Boston School Committee

Good evening and welcome to this meeting of the Boston School Committee. I'm Chairperson Jerry Robinson. We will begin with the Pledge of Allegiance. of America, and to the Republic. I want to welcome everyone who is joining us tonight in person on Boston City TV and on Zoom. I'm going to ask everyone here in the chamber to please turn off the volume on your laptops or other devices so it does not interfere with the audio for tonight's meeting.

Thank you for your cooperation. Tonight's meeting documents are posted on the committee's webpage bostonpublicschools.org slash schoolcommittee under the November 19th meeting link. For those joining us in person, You can access the meeting documents by scanning the QR code that's posted by the doors The meeting documents have been translated into all of the major BPS languages. Any translations that are not ready prior to the start of the meeting will be posted as soon as they are finalized. The meeting will be rebroadcast on Boston City TV and posted on the school committee's webpage and on YouTube. The committee is pleased to offer live simultaneous interpretation virtually in Spanish, Haitian Creole, Cape Verdean, Cantonese, Mandarin, Vietnamese, and American Sign Language.

The Zoom interpretation feature has been activated. Zoom participants should click the globe icon at the bottom of your screen to select your language preference. I'd like to remind everyone to speak at a slower pace to assist our interpreters. We will begin the meeting with the approval of minutes. I will now entertain a motion to approve the minutes of the November 5th meeting. Is there a motion? So moved. Thank you. Is there a second? Second. Thank you. Is there any discussion or objection to the motion? Is there any objection to approving the motion by unanimous consent? Hearing none, the minutes are approved. We will now move on to the superintendent's report. I present to you our superintendent, Mary Skipper.

Thank you, Chair. Good evening to everyone in the chamber. On Zoom. So first I'd like to just take a few minutes to talk about a couple of items that I know are of top of mind to our school committee members. The first is transportation. At the conclusion of the systemic improvement plan with the Massachusetts Department of Education, The district committed to providing quarterly updates about transportation on-time percentage rates to the school committee. School Committee members are in receipt of a memo from the BPS Transportation Department that provides an update on the district's first quarter on-time performance of what we call OTP. We started the year off with 66% morning OTP and 75% afternoon OTP on the first day of school. These were both day one highs. Since then, the on-time performance of our transportation so far this year has continued to consistently achieve record highs.

Through day 45 of the BPS school year, morning OTP has reached our goal of 95% or higher on nine different days. Across all prior years on record, we've only achieved 95% or higher OTP twice in the first 45 days of the school year. We're averaging 94% morning OTP so far in November and are committed to continuous improvement to increase the efficiency of our system and ensure high quality transportation service for all students. The second item is around enrollment. As we head into budget season and as we share our latest long-term facilities planning recommendations later tonight, I just want to ground members and the public in our current reality. As of mid-October, our enrollment is 46,824 students, which reflects a decline of approximately 1,700 students compared to the same snapshot last year.

This is mainly driven by a decrease in international immigration to the district. In addition, fewer children are being born in Boston, a trend that we have been experiencing in Boston for many years, and that is also true across the nation. This means smaller cohorts of students are aging up through the district. This dip comes after several years of enrollment leveling off due to the large volume of literally thousands of students, multilingual learners, who came into the BPS from outside of the US. We are continuously reviewing the data to understand all the variables impacting the change while maintaining the quality of services to ensure we continue to meet the needs of all of our students. Third, we shared a memo with the school committee members regarding BPS graduation rate data. The memo provides clarification on the difference between the annual graduate, sorry,

The annual graduate count, which is a simple snapshot of all diplomas awarded in one year versus the four-year cohort graduation rate, which is a more complex metric required by federal and state reporting that assesses if a school or district is graduating a specific group of students on time. These memos are publicly available on the school committee's website with tonight's meeting materials. Those are available to the public at bostonpublicschools.org forward slash schoolcommittee. And lastly, the data members have asked about in regards to multilingual learner achievement will be included in the inclusive education presentation scheduled for the Wednesday, December 3rd school committee meeting. Many bright spots from the last few weeks.

First was School on the Move 2025, attended where East Boston's Bradley Elementary School was awarded the 2025 School on the Move Prize by Ed Vesters. I often say it takes a village for every student to thrive. The Bradley Village exemplifies this commitment to collaboration, inclusivity, and emphasis on student voice. Staff have worked hard to create a caring, welcoming school environment which has led to significant gains in accountability targets in math and ELA. and I think the data actually showed that they were 10 years ago at the 33rd percentile and today they sit at roughly the 84th. So quite an achievement. The other two finalists, the Dante Alighieri Montessori School and UP Academy Dorchester. These two schools and staff also work tremendously hard to drive improvement every day.

Thanks to the generosity of two anonymous donors, both schools will receive a $20,000 prize, double what the runners up usually receive. Edvestris itself as a partner has supported BPS for more than two decades now, including 20 years of the School on the Move Prize. The district is so incredibly grateful for their continued support and partnership and for championing the hard work of our educators and school communities. Ed Vestres is a key partner to the district from their key roles in arts education, our racial equity work, our career pathways, to our newest partnership alongside Mayor Wu and the City of Boston, Wicked Math. which will provide advanced math instruction for students across our district. On Wednesday, November 12th, we had 71 schools participate in Principal Partners. This was a one-day event when leaders from the corporate, public, and nonprofit sectors joined principals at BPS schools,

and they walked through a typical day of a school leader. Here are some of the photos from the day. Ronald Murphy, Senior Vice President at Eastern Bank during a visit to the Warren Prescott. Chair Robinson and Head of School Nichelle Gordon at Excel High School and Steph Cherry-Winder, Secondary Education Specialist and Strategic Initiatives Manager at National Grid at the Bates Elementary School with school leader Megan Harrington. Principal Partners generates support for the city schools and provides our city leaders with an up-close look at what's happening on the ground in our schools. On this slide, there are some photos from the morning where I spent in Madison Park with Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Jim Rooney. It was an amazing visit. We went into the culinary area and we learned about a unique partnership of internship where students are at BC doing their culinary apprenticeship. Went into the carpentry area, as you can see.

We went into the electrical, the HVAC, the plumbing, and the one on the right is where we went into the craft shop, their marketing space. and Enterprise Shop where this is the Madison Cardinal that they've created for a t-shirt mascot. The kids were just, you could just tell, so proud of Madison Park, their school, all that was happening in it. And I know that CEO Jim Rooney Learned a lot. He had a dialogue with a group of the students afterwards from the health pathway to talk about how students can get higher quality internships in the health career area. Last night, the district held its annual DLAC elections, what we call our District English Learner Advisory Committee, which brings together families committed to advocating for our multilingual learners. I want to recognize and thank these families for their leadership and partnership.

Their voices are essential in shaping our programs strengthening our services and ensuring we continue to honor the language and cultural assets of every BPS student. I'm proud to share that a member of the BPS family is being honored tomorrow at the annual Henry L. Shattuck Awards. For the past 40 years, the Boston Municipal Research Bureau has presented the award to individuals for their dedicated service to the city of Boston and the greater community. Mattahunt Elementary School teacher and inclusion specialist Taylor McCoy is one of the 10 honorees being recognized as an everyday hero of public service. I'm so happy that one of our dedicated educators is being recognized in this way as a new teacher developer. Taylor mentors new teachers during their first year at school.

She also continues to carry a full caseload of inclusion students, providing both support in reading and helping them reach their behavioral goals. Taylor holds two master's degrees, one in special education and one in reading. And for the past 10 years, she has given her heart and soul to the Matterhunt students and school community every day. and we'll formally recognize Taylor at a future meeting here at school committee but for now we just want to say congratulations to Taylor. Last week, I attended the SPEDPAC Resource Fair at the Murphy K-8 School, which is an event designed for students, parents, and caregivers to learn more about the services available to them. including food, clothing, health care, housing, and legal support. It was great to see Chair Robinson, Member Skerritt, as well as Bed Pack Chair Edith Brazil at the event. I just want to publicly say thank you to Edith and to the SPEDPAC leadership for their strong partnership with BPS.

I also want to note that several BPS departments participated in the event, including our Food and Nutrition, BPS Eats, The Office of Family and Community Advancement, and Countdown to Kindergarten. I would also like to extend an invitation to the 2025 Showcase of Schools scheduled for Saturday, December 13th from 9 to 1 here at the Bowling Building. The showcase, it's an annual career fair styled event where all 109 schools present their communities to current and prospective families. It offers families a chance to meet school representatives, ask questions and discover the distinctive programs, learning environments, and supports that each BPS school makes it unique. Our goal is for every family to feel welcomed, well informed, and confident in selecting the learning community that best aligns with their child's strengths and aspirations. These are some of the pictures from last year's event.

This is a tradition that our leaders and members of the school communities love to come out for. The school showcase marks the beginning of our 2026-2027 school year registration period. And this year, given our new registration platform, Families have the opportunity to explore schools and complete the entire registration process online. They can do this from the comfort of their home on any device. This has been something that's been a request from families to be able to broaden access. We know that it makes it easier for families to learn about their options and take the next step in choosing the best fit for their child. You can go on to thebostonpublicschools.org and click enroll at the top of the page to learn more.

Before we close, I'd like to just share a short video from the BPS communications team highlighting the Madison Park Co-op Initiative, which is a partnership between Madison Park and the city's Office of Workforce Development. This initiative provides real-world hands-on employment opportunities and the students in this video are putting their knowledge and skills to work at the City of Boston's Parks and Recreation Department. And this is one of three city departments employing our students.

and so on.

My name is Elijah White. I go to Madison Park Technical Vocational High School, and I live at Roxbury.

I'm Louis. I go to Madison Park. I live in Southend, Boston, in the Via Victoria area.

My vocational instructor, he called me one day. I was chilling at home. He was like, get your resume ready and tell Lewis too.

We at Madison can do things that simply other high schools can't do. And I really think we can help support the needs of the city while the city is helping to provide Thank you for watching.

We got together a team here within the city of Boston to improve our placements in co-op. And what better place than to approach the various cities' departments.

What do we put the lift in?

My role here is to manage our parks and all their needs of equipment, which also involves the garage for equipment repair.

During the summer, it's a full-time job. It's a full-paid job. Then once school starts, we're still getting paid, but it's one week on working here and then one week going to school.

We work on stand and sit down lawn mowers. We work on oil changes. We change the blades. If they pop a tire, we change those. With the weed whackers, we change the heads. Carburetor if needed, filters, the leaf load is the same thing, filters if needed and things like that.

I believe my most important role is to really make sure that our students are qualified and also have opportunities to go out and display the skills that they've learned here. I'm an immigrant from Jamaica and you know when I came in when we came in here I really wasn't thinking about college I was really thinking about helping my family and so I went to a vocational school it's one of the best thing that I did

Back in 1978, I was a graduate of Brighton High School and also a part of this similar program of working one week and academic one week at school. And it's been very good to me. and I see that being very good to any other student that is interested in the future.

I'm hoping after I graduate I get hired here and I'll work here for a couple years and at some point I want to move to Central Fleet which is a part of the city of Boston, but it's more of the cars and trucks.

I just want to say how important the co-op program is. It goes beyond earning money. It's a It's a confidence builder. It's a validation of skills for our young people. It's opportunity that they deserve. And it benefits the community, the student, the employer. It's a win-win for everyone.

Just a thanks to the communications team. This is exactly what we're trying to do, which is go out into our schools and really bring to life and showcase all the amazing work that our educators, school leaders, To learn more about the program, you can visit boston.gov forward slash Madison dash co-op, C-O-O-P. With that, Chair, that is my super intense report. I'll turn it back to you.

Thank you, Superintendent. I'll now open the floor for questions and discussion. I have a question.

The memos you talked about, are they coming or on transportation, on graduation?

You're in the packet.

I don't have that. Nor in my drive. I'm in my drive now. Okay, good. Maybe someone can get it for me.

They were sent by email two weeks ago, by email.

Okay, we'll resend to you.

So I'll look forward to reviewing that. I guess I'll ask questions then. I'm not seeing it. I do have a question on transportation, and maybe this is in the memo. I think a lot of people read the news, obviously, around the former director of Transtrab, the company that operates the bus fleet. and the sort of bribery kickback scheme and then we're coming off of obviously like a bigger independent report on some of the lack of district oversight so I'm which led to uncertified drivers and obviously Some really tragic situations here in the city. So I'm just curious like how are you thinking about that the structure of that division and what changes are being made and what can we sort of anticipate from a policy level?

Sure, and Dan may want or Sam may want to add to this, but I guess I'll start and say that when, for our purposes, The last contract, we have incorporated in that an abundance of changes that we believe strengthen both the accountability and address issues of holes that may have allowed for what previously had happened. And I specifically spoke with both Dan and Sam and was assured, as was my understanding, That was a previous contract and as you know it was from 2010 to 2021.

And were there, I guess, just to get, not to get too granular, but are there like specific things functionally that are changing? Or do you think the problem was just contract related issues? It seems like there's a broader oversight.

Yeah, I think there were a number of things. I think some of the things were things that the contractor themselves needed to put into place and then some were things that we have since done so that were something not in place by the contractor.

We, in fact, are catching it.

Thank you Madam Chair. Thank you for the report. Right now we are hearing from some families who are difficult experience for immigration issues. It's important too many families connect in this meeting. It's important everybody know How is the district support this family and students? Because it's important. The family specifically with the mental health. What is the fallow this district, the school provide at this particular family because it's difficult situation for the family.

No, I think this is an important topic, Member Polanco Garcia. I think that since January, we have... With our social work division and any of our partners that are supporting the wellness and mental health of our students and our families, We have had a real concentrated effort, particularly in the areas of the city and other schools in our city where we see issues happening or where things are reported. and we have actually a very strong protocol that we've trained all the leaders in that were there to be a situation with federal enforcement that We want to make sure that any student that witnesses it or family member that witnesses it that we are on site at the school to be able to support and offer everything we can as well as connect them to and other supports that may be in the city.

I think similarly with the SNAP benefits, we went into action right away. This is just the role that schools have come to play in our society is to fill these gaps and they are important gaps. I think even with the SNAP benefits, when we knew that there was to be a disruption, we immediately had task force in place, those operationalized, our food and nutrition services, went into full gear. We had 64 sites giving after-school meals. We had 11 sites that immediately set up food drives. We worked hand-in-hand with our city partners, and we started distributing that Saturday at our Saturday and Sunday programming. and even right now we have a number of food drives that are happening across the district for our families and that's just what we have to do. We are a village and we have to support our families in need.

Thank you.

My question is going to be a little legalistic, but just to follow up on Member Hernandez's questions regarding Transdev. I presume that the Boston school system entering into all kind of contracts with different vendors. Transdev is one. Just for my self-edification. Are we, do those contracts have a provision where we are held harmless?

You mean like an identification?

In a sense, but let's say if, like, A couple of months ago, there was a kid who unfortunately died at the bottom of the school bus. Lenz, and of course we are part of the party that was sued. I hate to see our budget or the city budget is going to be part of those Damage Recovery. I'm pretty sure those are covered by the contractor, not by us.

Yeah, I would actually, Member Tran, I would suggest that if committee members want a briefing on that, that we would go through our legal office. I'm not equipped legally to answer that question one way or the other. So I think we can arrange that if that's an area that you'd like answer on, we can have our lawyers be able to do that. I wouldn't feel comfortable answering that.

Thank you. Yeah, sure.

Superintendent, just with a question around the graduation rate for clarification just because in case not everyone has seen the memo and just to continue to distinguish between the count, I think you called it, and the cohort rate. The last year's seniors, class of 2025, graduated at a rate of 85.7%, which meant the students who were coded as 12th graders last year 85.7% of them earned a diploma by October 1st.

Yes, I can pull the memo up.

And then what we're waiting for is the four-year cohort, which is a more complicated algorithm involving all of the students who began four years ago. transfers in, transfers out, et cetera. And looking historically at the difference between the four-year DESE cohort rate and the count, It looks like those are usually within a percentage point or two of one another. So are we reasonably hopeful that The cohort rate would also be improved over last year since our senior count rate is four points higher than last year.

Yes, I think one of the predictors of graduation increase is actually dropouts. Having the dropout rate become stable and or decrease because you're basically feeding more kids into the pipeline to graduate. That happened for us where we stayed steady at our rate from the previous year and were very intentional. During last year and into the summer to offer our seniors as many opportunities as possible to ensure the credits they needed to graduate. So this summer, we actually had far more participate in the summer graduation and the June graduation, which is why you're seeing that bump to 85.7. Monica, did anything I said that you need to correct or add?

