Boston's schools don't have to be mediocre
Yet, with a mayoral election heating up, the quality of education in Boston Public Schools is shaping up to be at best a secondary issue in the race.
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That's despite the fact that the
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In a poll conducted last year, most
So why isn't education at the top of the mayoral agenda?
There are deeply rooted reasons why schools, despite being the biggest single operating department in the budget and the most important city service, tend to be oddly absent from mayoral races in Boston.
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First, perhaps, is history: Until 1991, Boston had an elected School Committee so mayors could legitimately claim that the schools weren't under their purview. A few years later, former mayor Tom Menino made news when he
That was more than 30 years ago, though, and neither Menino nor any of his successors have ever in fact been judged harshly for the schools.
Then there's the demographic reality that the number of voters who have a direct connection to the district has decreased, because there are fewer students in schools than there were a generation ago.
Boston's population is about 650,000 and there are about
There's also sheer political calculation: It's not lost on anyone that when former city councilor John Connolly tried to run as an education candidate in 2013, he lost. 'There's a disturbing culture in Boston politics where politicians believe that you can't win on schools and it can only be a divisive issue,'
Finally, as this editorial board put it in the
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That, at least, is a problem voters can end: by getting into the habit of demanding more.
We can't afford to be defeatist. Especially in a post-pandemic world, in which many white collar workers can live anywhere, Boston needs schools that are good enough to hold on to residents and produce students who can succeed at college or in careers — and not just those able to land a seat at an exam school.
In public debates, the candidates should be pressed on how, or if, they would
How would they bring the third of students who regularly miss school back into the classroom? What would they do to stop fistfights (and worse) in the schools? Would they ban cell phones during the whole school day and if so, how would they enforce bans? How would they turn the downsizing of the schools — an inevitability, considering long-term enrollment declines — into an opportunity to make the remaining schools better?
When she first ran for mayor four years ago, Mayor Michelle Wu had a lot to say about school buildings — she promised a 'Green New Deal' for dilapidated school facilities — and relatively little about what happens inside them, reflecting the kind of play-it-safe mentality Connolly described.
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Her record in office is more encouraging: Wu has started the painful, but overdue process of shrinking the physical size of the district. She hired an impressive superintendent, Mary Skipper. She
But violence in the schools — and
Her main opponent, Josh Kraft, has called for more
Those ideas should get a full airing. So should Wu's record.
But families should make sure to tell the candidates their ideas and their concerns, too, and their priorities. The part we all can play in making the schools better is to demand more — to insist that B or C isn't good enough, and that we won't accept buck-passing from mayors.
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Boston Globe
11 hours ago
- Boston Globe
No, Mr. President, race is not a biological reality
But the fight over race in education is not confined to the classroom, and the embrace of perverse and offensive narratives is by no means restricted to the progressive left. Get The Gavel A weekly SCOTUS explainer newsletter by columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr. Enter Email Sign Up In March, President Trump issued an executive order titled ' Some of what Trump objects to is indeed troubling. It is appropriate to be concerned about ideological litmus tests, Advertisement Yet buried in the executive order is a statement so wrongheaded that it should have set off alarms. In a section excoriating the Smithsonian Institution, the document condemns the museum because it 'promotes the view that race is not a biological reality but a social construct' and because it states 'Race is a human invention.' But race is a human invention, not a biological truth. For any educated person to claim otherwise is on par with claiming that diseases can be cured through bloodletting or that astrology is a reliable guide to the future. That the president of the United States would make such a claim in an official statement of policy is appalling. By now it is a firmly established scientific truth that race has within populations commonly categorized as racial groups. The differences between such groups are so few as to make them genetically indistinguishable. For all intents and purposes, in other words, the DNA of white people is impossible to differentiate from the DNA of Black people, Asian people, or Native American people. Of course there are physical variations among populations that originated at points far apart on the globe. But the idea that those variations are racial is a relatively recent fiction. It was not until the late 17th century that the notion that mankind could be sorted into distinct biological races first made its appearance. In Advertisement Today such taxonomies seem absurd. So does the view, If the president truly believes that race is a fixed biological reality, he is endorsing a view long discredited by science and rejected by Americans across the political spectrum. 'Racial criteria are irrational, irrelevant, [and] odious to our way of life,' asserted Thurgood Marshall on behalf of the NAACP in 1950. ' Marshall was speaking as a constitutional lawyer, but modern genetics has confirmed what scientists in the 1950s could only have surmised: Racial categories have no objective biological basis. That doesn't mean that race is meaningless, but that its meaning is social, not biological. It is a product of historical, cultural, and political forces. The concept of race was invented to categorize and rank human beings, often for purposes of domination and exclusion. Over time, those categories may have come to feel 'natural' or self-evident, but they are anything but. They are constructs, not codes etched in our genes. Advertisement It is deeply unsettling to see the White House resurrecting the idea that race is a fixed, objective, biological reality. Such thinking has an ugly pedigree. It undergirded slavery, segregation, and eugenics. It lent scientific respectability to white supremacy. It's the reason 'one-drop' rules existed and why anti-miscegenation laws once barred people from marrying across racial lines. It is not the language of truth and sanity — it is the language of race science and racial hierarchy. Trump may imagine that he is striking a blow against leftist dogma, but this isn't a left-vs.