CALL IT THE double-secret probation of Massachusetts public schooling.
State education commissioner Jeff Riley is livid at leaders of the Boston Public Schools, from the mayor on down, and he’s letting everyone know it. But he’s made it clear, so far at least, that he has no interest in exercising his ultimate authority and taking control of the state’s largest school district.
The result: blistering broadsides such as the dressing down he delivered to the district at Tuesday’s state board of education meeting.
Riley tore into the Boston system over its performance in meeting goals set forth a year ago in an improvement plan agreed to with the state to avoid a potential state takeover of the 46,000-student system.
He said Boston has failed to hire a leader of its special education programming or deliver a plan, due last November, for moving more special education students into mainstream classrooms. He also said the district has fallen short of hitting 95 percent on-time performance in its troubled school bus system, and has not met targets for renovating dilapidated school bathrooms.
“The administration signed a document saying that they would hit their goals. At best we can say their grade would be incomplete,” Riley said at Tuesday’s meeting.
The state and school district have been in a tension-filled dance since a March 2020 report, which lambasted the district on multiple fronts. The 286-page report said Boston’s special education services were “in disarray,” faulted its programming for English language learners, and took the district to task over the performance of its transportation system and condition of its facilities, starting with bathrooms.
The state and city signed an agreement pledging to work together to address issues identified in the report, and the state committed $4 million per year toward the efforts.
Two years ago, Riley ordered up a progress report. It pointed to a few areas of improvement, but broadly described a system still beset by deep dysfunction. It also had harsh words for the district over what the state said was “a pattern of inaccurate or misleading data” on everything from graduation rates to bathroom renovations and bus performance.
In a statement released yesterday in response to Riley’s latest criticism, the district urged patience with problems that have been years in the making.
The improvement plan the district and state agreed to “is addressing the long-standing broken systems that have persisted for decades in Boston,” BPS spokesman Max Baker said in a statement. “We recognize that we must act with urgency and engage with key stakeholders as we develop our plans. We cannot do this work overnight or alone if we truly want to create the lasting change that our students, families, and staff deserve.”
But Riley’s harsh words yesterday weren’t limited to Boston’s failure to hit benchmarks in its improvement plan with the state. He also lit into the district over the recent announcement by Mayor Michelle Wu of plans for a big high school shake-up.
Wu called for the relocation of the O’Bryant School of Math and Science, one of the city’s three selective-admission exam schools, from Roxbury to West Roxbury, and vowed to undertake a major renovation and expansion of Madison Park vocational high school school, which the O’Bryant currently shares a campus with.
“We were candidly blindsided by a major plan for high schools that seemed half-baked at best,” Riley said. He said the state – along with parents, teachers, and some school committee members – was not given any advanced notice of the plan.
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Riley said it’s hard to evaluate the plans for the two schools without a cost estimate – he speculated that the price tag for a rebuilt Madison Park could be as high as $1 billion – and he raised some of the same concerns voiced by teachers and families about moving the city’s most diverse exam school to a largely white neighborhood far from the neighborhoods where many O’Bryant students live.
Riley’s comments suggested that, while the district is not under formal state control, he expects to be put in the loop on any major initiatives it’s considering. What’s more, as he has done several times in the past, Riley again seemed to hold out the threat that a takeover could still happen. If benchmarks on special education, facilities, and transportation aren’t fully met by the fall, he said, “I expect us to have a different discussion with this board.”