No, I think just the clarification that the students who graduated in June did not necessarily graduate in that four years, so we don't necessarily know I think in recent years it has been a closer percentage point gap but you'll see in the memo a few of the years back it was more of a seven percentage point gap so I would just be cautious of trying to predict right now what that four-year cohort rate is going to be based on that data.

Because many of the students could have been over-aged or a few years out from the cohort, which is wonderful that they're getting a diploma, but would not be a part of that four-year cohort.

Right, and sometimes we don't always know exactly when they entered ninth grade in another cohort. and another school across the state. And that's what the state uses to determine that four year cohort.

Yeah, and similarly for us, every student that hasn't graduated, we continue to reach back to. In fact, we reach back to students who have dropped out. If they drop out again, they actually count again as a dropout. But we continue to reach out if they're under the age of 22 because we want them to graduate.

Thank you. Thank you, Superintendent, for your report. I want to dig a little bit deeper on something you talked about, which was enrollment. So you said through mid-October we're down approximately 1,700 from the same point last year. And I'm sure during the long-term facilities plan presentation, Later on tonight, we're going to talk about enrollment projections and open number of seats. But I just want to spend a moment, if you would please, Superintendent, or you may want to call out Chief Financial Officer of your call. The impact of that enrollment. First of all, what had we projected versus what was actual? Because I know we had projected a decline for this year. And then what the actual impact is, I don't know the answer to what percent of our revenue is based upon the actual student number. A lot of the federal money and state money in particular that flows through the city is by actual students.

So when we have 1,700 students less or X number less than we had projected, that's less revenue for us. There's an impact. I just want to spend a moment to understand the impact of that 1,700 down. And then I assume my third point of the question is, so one is, what was it versus what we projected? Two, what percent of our revenues are based upon students? So what's the actual dollar impact? What is our, since some of the trends you talked about, particularly the lower birth rate in the city, we know how many students have been born in the past couple years, what is our projection for next year on enrollment, if we may?

All right, so I'll answer some and I'll defer to you on the spreadsheet side. So in perspective, the last three years, we've seen fairly steady enrollment. That has been in part because we have seen a very steady flow of multilingual learners into our schools, particularly newcomers. and to the point that last year was the first year in real recent memory that we had an increase in enrollment. To have 1,700 students The last time we had a significant drop like that is right after the pandemic. So it has huge ramifications across the schools. Where we saw probably the most significant was at the high school level, grade 7 to 12. That's where we saw the highest.

and the cost which David can get into, it expresses itself different at the elementary than it does at the high. So for instance at the elementary, You can close a classroom of learners in a grade, and that has a particular saving. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. and so it becomes very hard to balance that easily and it makes it hard on the schools with their scheduling. So, and it depends on if it's multilingual learners, there's the cost impact of both the content and the ESL. And if it's special education students, it's obviously services. So every learner has a different amount of resource attached in that way to support.

I'm sure David can get ballpark on it. But that is, I can't underscore enough, 1,700 students out of our system. Again, predominantly multilingual learners. which if we follow that trend with the way the federal landscape is right now, we're not hopeful that that bounces back right away, right, anytime soon. I think on the lower cohorts we see that post-pandemic that just in general city centers became less filled with school-aged children post-pandemic and You also just see that families are not having more than one or two children on average. We see this nationally, we see this statewide. So what that means is, as cohorts come up, and they hit those 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th grades, The number of kids are much smaller per grade and that has a secondary impact on the enrollment.

Yeah, so in regards to our revenue, we are in a relatively fortunate position compared to many of our colleagues around the country in that our The enrollment actually has very little impact on our revenue in the current year. This is for two reasons. The first is because of the way our revenue flows through the city, our appropriation is set by the city council independent of revenue. So our general fund appropriation is set independent of revenue. and then our main enrollment-based allocations.

Excuse me, independent of enrollment? Enrollment, sorry.

Okay, thank you. And then our main enrollment-based grant funds are set based on prior year enrollment counts. Okay. So all that is to say that we don't really see a current year adjustment. The second level of it is The way that Chapter 70 aid from the state to the city works, because we're a minimum aid district, we basically get the sort of minimum increase year to year. And because essentially the state formula suggests that we should be getting below the minimum already. And so interestingly, there's also a limited impact on our city's revenue when our enrollment goes down. I mean, it will eventually catch up and have a bigger- In the following year? Well, it's unclear. The Chapter 70 formula is a little bit complicated that way, but in some years, even with enrollment decline, we don't actually see a decrease in state aid.

We'll see a decrease in federal funding most likely, though. Because of the nature of the way that works, some of the years it's actually less connected than you might think.

And by that you mean Title I, II, III?

Title I, II, III, especially Title I is the main impacted.

and this is separate and apart from the ESSA funds going away so that was obviously that was another one as well right

The other thing that I believe the superintendent asked me to give you was just a sense of the sort of per pupil impact in terms of like school budgets and where we were with enrollment projections. So last year we projected right around 50,000 students. if you recall our projections are always higher than our actuals because we're projecting for high watermark for things like special education we're building some capacity that we know we're not going to hit at any one time so we're not We're not, you know, at 4600 kids, 46,000 kids, we're not 4,000 kids below projection, right? But that projection was a relatively flat projection. So effectively by decreasing by 1700 kids, That effectively all needs to be corrected in the projections and then any ongoing decrease from that. There's really going to be an almost 2x factor of the enrollment decline as we look forward into FY27.

To next year, the budget you'll be presenting in January. Exactly. And so when I come back before you in the middle of December, I'll have some sort of initial calculations and estimates of the impact of schools of that enrollment decline. But in the budget you approved last year, we approved just over $800 million in direct school budgets for about 50,000 projected kids. So ballpark is a little bit more than $16,000 per student. Right, and if I just, I haven't quite finished the math, but here we go, times 1,700, that's about $27 million. of sort of school funding, right? That that sort of represents, right? That we would have essentially reduced some portion of that, because we usually do some soft landing and other thing for schools experiencing enrollment decline. We wouldn't take it all away necessarily, but that's a pretty significant amount of funding tied to that enrollment decrease.

27 million. that would not be flowing to our schools next year because of less enrollment. And as the superintendent said, for example, at a high school level, if you have to have an English teacher or a math teacher for each of the cohorts, The discretionary funds become very difficult.

It's actually $27 million that wouldn't have gone to schools for this year. It's not, it'll be... More than that it'll be closer to you know, if we do that purely proportionally, which we don't it would be a lot It would be more for next year. So I think we are still doing the math of the actual funding formula and and the way it would all work because we're trying not to do things like cut funding from a school that can't collapse classrooms or do other things like that. So it won't be smooth. Right, because we will help our schools work through it, but it is going to be significant.

Yeah, and I think just to remember that it's not a one-year enrollment issue. Because the source is rooted in multilingual learner population and smaller cohorts, it is a longer multi-year issue for us of cumulative enrollment decline.

And I'll add one more thing, gentrification as well. So it's smaller family cohorts, but also when you have families forced out economically out of the city as well.

Sure, yeah. I mean, I think in general what we see in city centers is that it's more and more expensive to live in city centers. And so you're seeing some of that. But this is also just sheer birth rate, right? That is now like across the country is you're just seeing it at all time lows. In addition to, for us, which was a point of huge pride in our district, which was to welcome all of our multilingual learners into our district.

Thank you for that. I appreciate it.

And maybe we'll hear about this later within the presentation. I had this question earlier this week because of that decline in 1,700 students, knowing that this is going to be a multi-year problem, what might be your initial thoughts on the long-term facilities plan and what does that mean for School mergers, closures. It might be still too early to really speculate, but I'm just curious.

So, I think, you know, we have a 2030 goal, which we've never had, which sets at, and we'll review it in the presentation, which aims at about 95 buildings or schools. I think the issue here is that this could be a three or more issue. This could be a longer issue. We don't know. Part of why we only did five years out and did 25 to 30 was because the further you go, the less clear it becomes. And so I think that was like deliberateness on our part to say we will need to keep looking at and making some adjustments as we go. There are ways that we can compensate enrollment decline with class closures in schools, or even cohort closures, that doesn't result in an entire school needing to come offline.

But what it does mean is that the pool of students to go to, say, like the high schools becomes smaller and smaller and smaller. which I think what you will hear and see is that for some schools there's just not enough students to flow to them. and so we get to the point where we have buildings that are serving such a small group of kids that the experience becomes It's very hard to achieve things like athletics and arts and robust AP and rigor in early college because it's just a smaller group of kids. And that's no fault of any schools. It's just the reality that the pool of students continues to go smaller. So they're really, I think mostly what you're seeing in the long term facility recommendations this year is a focus on the high schools because that is actually where we're seeing and predicting

The greatest decline, right, from what we can see the foreseeable future. And we already have that situation of schools that are already experiencing that Thank you for joining us. All of our 10,000 surveys and hundreds of focus groups, we created as part of that process a profile of what high school should be able to offer every student. and what elementary school should. And it becomes increasingly harder to do that when you're just not getting a flow of students.

Sorry, I take another stop at the same issue regarding the 1,700 students that was outside of the projected enrollment. And I heard you mention that the decrease in enrollment is somehow correlated to the number of multilingual students who each year that we lost, we anticipate that we are originally The breakdown on student enrollments.

Do we have the breakdown on each particular group of students? And we do receive that?

Yes.

Okay. Bilingual students, bilingual programs. I don't know whether, and I understand the federal... The current climate in the federal government affects the multilingual students who should be here to enroll. Okay, I understand that. But at the same time, We have been regularly and consistently hearing from different group of bilingual students who appear before us or who approach us or approach you or approach me regarding The expansion of bilingual programs. And I understand that. Right now there are only certain schools that are

Offering bilingual students of different groups at certain school and maybe those are already I understand that as well. But... If, in fact, the number of students, but especially multilingual students and bilingual students are decreasing, I was wondering why and how those schools that offered bilingual programs or multilingual programs are still filled or overfilled. and if in fact they are overfilled.

Given the budget, I understand the budget as well. Given the budget, is there any other? Any other options that we can think of that we can somehow allocate those kind of concerns?

So lots of different kind of questions in there. I think we've made a very intentional effort to expand bilingual, dual language, Programming, from advocacy here as well as the community, so much so that it's been more than we have actually done in decades. and those programs are rolling out. We had nine additionals that went out for this year that started. We have another several that have gotten initial approval. So we continue to do that because we believe in bilingual education. and access to native language. They are not all full. It depends on the part of the city, it depends on the language, and this is something that as we're trying to put together the memo for you to give you the information you need and the context,

What you'll see is those programs as well have also as a group, as our multilingual learners as a group has gone down, Then there are some areas of the city for which those bilingual programs don't fill. So I think what you've heard from is testimony from a couple of the communities where the pathway may be full. and they're either asking for like, is there an option to increase it? Or is there an option to have it be in more than one location? and that's like what we're looking at in hearing and certainly we'll give to you in the memo but there are also instances where some of our bilingual programs that we've just launched even are not full. Now sometimes that can be it takes time and it takes word of mouth in recruitment and building up and sometimes it is because there's just not a base enough in that area of the city because of everything that's going on.

So I think when you get the memo and we talk on December 3rd, more of that information you'll have to then be able to kind of ask the next set of questions around it. You're welcome. You're welcome.

I'm coming back because my start was clunky, so I appreciate you letting me have a second round. First question, just going back on the buses and the broader transdev issue, Here's my ask is, given how incredibly huge of a budget item this is for our system, and the safety and operation issues. I am wondering and I really do trust that you've done the work to build in the sort of right checks and balances, but I think it would be helpful for us to hear more deeply just given because of how large of our budget process it consumes. What are those sort of checks and balances, even if it's like, Not an exciting conversation. I think it's a really important part of what we do. We have said this is such an incredible priority. It's operating at a third of what we spend.

So I think that would be really helpful if we can make that happen. And two more questions. On the graduation rate, and I got the memo, thank you to my colleague for pointing out where it was. I want kids to graduate, and I don't care if it takes four years or six years. We're all on a different journey. So I'm 100% with you. and I am curious as we pull apart the data and this is us getting really deep in being a student outcomes focused body. This is why I've been pushing on this so much. This is actually interesting data for us to play with to understand the dynamics of the system. So as you give us the graduation rate, that will include fifth year, and six-year students, which again, is a success. Also, someone taking six years to get through this in a non-typical way, you are winning in my eyes.

But it would be helpful for us to understand what percentage of that is four year, what percentage do we see fifth year, what percentage do we see sixth year, and then where in that do we understand dropout? I think from understanding policy decisions from a budgetary direction, that might be really helpful for us to also be thinking about. Yeah, sure.

No, no, absolutely. And that's something we analyze as well. There are students, and I'll give you for examples, students who are multilingual learners who come in and they need additional year to complete their English proficiency and be able to complete content areas. Some of our SLICE students fall into that category. And sometimes Gen Ed students just need extra time to be able to complete because of life. When we report out the four-year cohort, like when the state does, they do it as the extended time as well, and they break it into a fifth, they break it into a sixth. And then each school will look to see which students fall into those categories. So we put a lot of effort at the school base to really drill down to the student level to understand what's going on for that student.

That's really helpful. And then I think, again, as we push for more data and to ground conversations here in student outcomes, it would be helpful then to see that in relationship to our high schools. So this is our citywide graduation rate, but what are the trends across each school? I'm imagining if we were like a different, School, Board, somewhere else. That is central data to us understanding school-based progress and its relationship to the system.

We can give you the entire chart for the district of every school.

Awesome. That would be really helpful and just really good to understand sort of what's happening where and where we're seeing real growth and where we're seeing some areas of concern. The last question I have here is on the 1700 students. It's a tragedy, obviously, I think, from a broader political standpoint. Last year, during the budget process, we talked about this. I had real concerns over The projections in relationship to what I thought was a year, a somewhat anomaly politically of a year with the broader migrant crisis, and then what we knew was looming from the president. and his policy direction. And we still went forward. I am wondering from a projection standpoint, and I have brought up projections my entire time on this body, predating you as a...

as something that I still feel like we're not getting right and that we will create more harm to schools if we don't find further precision because of what happens when we start pulling back. From a projection standpoint, is there anything changing internally around how we do that modeling so that we can get closer to good? particularly across demographic data as we're thinking about Title III funding or we're thinking about special education funding as we start doing projections based on student populations.

So I think we are definitely, we have, and I'll use it at the high school level, we tend to try to carry at the high watermark or a bit of extra seedage. in the event that we have years where we get additional students and we weren't expecting or accounting. I think in the first couple years as our newcomer numbers and As the shelters opened and we started to see more and more students come in, the drawback of not projecting as if they will come and many more. It can be harmful to the schools when you have substitutes in front of kids who are not prepared to teach.

So I think we were trying to strike a balance in that and truthfully had three very steady years of that which felt very trendish. I think in addition to the newcomer numbers, the other thing we saw that was not predictable as much as what happened was that students that were part of the system and no longer newcomers also left. And so I think that's really when you start to get into that 1700 and you break it down. It's complex because it's comprised. and remember those students are you know they're part of our system they're getting you know we have to make sure we have appropriate contents life ESL teachers for them and so to predict that they wouldn't come back, I don't think we had any data to say that wouldn't happen, that that would happen. And once you staff, you staff. So we complete our staffing, and we're proud of it.

Usually around June, we try to get our teachers, and this was like a record year of being able to get our staffing in place early, and we've worked toward that to get qualified educators in front of our kids earlier and earlier. I appreciate it. It is definitely a science. Projection is. It's not just a one-size thing. I do think we're trying to take some steps in the current, you know, for this coming budget and projection. and part of that is also working with our schools to know what they and understand better what they know about the families. But again, we don't have any reason right now to think that projections will bounce back unless something drastically changes outside of our control.

And I'll just say this, it's refreshing to hear you say that, mostly because we've sat here before you were here with, I think, With no disrespect to anyone before you, but we would sit here and sort of be told that there was this sort of like great hope for a quick rebuild. and I think sometimes the body bought into it. We approved the budget, we went that direction. And I do think while sobering, it is really important for us to recognize that. That's true in every major city. and we can then make better policy and budget decisions that are grounded in the kids we have and the kids we're gonna get versus holding for folks who are not. I really appreciate that. Thank you.