-right issue. The point has been underscored across the political spectrum — including by the Supreme Court's most conservative jurist. 'Race is a social construct,' Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in his 2023 concurrence in the landmark case of Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard. 'We may each identify as members of particular races for any number of reasons, having to do with our skin color, our heritage, or our cultural identity.' But that doesn't change reality, he continued. 'All racial categories are little more than stereotypes, suggesting that immutable characteristics somehow conclusively determine a person's ideology, beliefs, and abilities. Of course, that is false.' Clearly there are some human groupings that are genetically determined and have clear physical and reproductive markers — blood type, biological sex, Advertisement That is why the stakes here are so high. A government that treats race as a biological certainty is a government that legitimizes inequality and division. It is not 'Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History' to claim that people's character, capabilities, or civic status can be inferred from inherited traits. It is doing the opposite. And it opens the door to even more alarming policies. If race is 'real' in a biological sense, what follows? Race-based restrictions? Genetic profiling? The lionizing of historical figures with The president often casts himself as a fighter against political correctness and progressive overreach. But in this case, he isn't fighting back — he's reaching back, to a time when science was bent to serve bigotry. The right answer to racial dogma from the left isn't racial pseudoscience from the right. It is fidelity to truth, and to the ideal that all men are created equal. Jeff Jacoby can be reached at
Los Angeles Times
a day ago
- Los Angeles Times
L.A.'s bid to rewrite its City Charter starts off with a spicy leadership battle
Good morning, and welcome to L.A. on the Record — our City Hall newsletter. It's David Zahniser, with an assist from Julia Wick, giving you the latest on city and county government. Here you thought charter reform would be boring. A 13-member citizens commission is just getting started on the painstaking, generally unsexy work of poring through the Los Angeles City Charter, the city's governing document, and coming up with strategies for improving it. Yet already, the commission has had a leadership battle, heard allegations of shady dealings and fielded questions about whether it's been set up to fail. But first, let's back up. Mayor Karen Bass, City Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson and former Council President Paul Krekorian chose a collection of volunteers to serve on the Charter Reform Commission, which is charged with exploring big and small changes to the City Charter. The commission is part of a much larger push for reform sparked by the city's 2022 audio leak scandal and a string of corruption cases involving L.A. officials. The list of potential policy challenges the commission faces is significant. Good government types want the new commission to endorse ranked-choice voting, with Angelenos selecting their elected officials by ranking candidates in numerical order. Advocacy groups want to see a much larger City Council. Some at City Hall want clarity on what to do with elected officials who are accused of wrongdoing but have not been convicted. 'You are not one of those commissions that shows up every few years to fix a few things here or there,' said Raphael Sonenshein, who served nearly 30 years ago as executive director of the city's appointed Charter Reform Commission, while addressing the new commission last week. 'You actually have a bigger responsibility than that.' The real work began on July 16, when the commission took up the question of who should be in charge. Many thought the leadership post would immediately go to Raymond Meza, who had already been serving as the interim chair. Instead, the panel found itself deadlocked. Meza is a high-level staffer at Service Employees International Union Local 721, the powerful public employee union that represents thousands of city workers and has been a big-money spender in support of Bass and many other elected city officials. Meza, who was appointed by Bass earlier this year, picked up five votes. But so did Ted Stein, a real estate developer who has served on an array of city commissions — planning, airport, harbor — but hadn't been on a volunteer city panel in nearly 15 years. Faced with a stalemate, charter commissioners decided to try again a few days later, when they were joined by two additional members. By then, some reform advocates were up in arms over Stein, arguing that he was bringing a record of scandal to the commission. They sent the commissioners news articles pointing out that Stein had, among other things, resigned from the airport commission in 2004 amid two grand jury investigations into whether city officials had tied the awarding of airport contracts to campaign contributions. Stein denied those allegations in 2004, calling them 'false, defamatory and unsubstantiated.' Last week, before the second leadership vote, he shot back at his critics, noting that two law enforcement agencies — the U.S. attorney's office and the L.A. County district attorney's office — declined to pursue charges against him. The Ethics Commission also did not bring a case over his airport commission activities. 'I was forced to protect my good name by having to hire an attorney and having to spend over $200,000 in legal fees [over] something where I had done nothing wrong,' he told his fellow commissioners. The city reimbursed Stein for the vast majority of those legal costs. Stein accused Meza of orchestrating some of the outside criticism — which Meza later denied. And Stein spent so much time defending his record that he had little time to say why he should be elected. Still, the vote was close, with Meza securing seven votes and Stein picking up five. Meza called the showdown 'unfortunate.' L.A. voters, he said, 'want to see the baton passed to a new generation of people.' The 40-year-old Montecito Heights resident made clear that he supports an array of City Charter changes. In an interview, Meza said he's 'definitely in favor' of ranked-choice voting, arguing that it would increase voter turnout. He also supports an increase in the number of City Council members but wouldn't say how many. And he wants to ensure that vacant positions are filled more quickly at City Hall, calling it an issue that 'absolutely needs to be addressed.' That last item has long been a concern for SEIU Local 721, where Meza works as deputy chief of staff. Nevertheless, Meza said he would, to an extent, set aside the wishes of his union during the commission's deliberations. 