Boston's schools don't have to be mediocre

Boston Globe

17-07-2025

After all, the mayor controls the schools, because she appoints all the School Committee members. The buck truly stops at City Hall.
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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Four years ago,
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