All right. Thank you. I think we've done a lot. So I'm not going to ask any questions right now. But I will now entertain a motion to receive the superintendent's report. Is there a motion? So moved. Thank you. Is there a second? Second. Is there any discussion or objection to the motion? Is there any objection to approving the motion by unanimous consent? Hearing none, the superintendent's report is approved. Before we move on to public comment, I'd like to invite Superintendent Skipper to share some remarks about the long-term facilities plan.

Great. So thank you, Chair Robinson. So later in this meeting, we will give a detailed presentation of the latest long-term facilities plan recommendations. And just as a reminder, these are recommendations. There's no one voting on any recommendations tonight. Before we get to that, there's a number of speakers who have signed up to give public testimony on this topic. We want to also just be clear that the vote not happening tonight, it's not happening until December 17th. So it's good to see a lot of people here to talk about and give their thinking, and we hope that that's the case. I also just want to emphasize on behalf of the team that our recommendations are not about seats. I know we've been talking a lot about seats up here. But they are about our students and our families and our staff. And our goal is to give every student we serve a high quality experience.

We collectively are just faced and inherit decades of deferred maintenance and divestment in our facilities and it's led us to have to create the long-term facilities plan which is a roadmap that we created several years ago to reduce the number of BPS buildings to 95 by the year 2030. The reality is, as you've heard this discussion, that enrollment has declined over years, especially at the high school level. And as we mentioned, 1700 students is a significant drop. in one year for our schools. It impacts the high school level also because what's behind it are just smaller cohorts or groups of kids moving up to enter high school, and we just don't see that changing. The Long-Term Facilities Plan is grounded in data that followed what was a two-year process.

And during that time we collected feedback from approximately 10,000 students, Parents, staff, stakeholders, it was really a citywide process. And before we get to the point of bringing the recommendations before school committee, We complete a comprehensive and extensive 18-month process. We don't make any of the recommendations lightly that you hear and have seen. In fact, they weigh heavily on all of us, myself foremost and included in this, as well as capital planning. closers, mergers, grade reconfigurations. They are literally the most serious and impactful decisions that a district makes. So again, I just want to ground us as we enter tonight, hearing our public comment, hearing the presentation, that this is about kids.

and that our responsibility is to make decisions to provide our students with the best educational opportunities possible. I also just want to thank everyone that's here tonight for coming out. And we will be taking extensive notes and listening. to voices, ideas, experience because we know this is just a critical decision. So thank you, Chair, for giving me an opportunity to say that at the beginning before we hear public comment.

Thank you, so we'll now move on to general public comment and I just want to remind everyone we have a number of people in person to speak. We will do one hour. A public comment, and I believe we have approximately 30 people here. So please remember, each of you will get two minutes. and remember that we are going to have to stop at exactly one hour so please don't go overtime because you'll be taking away the time from somebody else who is also sitting and waiting and I would hate for them to have to wait until the end of the meeting. if they're here to be able to do that. But we know it's going to be a long meeting, so we want to be respectful of your time and also I want to be respectful of the members' time. So with that, Ms. Parvex.

Thank you, Chair. The public comment period is an opportunity for individuals to address the school committee on school-related issues. Questions on specific school matters are referred to the superintendent. Questions on policy matters may be discussed by the committee later. The meeting will feature two public comment periods, with the first comment period limited to one hour. After one hour, anyone who hasn't testified will have the opportunity to do so at the end of the meeting. We have 61 speakers this evening. Each person will have two minutes to speak and I will remind you when you have 30 seconds remaining. Please feel free to email your comments for distribution to the committee. Speakers may not reassign their time to others. The time that an interpreter uses for English interpretation will not be deducted from a speaker's allotted time. Please direct your comments to the chair and refrain from addressing individual school committee members or district staff.

Please note that the comments of any public speaker do not represent the Boston Schools or the Boston School Committee. Please state your name, affiliation, and where you live before you begin. If you're on Zoom, please sign in using the name you registered with for public comment. and be ready to unmute and turn on your camera when it's your turn to speak. Please raise your virtual hand when I call your name. To support interpretation, please speak slowly and clearly. We will start with our in-person speakers. The first group is Kuan Nguyen, Yu Nguyen, Wong, Ngo, Chilo Storm, Collins Walker, and Nhat Minh Dinh, Quan Nguyen,

Good evening, my name is Nguyen Nguyen, and I am bilingual professional at the Vietnamese Dual Language Program at the Matha Elementary School. As a bilingual teacher, I see every day how powerful dual language education can be. Research shows that this program improves academic outcomes for both English learners and native English speakers. This strengthens cognitive development Three petulants for the success in the global economy and the most racial linguistic equity in our school. Our program has already proven that when students are given to try Learn in two languages, they excel academically, take pride in their identity, and develop empathy for others. That is why I'm here today to respectfully request the school committee to adopt citywide enrollment for the Vietnamese Dual Language Program. This will ensure that more Boston students can benefit from the opportunities and advantages that bilingual education provides.

The next few public comments are all about the accept to bilingual programs in which students can learn both their home language and English. We are eager to receive In sub-appendance, Skipper promised memo response to our community request for the citywide rather than home-based assignment. Thank you very much for the consideration. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker is Liu Nguyen.

Good evening, everyone. My name is Liu Nguyen. I serve as the Vietnamese Youth Liaison at the Boston Police Department in the Community Service Office at District C-11. and as a proud member of the Vietnamese Dual Language Committee. I have worked with Vietnamese families and community members to advocate for the program since 2016. I am here today on behalf of my Vietnamese community in Dorchester to ask you to expand access to the Vietnamese dual language program at the Matter School. This is the only Vietnamese bilingual program in the entire state. As you heard from the children and teacher, this program does far more than teach two languages. It gives our kids a sense of belonging, of knowing that who they are and where they come from matters. For our community, this program is our pride.

It keeps our language and culture alive. It gives us hope for the next generation of Vietnamese children growing up in Boston. Today, I am requesting the school committee to discuss this topic at your next meeting to consider citywide enrollment for the Vietnamese dual language program and other bilingual programs in the district. Again, thank you for listening and for considering the future of our children.

Thank you so much.

Good evening. My name is . I'm in fifth grade at the Mather Elementary School. I live in Dorchester. My first language is Vietnamese. I am in a Vietnamese dual-language program. I'm here today because my class and I wanted to tell you that you should allow more Vietnamese students. especially newcomers to attend the Vietnamese dual language program since it helps kids that just came from Vietnam and might struggle in English classrooms. I believe that being bilingual is better for me because it helps me get more job opportunities in the future.

I believe that being bilingual can help me with my education because I can be smarter in two different languages. I believe making the Vietnamese dual language program accessible to all Vietnamese students in Boston can help the community. I just want you to know that bilingualism makes all students smarter and all students should become bilingual. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Next speaker is Chilo Storm, Collins Walker.

Good evening, everyone. My name is Shiloh Storm Collins Walker, also known as Stormy. Shiloh Storm Collins Walker. I am a fifth grader at Mather Elementary School and I live in Dorchester. My first language is English. We speak English at home. I am in a Vietnamese dual language program. Con Nui, Tien Anh, Er Nga, Condon, Hill, Hoc Chung, Truong Son, Ngu, Tien Viet I joined the dual language program when I was four years old because there was a lot of Vietnamese people in my neighborhood. My mom wants me to learn Vietnamese so I can speak to other people.

Being bilingual is also important to me because it will help me with my education in the future. I want all kids to have an opportunity like I do. to attend this awesome program. I also just want people to make more bilingual schools in Boston. I know that you are district leaders. You make important decisions. Please make more bilingual schools in Boston so more kids attend. Thank you very much for listening to me.

Nat Minden,

Hello everyone. My name is Denkao Nhat Minh. My name is Nhat Minh Denkao. I am a fourth grader in the Vietnamese Dual Language Program. I am very happy that I am in the dual language program. I just came to America so I don't speak much English. Con thích học chương trình song ngữ để con biết tiếng Anh và con không có quên tiếng Việt. Con cần nói tiếng Việt vì ba mẹ con không biết tiếng Anh. The program helps me keep my Vietnamese and learn English at the same time.

My brother didn't know how to speak English when he first came to the U.S., so he had a hard time learning English. Like me, my brother just came to America, but he did not have a chance to study in a dual language program. He had a lot of difficulties. for Learning English. I am here today because I want to ask you to open more dual language Program, so students in Boston can join. I want friends who just came to America to have a chance to learn English and keep their languages. They should not lose their home languages. Thank you very much for listening to me.

Thank you. The next speakers are Min Nu Le, Thien Thuy Nguyen, Odin Hau Nguyen, Nyla Hicks, and Angel Sosa. Min Nu Le. Can you move in, please, for the microphone? Thank you.

Dạ con xin chào school community. Con tên là Lê Minh Nhật. My name is Minh Nhật Lê. I am a fourth grader in a dual language program. Chương trình xong ngữ tiếng Việt. I just came to America last year and I am learning English as a second language. I speak Vietnamese at home. Con thường trò chuyện với gia đình con bằng tiếng Việt. I like Vietnamese and I really miss Vietnam. Con thích nói tiếng Việt. Con cũng nhớ Việt Nam nữa. Being in the Vietnamese dual language program helps me keep my Vietnamese and learn English. I get to have both. Con nghe mọi người nói nếu học tiếng Anh tao sẽ quên tiếng Việt. Con không muốn quên tiếng Việt. People told me that if I learn only English, it... I will forgot my Vietnamese.

I don't want to forget Vietnamese. Today I am here to ask if you can open the dual language program to more students. I want to have more friends to talk to and to play with. Thank you very much.

Next speaker is Tien Kim Thuy Nguyen.

Xin chào mọi người. Con tên là Nguyễn Thủy Kim Tiên. My name is Tien Nguyễn. I am a fourth grader in the Vietnamese dual language program. The dual language program helps me understand, write, and read in Vietnamese. It helps me communicate with my mom and dad better from what I already know. I'm here today because I want you to open the program for more children in Boston to enroll. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Odin, Howell, Nguyen.

My name is Odin Hau Nguyen. I'm a fifth grader in the Mother's School. I live in Dorchester. My first language is Vietnamese and I live in and I speak more Vietnamese at home. I am in the Vietnamese dual language program at the Mather. I'm here today because I want you to know I love Vietnamese. and I'm proud to be Vietnamese. I believe it is better for me, my family and my friends can get me a better job. I'm currently in the Vietnamese bilingual program. I love learning both languages. I want other kids to learn Vietnamese and be proud to learn another language. I want to be able to travel easily when I visit my home country and culture.

I am here to ask the school committee to expand the dual language program, the Vietnamese dual language program. to include all children in Boston because I want all of them to have a chance to become bilingual like we do in the matter. Thank you everyone for listening to me. Nyla Hicks.

Good evening, everyone. My name is Nyla Hicks, and I'm a senior at Cash, and I live in Dorchester. I know I've only been at this school since September, but in these few months, Cash has changed my life in a way I never expected. Even though this is my first and last year here, the thought of this school closing in 2027 breaks my heart. Not just for me, but for every student who will lose what has become a real community. Before coming to CASH, I spent seven years in Newton Public Schools. I've been in different schools, different environments, but nothing has ever felt like this. CASH is the first school where I walked in and immediately felt seen, supported, and believed in. I felt like I didn't have to fight to be understood. This school became a family to me faster than anything in my life. I've never been so motivated to be a better version of myself. Our teachers pour into us every single day. They push us and encourage us. They check on us every single day. They check on us and celebrate us every single day.

And then for our principal, Mr. Simpson. He's the first black principal I've ever had. And that means a lot to me, especially in Boston Public Schools. He welcomed me like no other principal has ever. He took the time to learn about me, support me, and make sure I had opportunity at his school. He is the type of principal who would give the last to make sure every student succeeds. You don't replace leaders like that, you invest in them. Because of cash, I've had opportunities I've never imagined. Joining the Boston Student Advisory Council, becoming part of the TCM program with Mass Bar Association. In just a few months, the school has opened doors for me that changed my confidence and my future path. But here is what I really want you to understand. This school may be small, but the love, the connection, and the community inside of it is what makes us huge. Students here know each other. Teachers know us. We feel safe. We feel wanted. We feel capable.

Every hallway you walk in someone is rooting for you. Thank you your time is up.

Our next speaker is Angel Sosa. And your source is not here, so we will continue our speakers. Netshakai Agust, Marika Allwood, Marcus Brown, and Deidre Manning. Netshakai Agust. No, Marika Allwood,

Hi, everyone. Good afternoon. My name is Marika, and I'm a junior at CASH. I moved here in 2024 from Jamaica. Starting CASH in September 2024, and going to cash doesn't feel like a chore. It feels like somewhere I want to go, better myself and further my education. It's an alternative school for people who need a second chance and other places might not accept them based on behavior and other things that that are out of their control. I am not a number and there's no price tag on me. I'm a real person and shutting down my school will hurt me. and others. Doing this will take away my experience. The Cash family sets a great representation. What if the population increases? Teachers might lose interest in teaching and might seek jobs elsewhere, which I think will decrease the numbers of teachers in school. What about parents who prefer small communities for their child or children?

At CASH, we offer multiple opportunities to under-resourced students. I debate at CASH, and I think I do what I do well. If I move to a bigger school, I don't think I will get the recognition I deserve. I hope you take into consideration the effect this has on students, parents, and staff. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Marcus Brown. Marcus Brown.

Good evening. My name is Marcus Brown. I'm the PE teacher and athletic coordinator at another course at College High School, and I'm speaking against the closure. We were notified on November 17th that ACC would be recommended for closure, and two days later this proposal is being presented. That is not meaningful engagement and it tells our community that the decision was made before we even were informed. ACC serves a majority black and brown student population, 91% high needs and over 40% students with disabilities. Many of our students choose ACC because larger schools in this district did not support them academically, emotionally, or socially. ACC is one of the few places where they feel safe, supported, and connected. The closing letter claims this is about student learning and experience, but decades of research say the opposite. Forced school transfers harm learning. Students who change schools are twice as likely to drop out, and Mobility disrupts academics, relationships, stability and mental health which also affects the schools they move into contributing to the cycle.

Closing ACC creates the exact instability the research warns us about. We also need to name the racial impact. When a district repeatedly closes schools serving black and brown students, forces them into unfamiliar environments, and gives families two days notice of a life-changing decision, the impact is indirectly racist. Intent matters less than impact and the harm continues to fall on the same students of color again and again. The long-term message this sends is damaging, that the safety, belonging, and community our students have built at ACC is expendable. ACC is not a failing school. It is a community worth protecting. I urge the committee to reject or pause this recommendation, conduct a real Racial Equity Analysis and pursue support or relocation instead of closure. If we truly care about our student learning and student experience, we cannot dismantle one of the fewer environments where our students are finally thriving. And if the committee truly cares about the long-term outcomes,

Black and Brown students, then you must also care about the consequences of the decisions because the research makes them impossible to ignore. Thank you.

Good evening. My name is Deirdre Manning. I'm a resident of Dorchester and a single parent of two public school students. I wanted to bring to the attention of the school committee that there's an organization called the Boston Compact. and Dr. Ana Tavares and Dr. Granger are people who participate in this collaborative effort to sort of foster I guess better opportunities for members of our community. I've testified many times about the wildly biased testing conditions that favor Boston public school students. I feel like this whole process is sort of like a welcoming party for BPS. I wanted to bring to your attention that there are very many charter schools that have a huge number of black, in terms of percentage, black and brown students.

And if the school committee in the district is really serious about increasing the number of applicants to exam schools, they need to find a way to make it easier for these students to apply. 70% of... Burke Charter School students met or exceeded expectations in math on the 2025 MCAS, 65% in ELA. But it is really difficult for those students to be welcomed to BPS because they have adverse testing conditions. If you have a situation where you have, say, five or ten minimum applicants who want to come to an exam school, why aren't you working through the Boston Compact to encourage those schools to provide MAP testing in that student's school? Why make it difficult for them to actually get to one of the testing sites, give up a weekend, have to take marathon testing, math and ELA, MAP, back to back? If you're serious about creating opportunities for other members of our community, you need to address these adverse testing conditions.

Thank you. The next speakers are Shamila Lloyd, Dorothy Humphrey, Amanda Roberto, Megan Despond, and Julie Tran. Shamilia Lloyd.

Good evening, community. My name is Dorothy Humphrey. I'm here on behalf of against the closure of Lee Academy Pilot School. I work there as a crossing guard, so I get to see how the teachers interact with the students. And it's very rewarding to see teachers embrace these students every morning. These students look forward to these teachers. They even look forward to speaking to me every morning. It's refreshing. And I remember when I wanted my children to come and attend Boston Public Schools. One of the things that I looked for was a small school, a small setting for my children to learn. And this school has that. And to take that away is a disgrace to the community. And I'm against it. Thank you.