'On the commission, I am an individual resident of the city,' he said. Stein, for his part, told The Times that he only ran for the leadership post out of concern over the commission's tight timeline. The commission must submit its proposal to the council next spring — a much more aggressive schedule than the one required of two charter reform commissions nearly 30 years ago. Getting through so many complex issues in such a brief period calls for an experienced hand, said Stein, who is 76 and lives in Encino. 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The mayor and several other officials immediately panned the idea, saying it would deprive the city's yearly budget of $800 million, forcing cuts to police, firefighters and other services. — INCHING FORWARD: Meanwhile, another ballot proposal from the business community — this one backed by airlines and the hotel industry — nudged closer to reality. Interim City Clerk Petty Santos announced that the proposed referendum on the $30-per-hour tourism minimum wage had 'proceeded to the next step,' with officials now examining and verifying petition signatures to determine their validity. — GRIM GPS: The Los Angeles County Fire Department had only one truck stationed west of Lake Avenue in Altadena at a critical moment during the hugely destructive Eaton fire, according to vehicle tracking data analyzed by The Times. By contrast, the agency had dozens of trucks positioned east of Lake. 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County's public health system, which provides care to the region's neediest residents, could soon face brutal budget cuts. The 'Big Beautiful Bill,' enacted by President Trump and the Republican-led Congress, is on track to carve $750 million per year out of the Department of Health Services, which oversees four public hospitals and roughly two dozen clinics. At the Department of Public Health, which is facing its own $200-million cut, top executive Barbara Ferrer said: 'I've never actually seen this much disdain for public health.' — HOMELESS HIRE: The commission that oversees the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority selected Gita O'Neill, a career lawyer in the city attorney's office, to serve as the agency's interim CEO. O'Neill will replace Va Lecia Adams Kellum, who stepped down Friday after more than two years in her post. — THE JURY SPEAKS: The city has been ordered by a jury to pay $48.8 million to a man who has been in a coma since he was hit by a sanitation truck while crossing a street in Encino. The verdict comes as the city struggles with escalating legal payouts — and was larger than any single payout by the city in the last two fiscal years, according to data provided by the city attorney's office. — LOOKING FOR A LIAISON: Back in May, while signing an executive directive to support local film and TV production, L.A.'s mayor was asked whether she planned to appoint a film liaison as the City Hall point person for productions. 'Absolutely,' Bass said during the news conference, adding that she planned to do so within a few days. That was two months ago. Asked this week about the status of that position, Bass spokesperson Clara Karger touted the executive directive and said the position was 'being hired in conjunction with industry leaders.' She did not provide a timeline. That's it for this week! Send your questions, comments and gossip to LAontheRecord@ Did a friend forward you this email? Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Saturday morning.
Boston Globe
2 days ago
- Boston Globe
School vouchers: an issue that unites and divides
Advertisement The issue of school vouchers is primarily one of wealthy people who want the government to bear the cost for their private school tuition vs. most Americans, who know that this policy choice is only going to worsen the education they depend on. This oligarchic reality is true in every state, regardless of which party is in charge of that state. Get The Gavel A weekly SCOTUS explainer newsletter by columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr. Enter Email Sign Up Ellery Klein Medford GOP's nod to the private market would undermine our sense of community Nothing binds a community together more than public schools. In our increasingly divided country this institution remains essential. Countless families with children know the experience of school involvement leading to a familiarity with neighbors and the community. Parents' interest in ensuring the best for their children prompts their participation in school affairs and municipal government. Advertisement Raising a family encourages all of us to care about what is going on where we live. In once again promoting the private market approach of school vouchers, Republicans undermine our public voice and sense of community. They wish for a diminished public sphere replaced by the marketplace. Expanding the use of publicly funded vouchers to support private elementary and secondary education would not only seriously harm our public schools. It would also further widen our national divisions. Perry Cottrelle Malden My taxes shouldn't go toward promoting another parent's values Jim Stergios, executive director of Pioneer Institute, argues for using public funds for private education ( Stergios cites Kendra Espinoza, the lead plaintiff in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue and a single mother, who explained in a 2020 Reuters interview, 'At the public school, there's a lot of disrespect and not enough of those values that I wanted them to learn.' I'm a childless atheist who eagerly supports public schools. Public secular education serves me by giving my fellow citizens the intellectual tools to meaningfully participate in our democracy. It's not my responsibility to promote parents' values. I don't want to contribute to parochial schools that promote parochial values or viewpoints. Citizens who are antiabortion don't want a dime of their tax money to support abortion, even indirectly. I feel the same way about spreading religious myths of any stripe. Parents, pass on your values as you see fit, but don't insist I have to pay for it. Advertisement Jim Mesthene Waltham
