (I think their's are just a little worse than ours) where social promotion is viewed as success.

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Have you actually talked to Jackson or any of the kids in Black at BLS?

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gymnastics of playing both sides. When you have educators intimidated, investigated and belittled you stifle the intellectual growth of the students "leaders" claim to care for. This is political brinksmanship. Nothing more.

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Adam,
As I mentioned elsewhere, race, particularly in Boston, has a narrative. And part of it is defensiveness, doubling down on rhetoric and lying about the existence of racism.

I feel badly because I can only imagine the comments we haven't seen, but you have. After 45 years, I can't get angry (kind of) anymore. Its the fiercest form of tribalism I've ever seen and they will never let an opportunity to drag us back into the morass of pre-1974 Boston.

I would argue those who refuse to admit we have a real problem in this city are the real reason we can't get past it.

Anyway, good luck. Keep your head up and don't get let them rattle you. I'm taking a break.

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Adam,
As I mentioned elsewhere, race, particularly in Boston, has a narrative. And part of it is defensiveness, doubling down on rhetoric and lying about the existence of racism.

I feel badly because I can only imagine the comments we haven't seen, but you have. After 45 years, I can't get angry (kind of) anymore. Its the fiercest form of tribalism I've ever seen and they will never let an opportunity pass to drag us back into the morass of pre-1974 Boston.

I would argue those who refuse to admit we have a real problem in this city are the real reason we can't get past it.

Anyway, good luck. Keep your head up and don't get let them rattle you. I'm taking a break.

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