Thank you. Just want to confirm, Shamilia Lloyd is not in the meeting? Okay, so then we'll continue with Amanda Roberto.

My name is Amanda Roberto. I live in High Park with my husband and three children, two of which have IEPs and need an inclusion setting classroom. My son CJ is a sophomore and another course to college. I am deeply concerned about the news to close ACC. Given my son's diagnosis of autism and muscular dystrophy, that school is perfect for both my boys. The proximity to home, the size of the building, and the inclusion setting classroom checked all of our boxes. I keep hearing that inclusion settings will be rolling out but never give an exact answer as to when all schools will have an inclusion model. You have now left my family along with many others without a clear route of how to complete high school which brings an enormous amount of stress trying to figure out where to send my children. Now there will be no options for inclusion schools for my boys or many others within a reasonable distance. You can't expect kids to sit in traffic for over an hour to get back and forth from school. Without having a solid school choice, inclusion or not, it is not only an inconvenience but disrupts our daily lives as a whole. We can't be expected to sell our homes, move out of the city to find a decent school for our child.

because that's a ridiculous notion for families to uproot their entire life for a decent school within a reasonable distance to their home. Some families can't even leave the city due to their jobs because most Boston City employees have to live within the city. Also, it's not fair that families in High Park, Roslindale, and West Roxbury are left with no viable options for public schooling, especially for kids in the inclusion setting. I also know there needs to be at least one inclusion SPED program in each district by law. We all know that high school holds many memories for students and to end these memories so abruptly is heartbreaking. The email that we received stated two reasons to close. One, because there was no gym, which New Mission is right across the street and is perfectly accessible. And the other reason is because the size of the school. They knew, the school district knew full well how big that school was when they signed up to make it a high school. Having a small school was one of the reasons we loved ACC. It brings... Sorry.

One reason we love this school is because of the size, both physically and because it gives the kids more face time with their teachers and helps foster a better homeschool relationship with families. Please keep this school open.

Thank you.

Megan Despond, Megan Despond, Julie Tran.

Oh.

Hi, everyone. My name is Megan Desmond, and I am an ESL teacher at another course to college in Hyde Park. Again, I know that you all have done a lot of research, spent a lot of time making these decisions and I hear all of that and I also believe that we follow different trends. 20 years ago we were moving towards smaller community schools and that's why we exist and now we're being told that that data is no longer valid. We found new data and now we're deciding to close schools. I personally don't know when I've ever heard closing schools was good for kids, good for communities, good for families. Seeing kids who I would have never expected to have shown any emotions in school were heartbroken.

This is literally in our face, the school to prison pipeline that you guys are doing by making these decisions. Multiple students have faced multiple closures. and moving ahead of time in order to try and make sure that they are getting less interrupted schooling and now they're being faced with it again. I don't know what to tell my students. We don't know what to tell our students. Our students don't know what is happening to them next. and these are decisions that are being made and we're finding out less than 48 hours later that we need to come and fight for our schools and we're all here willing to do that but we need your guys' help to make better decisions because this isn't it. Thank you.

Next speaker is Judy Tran.

Hello, everyone. My name is Julie Tran, and I am a teacher at another college. I am a teacher since four years at the school. One of the things I love about this community is the small size because at the end of the day, not only do I get to know about my students, but because I get to see like a lot of students that don't teach in the hallways you get to build a better relationship and you get to kind of help mitigate some of the issues some students may have and build a relationship in the hallway to make sure that our class is running very smoothly. So also because our class is so small, our school is so small, I think it's really important to highlight the capability of our school to have more school-wide events to just not single-size everyone, but to have small events where we could get to know everyone and that we could celebrate the community as a whole. and to boost morale and to set more community bonding.

As a result, we were able to have a lot of school-wide field trips and making sure that our students feel like they have a place to go and have a lot of experiences that they would never face if they weren't at ACC. The thing is that with this recommendation of school closure, I wish that the school committee could think about these recommendations. to make sure that we as a community have better solutions on making sure that our community is safe and our community is preserved in a way that students could get the support that they need. Thank you.

The next group of speakers is Naomi Pillay, Chris Mee, Johanna Waldman, and Kamalampata Dibinga. Naomi Pillay.

Good evening. My name is Naomi Pillai. I have the privilege of teaching visual arts at ACC, another course We call it ACC. It's just an acronym for the family that we are, but it's not just a title. It's a name that we take to heart. Every day that the kids walk through the door, they're offered an opportunity for a hopeful future. I hope you understand that most of the students that come to us, there was a new one just this Monday, they have been turned away by so many people and failed by so many systems, not just Boston, from around the world. and they come here to our school and they find out that there is a bright light at the end of the tunnel and it doesn't look like what other schools might tell them. It looks like cosmetology, it looks like gardening opportunities, it looks like saying, yay, watercolor this week, you know, because there's so much going on in their lives. There's ice raids going on constantly.

I have yet to get a driver's license because these are the kids I get to see on the bus. I get to go to Forest Hills where so many news about fights and so much incidents, but we get to stand there as ACC looking out for each other. The small size of our community, it fosters leadership opportunities that you've never seen before. Kids that come to me saying, Miss, you won't believe it, I got this kid to class. I'm a senior, this is a random ninth grader that is... he doesn't know this but has been going through it his whole life just attending class and this senior takes it upon himself and takes the pride in just being a part of this community I understand that you're looking at these future projections, but the reality of ACC is a success. When you talk about MLL learners, what I experience is the joy when Haitian Creole students hear me go,

Bonjour, aujourd'hui nous désignez, or nous disons, I got that wrong guys, but they correct me and guess what? Thank you. Thank you.

Chris Ming.

Good evening. My name is Christopher Ming. This is my 25th year. Another course to college. I'd like to talk about partnerships. We saw a very inspirational video of the partnership of Madison Park and the DPW. At ACC, we've had a 15-year partnership with Build Greater Boston. It is an entrepreneurship program. In which ninth and tenth graders are given seed funding to start and run their own businesses. But it gives much more than that. It teaches students to become the CEO of their own lives. We're pretty competitive at ACC. In three of the last four business plan competitions, ACC has won, beating schools that are five times bigger. The pride that the students have with these accomplishments is great. But they shouldn't be surprising. ACC has always been built on two pillars, rigor and support.

We continue to have the requirement that all students must gain acceptance to college even while taking on more and more students with high needs. Let me tell you what I'm most proud of at ACC. We have never had a barrier to acceptance. You show up on day one, well there's no interview. There's no interview, there's no application, there certainly is no test. You come, you achieve, you're with us. And that respect for humans more than students goes both ways. Two days ago, we were in a meeting And the meeting was delayed because a group of students would not let us start the meeting until they knew that we were okay. Thank you.

Johanna Waldman. Johanna Waldman.

Good evening. My name is Johanna Waldman. I am a biology and special education teacher at another course to college. I have worked there for 20 years. And it has changed a lot in the time that I have been there. But some things have not changed at all. And I, excuse me. When we think about a student's experience, I do wonder if small community is on that survey, that what we can offer students and that we see them all day long in the hallways, maybe when they don't want to see us, but we're talking to them anyways after school all the time. Also, thinking about the experience, while we are small, we still offer and are constantly trying to offer students the best, right? are constantly thinking about curriculum and opportunities.

The students behind me, many of whom are in my very full 10th grade classes, right, which are at and sometimes over the class maximum right now with many different types of learners have participated in the Aspen Challenge, have been in those BUILD programs, are receiving New curriculum that some of it's from the district, some of it is because colleagues are developing new things. Staff at ACC that present at PD both for social, emotional, and belongingness that are part of leaders in the AP Community. I participate in science teacher leadership programs. So while we may not have all the bells and whistles, we are working every day to provide our students with a high quality We have an exceptional program and we meet every student where they are when they walk in the door. So I urge you to reconsider

and also to think that while you have to face these very real drops in enrollment, that doesn't have to mean that you cut small communities. They could stay as an option and we could think about ways to make sure that they offer all the things that students need. Thank you.

Carmen Ampata-Dubinga.

Oops. Hi there. My name is Mr. Dibinga. I'm an English teacher. I know the course to college. I'm going to start with some of the words of a student who is an honor roll student. She came up to me and she says, wait, hold up. I'm going to have to go back to a big class. And her words were laced with anger, fear, and anxiety. And she said, I can't go back there. That's why I came here. She said, I can't focus in those classes. I don't feel seen in those classes. She was concerned about how the teacher is going to reach her if she can't even see her. A girl came from Mecco last year. She said, I came back to Boston because I wanted to be around people that treat me like a friend and a family member as opposed to an intruder. She also said that she wanted to make sure she could walk to school. And she also said something I was shocked by, that the staff at ACC trusts her more Then the staff at the school that she came from.

But being able to walk to school is important because we are the only open enrollment high school in Hyde Park. That's very important. In a school like ACC, you are going to build relationships with students that you don't even teach. The population of the school is a population I come from as a BPS grad, and we all know that relationships are crucial in order to build a productive, harmonious teaching environment. At ACC, a kid who's looking upset can't walk 20 feet without three or four adults stopping them and checking in on them. A kid who's absent a couple days gets adults asking, where were you? Even if they don't know them that well. I've taught for 23 years, 10 years in middle school, 13 years in high school, 8 years at ACC. There's only one other place I worked that had a school-wide vibe that ACC does. and that was the Irving School under Jamila Smith, but that's now closed. Instead of cutting out, we need to carve in support and create spaces

for kids to achieve the visions that we want them to and if we want to do that we have to make sure they're seen first and ACC does that very well. Thank you.

Next speakers are Genesis Moretta, Jacob Watson, Sadie Jasmine, and Giovanni Spurgos. Genesis Moretta. Jacob Wawson,

Hello, my name is Jacob Wathen. I work at ACC, like many of the amazing people behind me. I'm new to ACC. I've been working there like two and a half months now. I'm a baby teacher, you know, only been a teacher for a couple years. And the sense of community that I've seen at ACC is amazing. So when I, like many others at this school, received the news of the upcoming closure, it crushed me. and then I thought about it and I realized just how awful it's going to be for so many people in that school um many other people have a lot better points about it than I do so I'll just focus on the fact that uh The commute times for students who will have to go to new schools instead of ACC is going to be almost cataclysmic for their learning.

I can't even begin to use this mic, first of all. I can't even begin to explain how that transition from knowing you have a five and a half minute commute to an hour plus... could change your view of school of learning of homework etc everything is going to be worse for these kids if this goes through please think about that thank you

Sadie Jasmine. Sadie Jasmine. and Giovanni's Burgers.

Good evening. My name is Sadie Jasmine. I am a bus monitor and I am the president of the local 2936 I am here today to respectfully inform you that it is an incident occur on the school buses My monitor should not be held accountable or charged under the following superintendent circulars. Child Abuse and Neglect, Physical Restraint Policy, Discipline of Students with Disabilities, Special Education Law IEP Requirement. I am making this speech because I have repeatedly reported serious safety concerns to management, particularly regarding an assigned monitor who has documented several incidents involving a student who requires a one-to-one support was never assigned by management.

Management has stated that BPS has qualified staffs who are paid significantly higher wages whose job is to respond to these situations. Yet, monitors earn $19.76 per hour. are being asked to take on additional one-to-one responsibilities, saving the district substantial money while those funds allegedly being spent on other purposes. Such as expensive city vehicles. At the same time, we are told there is no money to provide monitors with a fair wage increase. Meanwhile, many city officials including the mayor, superintendent, and management continues to receive cost of living raises. Respectfully, BPS needs additional monitors.

However, it is unrealistic to expect qualified individuals to apply for positions that offers... that offers low wages, high responsibility. Okay. Okay, now I will speak for Giovanni Burgos. mistreated disrespect from management as a result many senior monitors have resigned and others has transferred into driver's roles who remains are being requirement takes the duties far beyond their jobs. Until this systemic issue is addressed, the burden will continue to fall on every student and families who depends on us for a safe and appropriate transportation.

to formally report several serious concerns regarding dual roles assignment to executive directors, yard management, and supervisors who have instructed school principals, monitors, even union representatives to follow it being stated by Mayor Wu, the superintendent are allegedly aware of this practice. One significant example is the school bus, World Bus 4943, which transports some of the most medically fragile and vulnerable students in the district. This bus has four Students were one-to-one requirement. However, for an extended period, only one monitor was assigned to manage all of them. What happens if multiple students experience seizures, medical emergencies at the same time while only one person is responsible for all of them?

If this happens, who will be blamed for neglect? The Monitor, In the impossible situation to manage that create unsafe condition, the Carter School students must be treated with the highest priority due to their complex medical behavior and needs. Additional examples include HS 511 to the Perry School has nine monitor required students and one one-to-one and one monitor and there are many more buses that way and it's unfair and thank you for having us speak.

Next speakers are Phyllis Leslie, Esther Jean, Ana Morgado, and Andrew McDonnell. Phyllis Leslie.

Good evening. My name is Phyllis Leslie, and I work at the Henderson School. I'm proud of that. And I live in Mattapan. I'm coming to you not only as an employee of the Henderson School but also as a proud grandparent. I was a former student there and also my children were there. And so there's deep personal and family history tied to its success. I began my journey at the Henderson. I was a volunteer because I was a stay-at-home mom. Encouraged by Dr. Henderson, I applied for a professional position. Then eventually I served many other positions. I'm currently a social worker. So this marks my 25th year of service at the O'Hearn slash Henderson School. Currently my granddaughter is in the third grade at the Henderson. In 2009, the school was rightly dedicated to Dr. Henderson in recognition of his tremendous work fostering inclusion.

Under Dr. Henderson's leadership and later that of Patricia Lampron, our school experienced significant growth and flourished. internationally recognized for our inclusion model in which severely disabled students learn alongside their peers in a fully inclusive classroom. Parents embrace this approach wholeheartedly. Our school was often visited by educators from around the world. Eager to learn from our model, we had a waiting list for students wanted to attend, and school events, when we had school events, regularly saw 100% parent participation. My purpose in sharing this history is to ask, how do we arrive at the point where we face the elimination of grades nine and above, Where is the data that supports our years of thriving success and then what led to this decline? What changes have impacted our trajectory so deeply? Our school mission and Inclusion model have remained unchanged, yet leadership has evolved.

As we transition to the K-8 model, what measures and supports will the district implement to ensure that we do not experience the same challenges and declines that led us to this point? We remain committed to our inclusive mission and want to be confident.

Your time is up.

Thank you for your time and thoughtful consideration.

Esther Jean. Esther Jean.

Okay, my name is Esther Jean and I speak today as a parent of four children in BPS, a staff member and a proud member of the Lee Academy community. When my children transitioned from daycare to elementary school, I searched for a place where I would know that they would feel safe and Truly Seen. The search led me to the Lee Academy Pilot School, a hidden treasure in Dorchester, a small hands-on school where children are known by name Learning is personalized and families feel belonged. My children thrived here because of the environment that was built on trust, support, and high expectations. Years ago, the parents of the community fought to add the third grade to the school and they won. Today, we fight again. Less than 48 hours ago, the families received an abrupt email about proposed closures.

As someone who works at the Lee, I heard the frustration and endless questions from staff and family members who deserve clarity, respect, and a real voice in the process. If the district claims we're facing enrollment decline, you don't solve shrinking enrollment by giving students less support in larger classrooms as classroom sizes increase this year. Lee Academy has a current waitlist and parent walkthroughs as of Monday. with interest in the school. Yes, our school deserves a better building for our students, but closing Lee Academy is not the only solution. We asked the district to discuss More options. Can we rebuild or renovate? Can the Lee return into an EEC center? Can we merge with other schools in a way that preserves our community? These are serious inquirements that require documents, details, and genuine collaborations with the family and staff.

One month is not enough time, not for the families to process, not for the plan of the district.

Thank you, your time is up. Okay, thank you.

Good evening. My name is Ana Paula Morgado and I am an ESL teacher at the Lee Academy Pilot School. This is my ninth year serving our students and families and my 19th year in the Boston Public Schools. I am also a Hyde Park resident and a BPS parent. I'm here tonight to ask you to truly consider what closing Lee Academy would mean, especially for the multilingual families I serve. Of our 201 students, 81 are multilingual learners. That's more than a third of our school. Many of our families have left their homelands because of political unrest, natural disasters, economic hardship, or a need for better educational support. As a child of immigrants and an English language learner myself, I know what these families sacrificed to build a life here. At Lee Academy, we work intentionally to make every family feel welcome and valued.

