A group of parents sued Boston Public Schools today over its decision to replace exam-school exams for one year with a system that uses pre-Covid GPAs and Zip codes to select students for Boston Latin School, Boston Latin Academy and the John D. O'Bryant School. Read more.
Boston Parents Schoolyard News posts a copy of the essay Khymani James wrote as part of his application to Columbia. James is a Boston Latin Academy senior and the student representative on the School Committee, which voted in October to eliminate the exam-school exam for one year due to Covid-19.
Student member Khymani James speaks during School Committee discusion early this morning.
Update: School Committee chairman resigns over "hot-mic" comments.
The Boston School Committee voted unanimously early this morning to suspend the use of an exam to decide who gets into the city's three exam schools for the next year because of a raft of problems brought up by the Covid-19 pandemic, in a meeting that lasted more than 8 1/2 hours. Read more.
About 70 people rallied this morning on the steps of Boston Latin School in support of keeping an exam to help determine who gets into Boston's three exam schools next year, while across Avenue Louis Pasteur, about 20 people held a counter-protest saying it's time to ditch the test as a legacy of Boston's racist past. Read more.
There are currently a couple of Boston-specific petitions circulating online: Read more.
WBUR reports BPS Superintendent Brenda Cassellius is proposing a one-year change for Boston's three exam schools: 20% of next year's seats would go to students with the city's top grades, while the rest would be awarded based on students' ranks in each city Zip code - with students in lower-income Zip codes getting first crack.
The Bay State Banner reports the BPS's Opportunity and Achievement Gap Task Force unanimously urged a one-year halt on exams because of Covid-19 - just as some colleges are doing with SATs, two days before BPS announced it would be using a test from a non-profit testing concern.
BPS today issued an RFP for a company that can write exam questions that will both ensure potential students are ready for the "rigorous" exam schools while also "furthering equitable access to the exam schools, particularly for Black and Latinx students who have historically been underrepresented." Read more.
The company that writes the ISEE exam that BPS has long used to help figure out who to invite to attend exam schools and BPS administrators are exchanging exclamations of "You can't quit me! I quit you first!" today. Read more.
City Councilors Andrea Campbell (Dorchester) and Kim Janey (Roxbury) want to look at ways to increase black and Latino enrollment at the city's three exam schools - including possibly replacing scores from the ISEE exam now used to help determine entrance with results from MCAS tests. Read more.
The Charlestown Patriot-Bridge reports BPS told Charlestown parents of kids at Boston Latin School and Boston Latin Academy they'd have to take the T to get to school this year, but relented after parents protested and it became an issue in this year's city-council race.
They put out the Boston Latin Academy and Boston Latin School graduation balloons (they had a lot more BLS balloons up).
Troy Henninger yesterday announced his resignation as Boston Latin Academy headmaster at the end of this term next month, two years after he took the job.
His resignation comes a year after the headmasters at Boston's other two exam schools resigned. Read more.
Parent Imperfect notes that that recent report on unequal treatment of black and Latino boys in BPS proposes limiting admission to the three exam schools to kids who were in BPS in grades 5 and 6 - which would mean no more students from private or parochial schools or among kids whose parents moved to Boston in the year before the ISEE exams.
The goal would be to make the student composition of the exam schools more closely reflect the composition of the BPS, as a whole. I’ve seen proposals like this before (even made some), but at least in my memory, I’ve not seen a proposal like either of these in a document endorsed by the BPS.
The Globe reports on what might not be the culmination of a BPS investigation into possibly unfair treatment of teachers at the exam school on Townsend Street.
Friends of Mark Delamere are organizing a Hypnotist Night fundraiser Saturday night to help his family with the costs of recuperating from the spinal-cord injuries he suffered in a September crash on the Arborway that put one driver into a coma, sent four other people to the hospital and led to criminal charges against the driver of the SUV Delamere was in.
Update: The Globe reports the letters have rambling references to al-Queda, Nazis and "poisonous organs in animals."
Among the schools receiving letters: Beethoven, Ohrenberger, Kilmer and Lyndon in West Roxbury, Irving and Bates in Roslindale, BTU Pilot School in Jamaica Plain, Charlestown High School, Dorchester Academy and the Harbor School.
Parent Imperfect describes the choice his daughter faces now that she's gotten into both BLS and BLA:
Connie's Mom, to her unending credit, will challenge Connie to remember that both schools have the same curriculum and to think about who she'll be going to school with and to imagine how she will feel in the two schools. She'll do all that challenging, and then she'll listen to what Connie wants and we'll make a decision ... hopefully the right one. Help!
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