Time and again, families tell us how much they love our school, how safe their children feel, how supported they are, and how proud they are of their children's progress. Each year, third grade parents tell me they wish we continued on to fourth grade. Just last month, a mother expressed her worry when she learned her son would have to leave our school after this year. She said this was a safe school and she needed him to be safe. So I ask you to view this decision through the lens of BPS's mission to provide an equitable, high-quality education and eliminate opportunity gaps for all students. Closing the academy is not an equitable choice. And it stands in stark contrast to recent investments made across the district, the new buildings and mergers supporting other schools, Why are our families the ones losing their community? We deserve the same respect, the same stability, and the same investment as every other school community.

Our students deserve a building that is safe and accessible, yes, and they deserve to keep their teachers, peers and community that make them feel safe to learn and thrive. I invite you to visit us and please push back the vote to January.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Andrew McDonnell. Andrew McDonnell.

Hello. My name is Andrew McDonnell. I live in Dorchester, and I'm the parent of a second grader at the Lee Academy Pilot School. My son has been there for his entire public school career since K1, and I hope to send my daughter to K1 there in a few years. He has thrived there because it is a close-knit community with a strong focus on young learners and their social and emotional growth. He feels comfortable and confident going there despite the challenges he faces due to the hard work teachers and staff make to connect with learners and make them feel welcome. Lee Academy is a unique, irreplaceable community. I do not want to see it shut down. The issues flagged by BPS are things that have been raised by LAPS families and faculty over many years. and is disappointing that instead of being addressed, BPS is proposing to close the school. I am concerned that if shut down, students who remain at the school through the next year will not receive equitable educational resources

or have a positive school experience since the student base will be cut in half and looming change will dampen school spirit. I would particularly like to hear more about plans to ensure that students receive support before, during and after their transition which will be a traumatic event. How will the relationships with fellow learners and staff that contribute to educational success be maintained? Will staff be kept together? Connections between classroom teachers, paras, specials teachers and support roles are an important part of LAPS culture and the result of years of effort that should not be thrown away. Even if the facility is unsavable, the community and educational environment should be preserved. Please also ensure that families have a way to hold BPS accountable and that there is a clear, accessible point of contact for that during this time. Thank you.

Chair, that concludes public comment for the first hour.

Thank you, Ms. Parvex, and thank you to those of you who spoke this evening and shared your perspectives. Your testimony is very important to us.

Can I say something? We have one student from ACC who hasn't spoken and has been working really hard on his speech. Would it be possible for them to have a little bit of time? Is everyone okay with that?

That's fine. That's fine.

Good evening. My name is Rocco Serro. I'm from High Park. I'm here tonight to talk about the proposal of shutting down ACC and the negative impact it brings on students. In 2016, You guys took us from the Taft building and put us in our building in High Park. It was the first time we had our own building. And nine years later, you guys are telling us the building is inequitable. This feels unfair, especially because ACC is working for its students. Even though we are a smaller school, we have meaningful opportunities. We can enjoy lunch in the courtyard, and we still participate in athletics and other programs. The building itself is in good condition, so the issue is not the space. It's that the attention has been focused on closing ACC rather than supporting it.

As a student in an emotional impairment class, my options for other schools are extremely limited, and for others that live in the High Park area, new admission requires an application and an interview to go. which means ACC is the only realistic option in Hyde Park. I actually learned about the closure proposal through a text from another student. As someone who is new to the community, I feel disappointed ACC has been welcoming, supportive, and helpful. A place where I can succeed. Large schools are overwhelming for me, and I struggle to manage the environment. ACC's smaller setting and the support I receive in the EI program have allowed me to make real progress. including joining general education classes as I become more independent. If ACC closes, I will lose the environment that helped me grow. I'd have to start over socially and academically and that would set me back on the progress I have worked so hard to make at ACC.

All I'm asking is that BPS works with ACC instead of shutting us down and give us a chance to serve the students and not put us to other places. Thank you.

Nice job, Rocco. Actually we cannot. I mean we took an exception for the student but our public comment period is one hour. We've done the one hour. We will have a second hour at the end of our meeting. So we have to follow the rules. I'm sorry. Thank you. Our only action item this evening is the grants for approval totaling $18,775,752. Now I'd like to turn it over to the superintendent for any final comments.

Great, Chair. Thank you. And again, thank you to everyone that spoke in that first session. There's five grants for your approval tonight, totaling more than $18.7 million. The largest is an IDEA or Individuals with Disabilities Education Act grant that's continuing entitlement grant totaling nearly $18.2 million. For the 2025-2026 school year, this grant serves approximately 12,000 students and 100 staff district-wide. The purpose of the grant is to provide funds to school districts to ensure that eligible students with disabilities receive a free and appropriate public education, including special education and related services designed to meet their individual needs. The next largest is a special education early childhood entitlement grant totaling just over $513,000 and will serve approximately 1,000 students district-wide.

The purpose of this grant is to provide funds to school districts to ensure that eligible three-, four-, and five-year-old children receive developmentally appropriate special education and related services designed to meet their individual needs in accordance with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. The federal fiscal year 2026 budget proposal for school year 26-27 aimed to maintain the overall IDEA funding level but would consolidate smaller IDEA grants like Part B preschool grants, Part D national activities for technical assistance and teacher preparation into the larger Part B grants to state program. It is too soon for us to know if this change will be approved through the budget process and what the impact would be on the district. But we're continuing to monitor it closely.

The remaining $80,160 includes a continuing competitive civics teaching and learning grant totaling $40,160 that will serve 46,000 students and 300 teachers district-wide. This grant will support civics teaching and learning, including student-led, nonpartisan civics projects. It also includes a continuing competitive early college planning grant for $25,000, serving approximately 100 students at Boston International Newcomers Academy or BINCA, Madison Park Technical Vocational High School, and Margarita Meniz Academy. and there's a new $15,000 Campus Without Walls or what we call CWW planning grant for the Dr. Albert D. Holland High School of Technology serving 28 students and two teachers that will support a two-year pilot with 10 high schools and three to five districts.

This funding will support the development of a course using the Campus Without Walls model, a statewide virtual course sharing platform, that enables students to access high-quality, diverse courses without leaving their own schools. So that sums up the grants. CFO Bloom is here. Were there to be any deeper questions on the grants?

Thank you. I'll now open it up to questions and comments from the committee. Okay. There's no further discussion. I'll now entertain a motion to approve the grants as presented. Is there a motion? So moved. Thank you. Is there a second? Second. Is there any discussion or objection to the motion? Is there any objection to approving the grants by unanimous consent? Hearing none, the grants are approved. Now we will transition to our only report tonight, which is on the long-term facilities plan. I'd like to remind our presenters to speak at a slower pace to assist our interpreters. And Superintendent, I invite you to give introductory remarks.

I'm just waiting for capital planning to, Chief Stanislaus to approach. And actually my remarks will come in the presentation. Del's actually let me have a few slides. Let me know, Del, when you're ready.

You can go ahead, we're ready.

Thank you. So as I said earlier tonight, we're here to present the latest recommendations for updating the district's footprint as part of the district's long-term facilities plan. This plan reflects our efforts to engage the community to build a definition for the future district we want for our students. One that is optimized to match our student body while offering high quality choices for all BPS students and families across our neighborhoods. As I outlined earlier in the meeting, the Long-Term Facilities Plan provides a blueprint for us to reduce the number of schools to 95 by 2030. And we'll get there by following a comprehensive 18-month cycle that repeats itself each year. Our primary focus is expanding access to safe, healthy, and inspiring learning spaces for every BPS student. In a few minutes, I'll turn the presentation over to Chief Stanislaus, who will walk you through our recommendations. We will answer follow-up questions after the presentation.

Tonight's presentation will give us an opportunity to discuss where we are, what we've accomplished, and how we are making progress toward the 2030 goal. This is a lengthy presentation, so I will try to be brief. First, we'll spend a few minutes on our vision for the type of experience we want every student in the district to have. We'll provide a quick update on our implementation of the long-term facilities plan, focusing on projects approved by the school committee last year, which we refer to as Cycle 2. We will briefly go over enrollment data and our vision for 2030. We'll spend most of our time presenting our cycle three recommendations in detail. We will then share how we will be supporting students, families, and staff through these transitions. We'll close with next steps and we'll open up the floor for questions from the committee. So just to ground us in the vision, our long-term facilities planning strategy is one way we're aligning our work to the vision.

This definition of a high quality student experience came directly from BPS students, families, educators, alumni, and partners. As I noted earlier, Well, anyways, this work is embedded in our commitment to providing this high quality experience for every student in a Boston public school. Every one of our students deserves to learn in buildings that are safe and inspiring, buildings that can support the full range of experiences that foster a love of learning and make schools great. We know that today we cannot say that is the case across the BPS. We understand that these recommended changes are difficult to hear and think about and cause a range of emotions for students, families, and staff. And as I've said before, these are not just seats that we're talking about.

We are talking about children and families, staff and school communities. The goal is to get our students into better experiences, ones that will fulfill our commitment to them. Not just the students that are in the seats today, but the students who are to come up through the BPS. We want students to learn in school buildings that support rigor, culturally affirming learning experiences, wellness and enrichment, and a supportive network of caring adults. We believe that every one of our schools should provide the types of high quality experiences that every student should have. We have more projects in the pipeline today than we've had over the past four decades. We're making steady progress, but we still have work to do and we're committed to staying the course. For our district, this involves, bless you, a three-pronged strategy, which you'll see in this slide.

First, we're investing in capital and infrastructure projects and aligning our portfolio of schools with enrollment demands and the needs of the district. We're making progress, but we're certainly not there. We recently celebrated significant milestones, including ribbon cuttings at the new Carter School in the South End, the new Sarah Roberts Elementary in Roslindale, and the renovated P.J. Kennedy School in East Boston. Secondly, in the middle, we are developing and creating and improving our academic programs. And this happens by developing early college and career pathways at the secondary level, ensuring that our schools support a continuum of services such as the NEXT program, which is intended for our special education students 18 to 22, and Bada East to serve post-secondary students, 18 to 22 multilingual learners. and creating and improving academic programs such as six new bilingual education programs this year.

And third, on the right, we're making the structural changes necessary for sustainable improvement by minimizing transitions and creating more predictable pathways as well as restructuring alternative ed. And that again is the alignment to pre-K to 6 and 7-12. This is a continuous process over the last several years that's deeply entwined with our inclusive education work. It involves our work on college and career pathways and other aspects of our academic vision. We'll be coming back to school committee to ask for a vote on this on Wednesday the 17th of December based on significant feedback from impacted schools in the last cycle and communities in the last cycle. We prioritize providing families with the most up-to-date information about their school choices before the first round of school registration, which begins on January 5th, 2026. This timeline allows us to meet the registration deadlines which they asked us for last year.

Before I turn it over to Chief Stanislaus, I also just want to thank the members of the internal advising working group. This is a very large cross-functional committee that really looks at all of the data from all different sides in order to inform decision making. I also want to recognize Dell's hard work, the entire capital planning team's work. This is difficult work. It's not work anyone wants to do. It's work we've been tasked with. It's work that is necessary in our system just given where we are with enrollment and given where we are with our buildings being so aged. But it's just really, it's work that is strategic, it's data driven, it has to be transparent, which is why everything we do we put up and make sure the public can see and have done that for multiple years. And it's also remaining thoughtful and listening on impact on our students, families, and school communities and looking for ways that we can lessen that impact by working collaboratively.

So at this time, I'll turn it over to Del. And again, Del, thank you for your leadership and your work.

Thank you, Superintendent, and good evening, school committee members. I wanted to start tonight's conversation by acknowledging that conversations about school closures are never easy. They reach far beyond buildings and budgets. They touch our students' daily lives, our staff's sense of stability, and the identity and history of neighborhoods they serve. I know what many... I know that many who have joined us in person in this room and virtually tonight are worried, frustrated, or grieving the possibility of losing a place that has meant so much to them. Those feelings are real and they matter. My goal this evening is to share information and to do so with transparency, humility, and respect.

We care deeply about providing every student with the best education and while difficult, this work is necessary to build a stronger BPS. and deliver on the vision that our communities design in the Long-Term Facilities Plan. As we work through the data and the recommendation before us, I will do my best to explain clearly how we got to this point. What we have considered and how we are prioritizing students' needs as we look ahead. Before we discuss tonight's proposed closures and reconfigurations, it is important to remember that the long-term facilities work is about increasing access to high-quality student experience across all BPS schools. The superintendent shared the vision of this work. I want to share some real examples of how we are bringing that vision into reality.

Closures, mergers, and reconfigurations are one part of this work. With the partnership of the mayor and the city departments, the MSBA, and many others, we have more projects completed or in progress in the last four years than in the past 40 years. Each ribbon-cutting and newly created school community provides opportunities to invest in the rigorous and culturally affirming programming for all students in the district, including traditionally underserved populations. We are proud of our programmatic investments. Here are just a few. At the Carter School, we were able to make it a full K through 12 school Adding more high-quality seats in a new state-of-the-art building that serves as a national model for inclusive school design for students who are medically fragile and have complex needs.

At the new Sarah Roberts Elementary School, we started a new Spanish dual language program, increasing access to bilingual education for more students. We were also able to add more capacity for pre-K students. There's more that I would love to share in detail, but for the sake of time, you can see them on the slide here. We are committed to continuing this work as we create the school buildings our students deserve. We are also making an impact through facilities investment. We opened the next program as the superintendent shared in a renovated space in Roxbury offering up to 120 students with disabilities, a comprehensive postgraduate transition program. We renovated the Lincoln Building last summer to accommodate an expanded EMK school community while we work with the city to find a long-term home for the school.

We've continued our extensive bathroom renovation work and we are continuing to partner with the MSBA on various accelerated repair projects at schools across our district. All of this work contributes to more high quality seats in BPS and is made possible because of the thoughtful planning as a result of hard decisions. A quick update on our continued partnership with the MSBA. We could not do a lot of this work without them and are deeply grateful to them for their continued partnership. The Shaw Taylor Elementary School is in the project team phase of the MSBA process. We are working on the educational program at the moment that will be used to inform the design of the building, which will begin in 2026.

Ruth Batson Academies in the eligibility period of the MSBA process with hopes to begin construction in 2029. We submitted a statement of interest for Madison Park in April. We anticipate hearing if the project will move to the next phase in early December. Now I want to share a brief update on last year's approved recommendations and how implementation is going. Last spring, this body approved the closure of Excel, Mary Lyon, Dever Community Academy, effective the end of the 2025-2026 school year. Additionally, the merger of the CLAP and Wintrop schools into the Frederick for the start of next school year. Since the recommendations were announced, we have been working closely with each impacted school community.

Here we have a snapshot of our work to facilitate successful transition for students, families, and staff in the schools that are closing. One thing that we did not anticipate was that 91% of the rising 9th and 10th graders at Excel and Lyon wanted to transition this school year rather than waiting for the school to close. This is important data for us to understand because we need to be ready to immediately support students who want to transition early and at the same time continue the work I mentioned at the beginning of the presentation to ensure high quality options exist for students. Of the students who wanted to transfer before the school closed, nearly 100% of them were placed at one of their top choices. And as a reminder, students who haven't transitioned early will have priority in the 2026-2027 assignment process.

Klopp-Wintrop merger in preparation for the Klopp-Wintrop merger into the Frederick Building. The planning and design work is underway on a new age-appropriate accessible playground as well as We will continue to work closely with all of these communities to ensure a smooth transition for all impacted by these changes. Now let's talk about enrollment and how it impacts the future of our district. The superintendent shared much of this data earlier this evening, so I will provide a high-level overview of where we currently stand and how these trends affect our future planning. Like many districts across the state and country, BPS has continued to experience a decline in student enrollment as shown on this slide.

Our October snapshot shows approximately 1,700 fewer students than at this time last year. This decline is largely driven by a decrease in international immigration into the district. It is also impacted by the lower birth rates both in Boston and nationwide, which lead to smaller school-age cohorts. While overall enrollment has declined, the needs of our students have shifted in important ways. We now serve a higher percentage of students with disabilities and multilingual learners than we did seven years ago. This means we are educating fewer students overall by a greater number who required specialized services and support. As we plan for our future, especially programming, staffing, and building use, these shifts require a thoughtful alignment of our resources to ensure every student receives a high-quality, equitable educational experience.

Our district footprint must match our enrollment and provide enough flexibility to adjust and adapt to change in student needs. Based on the best information available today, we are planning a district portfolio of approximately 95 schools by 2030. With fewer students overall, we need to operate fewer schools and ensure that the schools we operate provide high-quality seats that meet the needs of all BPS learners. This approach allows more schools to reach ideal size ranges aligned with our enrollment projections and better position us to provide the program services and the physical spaces required to support students with changing needs. We have laid out a roadmap towards this 2030 vision and we are steadily making progress.

If the recommendations presented this year are approved, BPS will operate 100 schools by the end of the current school year. By 2030, our portfolio will include approximately 95 schools. with a stronger concentration of resources and a greater emphasis on delivering a high quality student experience. This is how we ensure richer, more comprehensive learning opportunities for every student across the district.

Thank you.

As we present our cycle three recommendation, I want to emphasize how committed we are to our students, families, and staff. We know that closing a school isn't about seats. There's a real impact on children and adults who have invested their time and energy into their school community. We do not make these decisions lightly. We also know that these are necessary steps to provide current and future generation of students with the type of learning experiences they deserve in buildings that can fully support those experiences. I'd like to remind everyone of the metrics we considered in our decision-making process, which is outlined in detail in our long-term facilities plan. The school's building experience scores, which assesses the types and quality of spaces a building offers on a four-point scale.

A score of two or below indicates that a building does not offer the spaces needed to best serve students. We look at whether a building can provide a full continuum of services. Does it have the spaces to provide multiple strands of each grade and the spaces to adequately and equitably support our students with disabilities and multilingual learners. We also consider the school's utilization rate. A utilization rate of 84 to 115% is considered a healthy range based on industry standards. Anything outside that range suggests inefficient use of space and negatively impact the learning experience. Other metrics considered are shown on this slide. Not all of our buildings are required to meet every single metric here, but these are all important to consider when thinking and planning for the physical spaces that support our students' learning.

Tonight's recommendation would take effect at the end of the 2026-2027 school year, unless otherwise noted, and I will go into specifics for each decision in the next few slides. In summary, the proposed package for this cycle is close the academy pilot school, a pre-K through three school, close another course to college, a nine through 12 high school, Close Community Academy of Science and Health, a nine through 12 high school, shift the Henderson Inclusion School from a pre-K through 12 and transition program into a pre-K through eight school This would require two elements, a merger of the upper and lower schools and a grade reconfiguration to eliminate grades nine through 12 as well as the transition program. We are also announcing two additional grade reconfigurations in alignment with our 2019 grade configuration policy.

reconfigured the Tobin Elementary as a pre-K through six, eliminating grade seven and eight, and reconfigured a Russell Elementary School, currently a pre-K through five, as a pre-K through six, adding a sixth grade, at the start of next school year. Now I will go into detail about each of these recommendations. We recommend that Lee Academy Pilot School be closed at the end of the 2026-2027 school year. The school currently serves students from pre-K through three and the building cannot accommodate expansion beyond that level. The building lacks a dedicated gym, auditorium, teacher collaboration spaces. The building also is not ADA compliant and requires significant HVAC upgrades. The school will not enroll new students including no K-0, K-1 for the next school year. Current eligible second and third graders will move up as planned.

Remaining students will have priority through the BPS assignment process. We are recommending that another course to college close at the end of the 2026-2027 school year. The facility was originally designed for an elementary school and does not include essential high school spaces such as a gymnasium, auditorium, or adequate outdoor learning and athletic areas. Despite strong efforts by staff, the building cannot support the full range of academic and extracurricular programming our students deserve. With a building capacity of 392 students, the school is only utilizing 63% of the space. The school also has a high churn rate of 35%, which means that the student population is consistently changing.

As we shared in previous cycle, an underutilized school is an under-resourced school, and these limitations ultimately affect students and staff. ACC will not enroll new students including no 9th grade class for school year 2026-2027. Current eligible 11th and 12th grade students will graduate as planned. Students will have priority in the BPS school assignment process. Student with IEPs will receive individualized counseling through the IEP process to ensure appropriate placements and support. We are recommending the closure of the Community Academy of Science and Health at the end of the 2026-2027 school year. Cash has seen a 20% decline in general education student enrollment.

It also has a high concentration of specialized programming, making it difficult to maintain stable and inclusive programming. Similar to ACC, Cash has a building capacity for 700 students and the school is only utilizing 53% of that space. The school also has a high churn rate of 38%, which means that the student population is consistently changing. Building a large high school building with such a low student population makes it difficult to sustain rich academic offerings, elective extracurricular activities, and specialized programming. Cash will not enroll new students, including no incoming ninth grade class for school year 26-27. Eligible 11th and 12th grade students will remain at Cash and graduate as planned. Students will receive priority through the BPS school assignment process.

Students with IEPs will receive individualized counseling through the IEP process to ensure appropriate placement and support. We recommend merging the Henderson inclusion upper and lower and reconfiguring the school to be a K-0 through 8. This means we would eliminate grades 9 through 12 and the transition program Currently, the upper campus building houses grades two through 12 and a transition program. After the reconfiguration, the upper campus will serve grades one through eight beginning school year 2027-2028. Grades one will move from the lower campus, strengthen the overall experience for students in grade one through eight, and expand in pre-K seats in the lower campus. The building was originally designed for an elementary slash middle school.

As a result, it limits programming for high school students. The Henderson nationally recognized inclusion program works well at the elementary and middle school grades, but the model has been more difficult to sustain in high school grades. Over the past three years, 45% of 8th graders have chosen not to return for high school, indicating that students and families are seeking other schools that can offer a more comprehensive high school experience. Henderson will not enroll new students including no incoming ninth grade class for school year 2026-2027. Current eligible 11th and 12th graders will graduate as planned. Current eighth graders will receive priority in the school assignment process for this year's school choice season. Current ninth and 10th graders will receive priority in the school assignment process for 2027-2028.

Next, I will review our reconfiguration plans. We will reconfigure the Tobin from a K-0-8 school to a K-6 school at the end of the 2026-2027 school year. Current eligible 7th and 8th graders will graduate as planned. Rising 7th graders will receive enrollment priority and support in transitioning to other schools in the district for 2027-2028. We will add a sixth grade at the Russell for school year 2026-2027, which will bring the schools into alignment with our grade configuration policy. Current eligible fifth graders will have the choice to stay at the school as sixth graders next year.

As we continue to implement the Long Term Facilities Plan, we need to consider the future of our buildings. This slide shows potential use of the impacted buildings if these schools' proposals are approved. You can see BPS use will be prioritized. One of the things that I want to lift up from this slide is assessing the current cash building for potential use and expansion of Boston International Newcomers Academy. The current Benka building will be assessed by the MSBA as a potential site for the future Shaw-Taylor, so we need a plan for where Benka can move if this happens. The earliest it would happen is school year 2027-2028. Thanks for watching! I want to lift up something the superintendent has said multiple times. This is not just about seats.

Real students and families are impacted by these decisions. We have a responsibility to successfully support the impacted students and families as a result of a school closure, merger or configuration. Every school in our district needs to be able to serve every student. Too often in the past, students with disabilities in substantially separate programs haven't had the same choices as their peers. Our students and families deserve equal choice and the district has been working with school leaders and staff to ensure all of our students, all of our schools are inclusive. For this set of closures and reconfiguration, there's a high number of students in specialized programs that are impacted.

So we have to be especially thoughtful and intentional about our planning. Wherever possible, we will work to move programs as a cohort. Over the coming weeks, we will collaborate with potential welcoming schools to identify appropriate new locations for programs to ensure continuity of services and supports. District departments such as Welcome Services, Office of Multilingual and Multicultural Education, and the Office of Specialized Services will meet with each of these students and families to ensure an appropriate transition We will provide a full year to plan and collaborate with welcoming schools to ensure strong transition and continuity of services.

All impacted students who need to select a new school will receive priority in the BPS assignment process. We will limit new enrollment in the entry grades of schools that are closing or reconfiguring. This helps reduce the number of students affected by change. Our school communities and staff will have dedicated transition teams led by a senior project manager and a school-based transition coordinator. We will work closely with all our union partners to ensure staff are supported. Our HR team will provide resources to help retain our talented staff and assist with career needs and next steps. A lot of the information on this slide have been shared already, but this is a summary of how we will support specific groups.

We have created a comprehensive transition guide that will help families understand the support available to them and next steps. Welcome Services will provide accessible community-based enrollment support, priority assignment in the 2027-2028 school year, and clear information to guide families through the school choice and registration process. We are committed to retaining staff in BPS and will provide comprehensive support during this transition. We will work with our union partners and the HR team will offer resume and interview interview assistance, licensure guidance, and confidential on-site office hours. In addition, a staff transition guide has been created to outline the supports available to all affected employees.

As you consider these proposals, here are the next steps we are planning. We made these decisions based on the framework outlined in the Long Term Facilities Plan. The framework was created with community input and has continued to provide the data to explain why and how these decisions were made. We are committed to bringing these recommendations to a vote. We will work with community to get their input to ensure that our transitions plans meet the needs of students, families, and staff. There are multiple avenues to share feedback listed here via a survey, email, school committee public comment, community meetings, and staff feedback forms. We invite the BPS community to engage with us over the coming weeks before the vote on December 17th.

Survey feedback will be summarized and shared publicly, including with school committee members prior to the vote. Community meetings will also be held for each impacted school by virtual and in-person, ensuring students, families, and staff are informed and are supported. Before I turn it back to the committee, I want to acknowledge that these decisions are difficult and affect real people. At the same time, our students cannot wait. Making hard choices now is how we deliver a more equitable, richer, and more comprehensive education for every student in our district. This is what our students deserve and it is our responsibility to deliver. Thank you.

Thank you, Chief Stanislaus. And before I open up questions to the whole committee, I'm hoping you'll allow me to do this. I'd like to have our student go first because she needs to leave at 9 o'clock, and I know she has prepared some questions.

First of all, thank you so much for this presentation and giving me the opportunity to ask questions on the behalf of other BPS students. and I believe that most of the questions and concerns have already been addressed in the presentation but there are some things that my fellow PSAC members and students across BPS, including some of my friends who attend the Henderson Inclusion School and other courses of college, ACC, and Community Academy of Science and Health, CASH, feel about these changes. since they are the ones being directly affected by this. So, as we know, all of these high schools serve many students with individualized education programs, and students who are a part of these IEP programs often rely on a familiar environment, consistent staff, and an established support team.

So wouldn't these larger transitions disturb the services and routines that the students depend on for their academic and emotional stability? So the main question is what is the transition process for the students with IEPs and how will they be helped throughout this transition?

I'm happy to start with that. It's a great question. It's actually one that comes up from parents as well. So I think at the high school level one of the reasons we let The 11th and 12th grade remain to graduate is so that we have plenty of time to concentrate on the 9th and 10th. and as far as where the services for the students get met, that happens through the IEP process. So we work with the IEP team, Dell and her team. We have special education liaisons, and they will work with each school and family that's impacted and student. to sort of look at where are the options for the student to be able to go to continue their education and then help to make that transition for them. I think different from before in the BPS, before we had inclusion, students were very limited in where they could go because the programming only existed in certain schools.

But one of the efforts that we've done to have inclusion happen across our high schools is that now there's much more opportunity for our students, particularly in the younger grades, to be able to choose from the schools that they're most interested in. but it's a very intentional supportive process that we do the team is part of that as is the student because their high school age and the family and we ensure like a smooth handoff that will continue with a supportive group of adults once they get to their new school All right, thank you. And I think, can I just, one more thing to take back to the kids that I think is important. Del had put it up, but at Excel and Lyons, All students, we were about 90% of the students got in their top three choices of the schools that they wanted to continue to, and that included IEP students. So I think part of the conversation with the kids is,

We know this school, you'd want to stay here, but because the school is closing, let's look at all the high schools and let's see where else you may want to go. and then our goal is to work with those school leaders to be able to do that handoff.

All right, thank you. So moving on, another concern or like something that me and my friends and my fellow BSAC members talked about was how these school closures will affect our teachers because they are the ones who have been there for years and some of them just started their careers from these schools. They're the ones who are there to build the community and everything. and they're always there for us as students so what's the process gonna be for teachers will they lose their jobs or Is there anything that's going to make sure that they are given the positions that align with what they specialize in and They just get treated fairly.

Right. So I know Del's going to answer, but Chief Canty is also in the audience, and I'm sure she could come up because she's very supportive in the process for our staff.

Good evening. My name is Frances Canty. I'm the Chief of Human Resources for the Boston Public Schools. And that's a great question. As part of these closures, one of the things that we, my team that we focus on in making sure that we can create for Our employees who are, you know, possibly have to, who are moving schools and there's a lot of things that go into that. So what we do, we do a curated We had drop in sessions. and each educator, they vary. You can have a permanent educator, you have a provisional educator. They vary in scope of where they need to be and things that they need specifically. So our focus is making sure that we can provide them resources and services that can answer their questions.

Like some of the questions we've been hearing about is like, you know how will this um about their licensure like like the positions we're gonna have available in the district um How are they on the process of like applying for jobs? So we've been able to go out there talk to them individually and we have tomorrow will be at cash on Friday will be at the Henderson and We'll be at the Henderson. There's one more other school that... The Lee Academy will be there on Friday. So again, what I'm saying to you is that we do provide them a curated service of meeting with them, not just now, but we'll be going there throughout the course of the year to talk to these individuals that are impacted.

We want our teachers, we want our paraprofessionals, we want our cafeteria workers, our nurses, like any of the Staff that are displaced because the school closes. We have a whole process that we work with them to support them much like we do the students to help figure out where they can get to. We want them to be part of the BPS family.

Thank you. And another thing that as a student myself, high school is a place where we go, we learn, we build bonds with teachers, the staff members, we create memories and then For students to think about their high school not being there anymore. And they just feel sad because they won't be able to see their old teachers in those classrooms where they once studied with them, where they once shared some Good memories and everything. So they feel like every memory that they've created in that school with specific staff members or just being a part of that community, it'll just be lost. So BSEC was wondering, how does the district honor the legacy and communities of these schools after the closure?

That's a really good question. That's a really good question. So as part of the transition process, our team, our senior project manager and transition coordinator work in collaboration to build out Like next steps for school community that outline how communities would like to be remembered and celebrated through the process. We also partner with Boston University. We have student photographers that comes in and we kind of just like curate just like the year of like closing how communities would like to remember document the process so it's a partnership that we do with like students and staff at schools that are transitioning to doc like right now we have are the Frederick School that closed. The school leader at the Frederick School, I think she did a beautiful job of like,

documenting, honoring the Frederick legacy. And there is an exhibition right now at UMass Boston. We did a lot of learning from that process. and right now we're recreating that process at like the Devereux school that's like currently closing and Excel. So we're recreating that at like other schools because I think it's important that the legacy of these schools are remembered throughout the BPM. Yes.

And this would be great with BSAC if they also had ideas about this, right? Because what people don't realize is many of our buildings have actually held several schools during the time. Like, for instance, the Cash Building used to hold the Cleveland School. and at one point Henderson and then those schools got moved so it's sort of each building sometimes a building has three four five schools worth of memories in it and I think this is becoming now for us. It used to just be we would close and then somebody else would move in the building. The kids are picking up on the right thing, which is how do we keep the memory that that school existed in that building for a period of time? And that was a special place for the students and the staff. So love to hear from BSAC if they have other concrete ideas about it.

And lastly, I'm just gonna state a few things that the students wanted me to share in today's meeting, what they wanted to advocate for. So they were wondering if you guys could provide any additional scholarships or like additional financial aid support specifically for juniors and seniors because this transition is going to affect their preparation for college and everything. and another thing that they wanted to like request was if they could have like some special field trips for these school communities so they could create happy moments and Make it their last moments and just cherish.

Good ideas?

That's it. Thank you. Very good. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.

Ms. Palma-Garcia? Yeah.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for the presentation. When the family, students, and community Hating about school clothes. In her mind, putting frustration, because is the school I provide my education, the students say. My parents have a job close the school. I'm living in this neighborhood, and the teacher think I lose my job, so it's too many things. I think the school close is hard process. I think how the district

I have a plan for that transitional moment difficult for the family. In beginning of the meeting, I talked about the mental health. Too many families right now have difficult situation for immigrant issues, for economy. and then putting now too, that preoccupation is hard. I know you say have meeting with each school. How many meeting? What is the process for the meeting? The student with disability, the inclusion school.

What is the plan for putting this special student, what is the school,

That's a great question. And I could say, even for myself sitting here doing this presentation tonight, it's also difficult. For me, on a personal level as well, because I had to look my mom in her face and tell her that the school that she's working at will be recommended for closure at the school committee. The first school that my son ever attended. So this is like presenting this at school committee for myself as well at home. It's like also really, really difficult. When thinking through the decisions that we have to make as a district, looking at the decline in enrollment, Thinking through what is best for students and centering our students through transition as a district team,

I have seen our leadership team and just like all of our teams at the district sit at tables and right now the conversations is like how are we all showing up to support students through transition and I think students and families through transition. and I'm just gonna take a step back for one second and just talk through like the process for Excel. When we did our, when we did, when we, We surveyed communities and we got feedback. One of the things that I consistently heard was that the district has Closed schools at a very short timeline. Families didn't get a chance to react. They didn't understand their options. And a lot of our students were administratively assigned through the process. We outlined an 18-month runway. And last year when we named, when the school committee approved the closure of like Excel and the Lion high schools,

I went into, myself along with some of my other colleagues, went into classrooms and started talking to students. And they were like, our ninth and 10th graders were like, we want to leave now. We really want a great high school experience. and what we all did with all of the principals across the district and with students, these schools showed up at Excel and held like A preview day with all of the students and had conversations with students. Students were able to share where they would like to attend schools. and as students were registering and sharing their assignment pieces back to these schools, we got that information and myself and colleagues The chief of schools and members of the assignment team, weekly we were able to sit down with other welcoming school communities and work through their assignment process to get these students assigned.

I do think for transition supports for our students and families, it takes an all-hands-on-deck approach. All of our schools need to serve all of our students, right? And we need to individually, what we're recommending tonight, A large part of the student population is students who learned in substantially separate setting. The same hands-on approach we took with this round of We have to take the same hands-on approach with these students who are current that are going to be impacted if the school committee votes on it. to transition these students to new high quality seats. So I think the same, I would take the same approach, right, with our special education team, with our Office of Multilingual Education,

with our schools team and with our assignment team to do a hands-on approach with our parents and families and our students because our high school students especially have voice in this process to transition them.

Yeah, definitely I have too many questions about it. The process is, I think the most important part is involve the community, involve the family. The family boys need to stay in the table. In the decision, make it together. Family and district too.

Rafa, . I see you.

Good work. Thank you. Well. Thank you for the presentation. And I appreciate the vulnerability around this particular Thank you very much. Thank you very much. to develop what is the high quality school experience. I do think we owe it to ourselves to be doing the same level of data gathering around the transitions and thinking about How families are faring after the transitions and really hearing either during the process what that was like or now that they are in different school communities, how they are being supported or not being supported.

because that helps us understand that the experience of transition is also necessary, but it's working. The data that was quoted earlier around the disruption, that is very real data also, What we know is that it falls short when we know that students are moving into better, higher performing situations and higher quality school experiences. So we need to be data-driven, at least on that, in order to be able to feel confident while we're assessing these decisions. Second, I also heard... in one testimony about schools, I think it was the Lee School that was actually doing parent visits sort of right before this. So I'm curious about

The timeline, particularly for notifying school communities and thinking about the rollout of that In your team, are you including folks like family liaisons as part of that discussion? Are you including even to go as far as to say even the individual school leaders? because they are the people who are best equipped to deliver this news and it feels very, yeah, it feels very caught off guard to actually have the students and the faculty hear about it at the same time. and so I'm wondering if you're utilizing them to sort of think about one strategy but then also Yeah, the timing of how it is because families are also saying, hey, I might want my student to go to this school and to hear that two days later, oh, it's closing. That's time invested for families.

Yeah, another personal thing I would share for Lee Academy, I was a Lee Academy parent, and those home visits, I will get the home visit from my son's teachers all the time. There was something beautiful about that community, naming that on record. But one of the things in terms of timeline, one of the things that we consistently heard, I feel like, Once the school committee vote happened last year, actually even before the school committee vote happened, the virtual and in-person meetings families and staff stressed the importance of like doing this earlier a lot earlier because of like the true school choice season so that's one of the reasons why

Like our team kind of just like pivoted quickly and pushed the timeline up a lot earlier so that we could we can tend to like we make sure that families We would make a decision so that families are aware before showcase for schools and before the round one for enrollment starts. They know what's happening, if a school is gonna be there or not. The other thing is how do we include schools in this process? One of the things is that we and many more. To work with staff who would be part of a transition team. So some schools appoint one person, some schools appoint two or three people. It's a stipended position.

and they work with the senior project manager from capital planning team and there are these all-in weekly meetings with all teams that is a part of this process centrally that the senior project manager leads with the school transition team. And also there's an engagement team where families are a part of. where we hold monthly meetings with the school communities. And this is with families, et cetera. And then there's the assignment piece where the assignment team As they're working through the priority process when families are ranking schools, families don't have to go into the Welcome Center. We work with all of the families. and like the family liaisons at the school to schedule dates and times. We go into the community like the welcome services team. If there's like a concentration of families, let's say in Codman Square area and families are like,

Let's do it at the Codman Square Library. The Welcome Services team will go into the Codman Square Library. So we meet families where they are. We go into schools. We work with the school communities and build out supports around the school communities. We have outlined supports built out in like a principal playbook and transition guides. But the school community, they know themselves best. The transition coordinator knows themselves. The principals know the community best. So taking an inquiry stance and going and talking about and building a more robust transition plan that is aligned to what that community needs, I think it's really important. So we right after like school committee vote, our team just starts hitting the ground and supporting school communities based on just like the transition plan and guides that we already have built out for a starting point.

Yeah, I would also, there's an incredible amount of work. I think, particularly at the high school level, it really requires looking at every single kid's profile. because what you find is a kid will be in ninth grade but they really don't have the skill of ninth grade or they'll be in tenth grade and they really have ninth grade credits. And so the opportunity that we took advantage of Excel, and Lyons, and we will with these schools is to literally review every kid and to then meet with the student and call the family. to be able to get them to the place that they can graduate from. And sometimes that is another BPS high school, like traditional high school. Sometimes if the student is a special education student, multilingual learner, it may be a different program. and sometimes it's an alt-ed because the student's been in that school for three years just spinning.

And Dell didn't get into deeper data on these particular schools, but I think when you learn, like she mentioned the term churn, and turn refers to who starts that school and then every year like who continues and one of the things we see in the schools that are under enrolled and we saw it last year in the schools that were that were closed is that they end up with a lot of open seats and as a result kids who are very mobile go to them. and then they stay for a little bit and then they go someplace else and so that's one of the hard parts is like the stickiness of building the relationship and having the kids stay so that cumulatively it impacts the student academically and so forth. But we see with schools that are already under-enrolled and not... And it tends to be the small schools because many times high school kids think about, I want athletics, I want this set of activities, I want this or that.

So they're looking for schools that have those things and these schools don't bubble up. So as a result, they're not chosen in what we call the top three or five of the choices. And students end up there by default. And then they decide later on, I want to go someplace else, and they put in a transfer. So you just see a lot of mobility in these schools as well, which is a credit to the staff. Every kid that walks through the door, no matter when they walk through it, they're really trying with the kids. But it's different groups of kids each year.

And I think my last question, I'm not sure if it's more of a question or of a statement because I know it's not in the official criteria. but something that's helpful is actually the our last presentation around transformation schools and then just as I was combing through sort of thinking about just as a body that we need to be mindful also of. I'm thinking particularly of the trend data for their accountability profiles or percentiles, I should say. in how some of these school communities have been able to grow or in a place where they are growing. and that is something that weighs heavily but I know that that's it's particularly tough to include that in I'm wondering as a body, to what extent do we consider that as part of our decision?

I would offer on that, Dr. Hawkins, that the transformation list is a good list to have because without us having to go into that dissection, it'll give you a sense of where schools are. You'll see them on the transformation list and you know if that's the case, we usually give a couple of years worth of data. Again, I think the hard part of all of this is Thank you for watching! When you peel back things, that's when you can see other pieces of data. If you ask for those things, we'll provide it, but we probably are not going to leave you those publicly.

Hi there, how are you? Not a big question, it's just regarding students' transition, I know it's going to be pretty tough. Cash is in Phil's corner. But according to the chart that you have here, The mild intellectual impairment may choose schools that are Brighton High School, Charlestown High School, East Boston High School. They are mild intellectuals. That's pretty rough. That's pretty long drive. Are those schools just recommendation? It's not, it's not, you know, set in stone that the students will be.

That's a good question and I think one important thing that's like not represented on this slide tonight that I think I touched really briefly on As we, this superintendent shared this and she's shared a few time and has met with all of our high schools, that all of our high schools need to serve all of our students. One of the things that we're currently working on with our special education team, we are working in collaboration with high schools. So some of our high schools are going to stand up new programs So that's work, and this is why we need the runway, just like the timeline, right? Because we're gonna have to stand up new programming. We're gonna have to do things different than we did in the past.

One of the things that we see for substantially separate programs, right, about half of our high schools have substantially separate programs, and of the half, about six of our high schools serve students higher than the district average. and what we need to do right now is work across all of our schools, stand up really strong programs and open classrooms So these are the schools that have the programs right now, but our team is doing work in the background in collaboration with other high schools across the district. So that list is going to look different as we're working to transition students and families.

Yeah, and I would also add that we believe that there's an opportunity, particularly for our multilingual learners. We don't have special education programs that are specific to our multilingual learners, particularly our newcomer students. They actually have the challenge of being in a program for special ed and learning the language, but not necessarily through that program. And so there's an opportunity to be able to actually Create some new programming that can take both things into account. And so that's one of the opportunities that we see here to be able to do and so the list of this will grow. The ABA which is again like our students with autism ABA is a particular model but our students with autism are a continuum. And so we as a district need to speak more like that and we need to think more like that in terms of accessibility for our students with autism.

That is the fastest growing population at the high school level because it was the fastest growing programming at the K-6. So that is attention point everywhere in the district. And so that capacity is one we will be working this year and next year to develop out everywhere.

You go. Chief Stanislaus, thank you so much. I know it's a difficult content and a lot to carry, and there was quite a bit of data and information provided. I appreciate that. Kind of extending from Dr. Alkin's observation around the high quality student experience and the way that we've defined it, I think it's challenging because this is framed as a long-term facilities plan and facilities are only one of the four elements of the high quality student experience and I think what we saw in public comment tonight and what we What we know is that these are all places that really excel in having a supportive network of caring adults and also under the wellness and enrichment heading we also saw a lot of student agency and voice which

You know, really makes this even more challenging. I think also our BSAC Representative Ma really acknowledged well the pain specifically of closing high schools. Thank you. Thank you. wanting to move students to a place that has a full range of academic programs that students deserve. I don't think we've as yet really defined that clearly and made clear what that set of academic programs are consistently. across a specific grade band and so I think that it complicates the ability to really

I had a couple of clarifying questions One, appreciate the timing and the earlier nature of this conversation as well as the Pretty substantial window between this proposal and the potential closure dates. You talked about the experience at Excel and that a lot of the freshmen and sophomores elected to transfer at the time. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much.

as opposed to waiting till it was necessary for them to transfer the next year. Do they also have priority in the school choice round this year as well?

That is a good question. I think a learning from Excel is the importance of making sure that the system is ready for change when it's happening because if The system was not ready like if the team did not work on like standing up things like the next program etc to support students I think it would have been difficult to facilitate that type of transition So like immediately also the announcement was done after choice season like after like sorry After Showcase of Schools and Choice Seasons had already started, so getting all of the high schools into Excel and stuff like that to start supporting students, the system, I think, really needs to be ready.

So a part of like the work and thinking through like programming, standing up programming and stuff like that is important like pre-work that we have to do as a team to ensure that we have a system that's ready if students would like to transition. I think right now, and last year even with Excel, students was not prioritized through their rounds. Their priority rounds is this year. But we were able to work one on one. It was like a lot of like one on one work with school leaders and school leaders and students and their families to get into their top Rank schools. So it was like a lot of like one-on-one work, like wraparound care for families. So it was not necessarily prioritized through the rounds, but we were able to collaborate with welcoming schools for students to get into their top choices.

And I think, yeah, so I think that that's my learning and that's, I don't know, Supe, if you want to add.

Yeah, I mean, I think it's, there's like different, I think there's different opinions and strategies on this. Like people will say, rip the band-aid. and just like you know close a whole bunch of schools and like like you know and put out like three years from now these are the schools they're gonna close and We end up with we would just have mass chaos of kids trying to transfer in and out of places and most importantly sometimes we don't yet have the program or programs enough prevalent like throughout the regions to let kids closer to home go to that program or we don't have the program and like we have to create it like we did with Next. So that's why the 18 months, it allows the 11th and 12th graders to graduate. What we've seen is, in most cases, both the 11th and 12th graders want to graduate.

the 11th graders sometimes will take other options but I think they've spent enough time in that school that they want that so it allows that to happen and them to have enough peer interaction that it feels like high school But it also just allows us to work with the 9th and 10th graders or other grades as quickly as we have the programming and the seats of high quality and the kids want it. And so it is a balancing act. Lions and Excel very quickly, like the kids and the families were like, let's get to the next stop. I think that will happen a little bit in a couple of these, but I don't think necessarily in... all of them in the same way and some of a few of these like cash is bigger and it's more specialized and so like 70% of cash is programmed especially at ELL.

and so like it's gonna take us right so like this is like the I don't think this one is one right kind of way I think the only way we see is right is we can only move as fast as as we can create the high quality seats for students so when we say to families and kids like we're closing this to get you into a better situation we can actually honor that.

I totally understand that and I think I was more thinking about if it's a student and family's choice to elect to make that move this year what supports are they going to have because you think about a student who's a sophomore at one of these schools, if they wait until the time of transfer, they would be in that situation where they're going to need to spend a singular year at another school versus spending a two-year cycle in another school and getting involved in that process. And that may not always be possible because of specialized needs, but there will be some students who will have more flexibility and just wanting to make sure that they are able to examine those choices.

I think because of the enrollment being depressed, our high schools have room. There's room. So I do think we can facilitate that. But what we wouldn't want to do is have a situation where we could just move the Gen Ed kids. Of course. You know what I mean? So it's like that's why each situation is so unique. And I think Del and her team just do an amazing job. And Corey McCarthy and student support. and Joelle, like who's sitting in the audience, like the one with me, they just go in and work to be with the kids and families to figure out what is best next step.

Just on the list of welcoming schools in the guide, what makes a school a welcoming school? Was that more an assessment of available Seats, proximity to the school. Member Tran mentioned specific programs. Is that what gives them this kind of designation in the presentation? Yes.

Yes. AP programming, et cetera. Yes.

This actually connects to an earlier presentation we had a few meetings ago on the secondary school landscape and school choice. But as I looked at the bullet points for the welcoming schools, I'm sure this isn't the exact same presentation that students or families will get, but would really encourage kind of consistency of description between schools. There are like numbers of AP courses offered as a bullet for some school and not others, but some of the schools that don't have that bullet do offer AP courses. I would encourage that AP courses be named because there may be a specific course or an area of study that's more appealing to one student than others. And again, going back to parents who are just going to look at a website and think about what our high school choices are, our current BPS website does not link any of the schools to their actual school sites that they develop.

which is where schools invest the time in making it dynamic and featuring presentations. So I think it's really time for us to look back at that. Sorry, I just have one more question around staffing. We, in the materials and the staff guide, said that there's a part-time school transition support coordinator. I think Chief Stanislaus, you talked about that a little. that was named as a staff resource in the guide for staff supports. And you were sharing that's a school-based position and not a central office staff member who would have that. and how would they then support staff with their next steps?

So the coordinator works in collaboration on the staff piece. As the day-to-day is going on in school, staff has a lot of questions, concerns, need connections to OHC and different areas like in the human resource department. That transition coordinator works with the senior project manager and the HR team to set up one-on-one conversations with HR, the recruitment team to get They also work in collaboration with school leaders. They schedule time for interviews. We do like kind of just like school preview days with staff where like Where we have schools that are hiring for positions.

So all of that type of coordination we do with the transition coordinator and the senior project manager will collaborate together. to get other schools who have positions to come in to sit in classrooms, look at how teachers and all of that good stuff to support with the transition.

Thank you.

I have a bunch of questions, but I won't make it fast. I do want to say what it does feel like a real improvement from the last two cycles and how we're communicating and the timeline adjustments that we made and so it feels like the conversations here have been heard as well as the conversations with community members and it's greatly appreciated. I am at the same time I'm holding this moment where it is hard to hear we're closing X school because it's actually designed for Y and But nine years ago, we moved them in there. And I do think as a body, there is real responsibility around that. And I keep finding those moments as we make really hard decisions here where it's like, well, we created this problem. I think these are adult creative problems and leadership problems, some of which is like folks still here and in the room and doing the work.

And so I do think it's something for us to hold because it is such a It is like a, it's a devastation we create having known, I don't know, we're placing high school students in a school that was built for elementary school students. And we did that, you know, eight years ago. And so I'm hoping as we're thinking that that type of strategy ends, or lack of strategy. I am curious about something that's a question I always ask, and it's really about how we ensure families don't experience repeated or compounded disruptions. While I won't go as far to say it's a master facilities plan, I think it's like a target for where we're going with a year over year rollout that will create a plan more or less. There is data that we saw 49 students in this cycle were previously affected by closures, mergers, or reconfigurations.

39 will be directly affected again. I'm curious if those students get a different experience in the transfer and then also how do we ensure that those 39 are not getting a third exposure to closure or grade reconfigurations since we don't know what the next 5 or 6 or 7 are.

Yeah, I mean, I think part of the challenge is we are a choice system. And so we can't prevent, like, when a parent chooses, A particular school because those are the schools that are open and in there and I think we also are a district that The concentration of this plan and the focus on closures and mergers has been over a concentrated period of time. Whereas when you go back into the system, The last time it might have been one or two and it was like back in 2012. So I think the nature of that kind of rapid plus the choice, plus there being, in particular areas of the city, a bigger impact of enrollment decline. Sorry, it's late. Decline. that those factors set up for where we can't be 100% insulated.

I think this round is predominantly high school. Lee is there and Henderson is in the restructure or in the reconfiguration. and I think our sense is that next year it will be more elementary driven which also then kind of gives some pause on the high school side, right? Right. But I think you're right. We're thinking of what is the best way to be able to reach out to The families who were at an elementary that closed or merged and now they're going to a high school where that's the case because it is that dual impact. The good thing with like 2030 is we have a goalpost. We know how many buildings we're aiming for. So different than before where it was just how many, you know, when it would happen and how often and how many was everyone's guess. That at least feels more finite for a period of time to get there.

So I think right now we sort of see it going like this, and I think that helps us to be a bit more narrow in our recommendations.

Makes sense. We talk about, you know, part of this work is rooted in making sure that students have access to a high quality student experience and I think Not to put words in your mouth, Member Skerritt, but I'm often holding this same tension of like, well, what is the definition of the high quality student experience? Like stuff and things, like how do we define it? You hear me say that all the time. At the same time, we can look at that 60-40 split. We've said, I don't know, am I getting this right? 60% of schools offer the sort of building experience that we want, 40% don't. Working with family shoulder to shoulder, how clear are we with that? If I'm reading the tea leaves, Or triangulating all the information I have, it's like the schools really on the table are that 40%.

How to define the high quality student experience is less clear, but we know we could be pointing families in that sort of 40% direction, and does that... Does that help? Mostly I'm asking because we're measuring, partially we're measuring success by students got their top three options. But students getting their top three options doesn't actually meet the goal of students having access to the high quality student experience. and so like we're using a different data point to talk about our success in the process than our target for the process. Does that make sense what I'm saying?

I mean, I have a way I would go with this. I'll offer it to you first, Al, if you want. You can take it. Okay. So I think one is... It is about both the students that are in the seats but it's also about all the kids that are going to come up. So when we talk about the high quality student experience, obviously our commitment is to try to get the kids that are there to that, but it's also that by expanding, taking offline capacity in buildings, in schools that couldn't offer that at all and expanding schools that can or taking like a PJK where they really couldn't do arts and music and their early ed was limited and they didn't have auditorium seats. and then doing a reno to them. They would have been a building that had a lower building experience door, but because of the reno, we were able to make them much more of a high quality seat.

That's going to be the reality, I think, for a bunch of those buildings that are in that 40 percentile. It's sort of like, how can we build some of them up? But each one of them requires a lot of money and capital to do that. And we only have so much money in capital every five year cycle. So that's the reason why I think next year we will see much more concentration of mergers where we can take a building, improve it, and then get two or three communities to be able to become part of that building at the elementary. That is much harder to do at the high school level.

That makes sense. Is there a plan in this, given a shift in intentionality around how we're thinking about the broader district vision, Is there a plan to also hold data around the outcomes of students specifically impacted by grade configurations and closures? There's a case study here for us that we can really lean on later, where this might happen in a decade again, to really lean on later. How are we doing that? What is our vision for making sure we're collecting the right data so we know what worked and what didn't? and closures as a strategy or reconfigurations as a strategy specifically.

Our team is currently doing that work in collaboration with some students from Harvard. So Emmanuel, who's here, our data and strategy person for capital planning, is working in collaboration with some students. and doing some deep dive into student like impact work from like past closures and mergers and looking at information like Students who have transitioned within the district, where they are, how they are going, looking at data like student attendance. Sorry, I'm going to ask Emmanuel to join us to share all of the data information and all of the data that we're actually looking at as part of this process.

And you get, it's the data now, but also long-term data implications. Okay, great.

Yes, the plan is to, every year, track all our students who have gone through a transition. and look at all kinds of data for them, academics, how are they adapting to their new schools, looking at climate survey data. School Choice, making sure that we are prioritizing students, attendance rates, things like that. But then as Del had mentioned, we have partnered with a group of students at the Harvard Kennedy School to also look at the human side They're developing materials for us to Go into schools and do interviews with students, interviews with staff and family, doing focus groups to really understand How these students have felt through these transitions and going forward.

And so this is work that we are not only just doing right now and working towards, but we're going to be continuing year over year.

That's helpful, thanks. I'm curious, as we're looking at programs that have ABA strands, mild intellectual impairment strands, moderate intellectual impairment programs, and thinking about cash and some other places, How are you assessing or was it assessed that there isn't a tipping point for this high concentration of vulnerable students in receiving schools? Like we've mentioned Next and we've mentioned Carter. Like, is there real seed availability as these programs fade?

Yeah, I mean, this is why in Dell works, this is a cross-functional team work so closely, but like... um this is why I was saying some sometimes it's creating programs in capacity because what we don't want to do is exactly what happened to some of these schools I mean you know you you guys brought it up earlier and and that is sort of like I firmly believe that everybody that sat in my seat before me and sat in all of our staff seats before them tried to make the best decisions at the time they made them. but like I couldn't tell you why we put a high school in an elementary building or why we like it probably was like we're gonna put them there temporarily and then find a building and it didn't happen right We're trying not to do that. We're really trying to go only as fast as we can make good strokes.

I appreciate that. And while I agree probably best intentions, I think the issue in urban education has been the sort of political nature that has caused so much harm to kids. So I want to always go. Good people get hearts, but lots of bad decisions. Last question. For the Russells specifically, this is one I've just been sort of curious about. It has a building score of one out of four, and yet it's up for the grade expansion. Help me pull that apart and then make it make sense for a community who has a higher building score and now is experiencing closure instead of growth.

Another thing that we look at is where a school is located. So last year, As part of last round of proposal, we propose closing the Debra School that was approved by school committee and also the merger of the CLAP and the Wintrop School. So that leaves the Russell School as one of the only elementary schools in the North Dorchester area. And as we name a part of this work, it's not only closures and mergers, it's also the conversation about renovation. Like renovations, etc. So the Russell is one of the like the only elementary school in the North Dorchester area and With the building experience, this is where as a district we have to look at investments as well, right? But looking at those...

We also took the sixth grade at the Dearborn offline where those students would usually like transition for a sixth grade. One of the immediate next steps was ensuring that fifth graders got the opportunity to transition to a sixth grade since that sixth grade is gone, but also as a district looking at seats in that North Dorchester area and how to ensure that families within that proximity have a school within walking distance of their home.

Yeah, and I think the Russells are a case where investment would make sense in that school. The enrollment is good and strong. And the sixth grade is something that they have been wanting. because it was leaving like we we do have these like odd schools that end in a particular grade and as a result it leaves the parent without any option We're trying again to do less and less of that. And there's still a couple. And you see it impact enrollment. So I think this helps stand the rustle up to keep their strand and that would be a building that's pretty full and it has some, I think, easier ways that we could get them within the building with some investment. Area for Music, right? Area for Arts, like the things that they're getting tagged on.

Yes. So I think as the superintendent is sharing, also looking at getting... teachers like off carts and areas for like music and looking for like how to invest in the building correct appreciate it thank you

Just a couple of points, Madam Chair, because our colleagues have made so many good points. First of all, Chief, thank you for you and your entire team, the work that you do. This is not easy work. It is critical work, and I thank you. Particularly the learnings, as other members have pointed out, you know we've seen the iterations of this over the past couple years and you have been learning and adapting and just hearing now about the work with Harvard about looking at the emotional impact to the students is very helpful to hear so thank you for that. You know, Superintendent, you have laid out a goal that all students are in high-quality building experiences, and that is a goal this committee has enthusiastically endorsed. And it's always great in theory. And then when you talk to parents, they're often willing to sacrifice that for a small building experience. and yet we've looked at over the years the budget implications of that.

It was interesting to me in the last go-around how many years ago this committee considered closing the CLAP. and we had a large outcry and we did not do it and in this most recent go around when parents saw that they were getting the Frederick as an opportunity It became real about that high-quality building experience versus the limitations of the clap. I'm just using that as one example. We have a lot of small schools, and yet we always hear repeatedly that people are willing to make that trade-off until they understand the alternative. And I think the Sarah Roberts, the work that we did this year to turn that into a beautiful elementary school with two communities together was excellent work.

Chief, you made one quick point in here, but I think it's a huge impact to potential work in the future, and that is we're expecting an answer from MSBA preliminary indication of interest on Madison Park. And that's a huge dollar impact for us because, Superintendent, as you said, we have limited dollars available for capital outside of MSBA. Madison Park is a potentially very, very big project. If MSBA gets interested, we think that could be what? 200 million, 250 million that their portion would be?

No, I think for us it may be a swing in our capital of around $150. But it really all depends on what ends up becoming reimbursable. But the point is we don't Like, there is, like, capital's done right now, so, like, anything coming back in would, like, be helpful, right?

Right, that would be able to put to other projects. So, I mean, that is a big question mark that's hanging out.

For sure.

I mean hopefully the state has been very supportive of vocational technical education and growing it and this is you know an obvious project for MSBA to be involved in but I just want to Point that out, that that's a big question mark about future projects. One question I had, and Superintendent, you know, I was going to dig in more on enrollment, and why not? Particularly with the challenges we talked about earlier, why aren't we going deeper? And yet, thank you for your point about we need the programs and we need the seats that we can't just have it terribly closed.

We have a plan. It was built solid on projection. Clearly, enrollment is running lower than what we had initially projected, and so we're going to have to watch that. But we can really only move as fast as we're able to support the students who are displaced, right, to get them into that high quality experience. And if it's a special education student, we need to make sure we have the special education programming. And if we don't, we don't have enough of it, we have to build it. and same thing with our multilingual learners so as a district that is our responsibility which is different than how it's been done before which is Things were closed and like I can tell you at Tech Boston, I took four different schools in during my time as leader at Tech Boston and kids just showed up. It's like, hey, I'm here. I'm a senior and I don't have credits. And so you have to figure it out. But that's not what we want. We want to have a planned transition.

and before the student arrives, we want that experience when the student starts that school to have the school poised to receive them, welcome them and most importantly, have what they need to support them. And I think that's the difference with what we're trying to do.

It will be interesting as you think through more because I saw on some of these still to be determined, so to speak, that you're working with the district. And the one that really caught my eye is what will be the choices for ACC students. Because even though a new mission is literally right across the street, it is an application process, et cetera. And so what is open enrollment choices? for the ACCU students. And I know we have some work to do in figuring out what would be the right, particularly programmatically, what would be the right welcoming schools.

Yeah, and I have great faith in our secondary school leaders because in this last go-around, they raise their hand constantly to take students. And I have great faith that they will do that again, including new missions. I think it really comes down to first talking with our young people about where it is in their heart they want to go and their families. And I think from there we build the bridge back to the schools and Again, I think our school leaders, like we've had a number of conversations about this and they're ready to open doors and support.

And the last question I have, thank you, is particularly in light of some of the other reconfigurations you're doing of K-8s to K-6s, I'm curious why the Henderson is K-8. Not K-6. That's a good question. And I know there's an inclusion piece there, but we also have 7th and 8th for Lyons, right? Aren't they, as in Lyons, K-8, even though 7-8 is in the old high school building across the street.

and the Lion reconfigured, so they lost their seven and eight, so they're K through six. So they're K through six, right. Yeah, but to share about the Henderson specifically, one of the things that we look at when we're talking grade reconfiguration right we look at like Arcata six and then what happened the data around what happens after the sixth grade right like how many students are we losing after the sixth grade When we look at the Henderson, we see a big drop at the eighth grade, right? So we see 45% of the students leave the Henderson. at the eighth grade instead of the large drop off at the sixth grade that we see at other schools. So a lot of our other schools when we're looking at reconfiguration, We see a significant drop in enrollment at the sixth grade, like a lot of students transition off to exam schools or just like other schools looking for that 7-12 experience.

And what then happens in some of our schools as we're looking to reconfigure, is that we see larger pockets of either students with this high concentration of students with disabilities or we see just like a new cohort of students that are coming in to make up that seventh and eighth grade so that 7th and 8th grade is technically it's not like students who have started within some of our schools so those are the schools that we look closely at right and this is these are the schools that we propose for reconfiguration Whereas the Henderson, you see a big drop specifically at the 8th grade. So it's a 45% drop of students at the 8th grade.

8th to 9th.

Yes.

They stay through 8th and then into 9th grade. Yes. Correct. Okay. Yes. Thank you.

and the only other thing I would just say is like I think as a district we have to have a menu and a range of School sizes, programs offered, etc. And it is true that some parents pick a small school because they want their students seen, known, supported. Small doesn't guarantee that. What guarantees it is leadership and culture and staff that build that. and you can have that in a bigger school. And at the same time, have many of these things that students have told us and families have told us they want. and so that's what we really should strive for is having all of our schools have that regardless of their size but making sure that our schools that are 650 or 750 or 850 as high schools or at the exam schools

Thank you for watching! to offer programming that's going to challenge and stretch and support each kid. And we're not there yet, but this is part of the plan and steps toward getting there.

Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair.

I want to thank you. I know this has been incredibly hard work for you and your team, and we really gratefully appreciate All that you've done this year, but all you've done over the whole course of this and realizing the many changes. Yeah, we're at a very different place than the first time we told a school that they were going to close. The preparation that's doing and it's still no matter when anybody hears those words, it's still very hard. I think the pieces that are resonating for me at this moment is that We don't know what our financial situation is going to be next year. We have been very fortunate and somewhat protected over the last several years through Lots of very strong work about making it through and not having a lot of the issues that we see our colleagues around the country.

But we're probably not going to be able to do that next year because of what's going on nationally, etc., and the critical change in our pieces. So the question for me is more, how are we talking... beyond the work that is being put in place to talk with school communities, but how are we helping our whole community? Understand. We get lots of criticism from advocates and from the public, the newspapers, etc. Everybody will have something. Thank you very much. What we are about to face and the desire to continue to move along the path of delayed

We have made decisions over many years to begin to get our students to situations that are better for them, not only physically, But the pieces that we're not talking about often still is that we still have a number of transformation schools, which means the quality of day-to-day teaching experiences aren't always up to par either. How are we not just pointing fingers at if we fix the building, all will be well? Well, really not necessarily. So how are we getting to those underlying issues? around our educators and their credentials and experience, etc. How are we helping families to think about, as you said, I heard a lot about that small school intimate experience and if somebody who went to a very small elementary school

and loved it and hated when I went to a sixth grade that was a big school for one year and it still traumatizes me to this day. I know those issues are really real for people. But there's also a real budget number at the end of the day. So how can we both afford the both and? How do we help find it or help people find it where they need it? In all of that, all of that's what is needing to go on right now. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. How do we balance these things in our continued public engagement?

Yeah, I mean, I think this is what makes all of this as complex as it is, is that it's our budget, and it's what's happening and going on with the budget, which is intimately tied year in advance to enrollment. We are part of a larger entity of the city as well and of a state. at a time when things at the federal level are not advantaging us in any way, like federal grants, things like that. So there's lots of tensions on the budget. Additionally, capital planning can't happen without capital dollars. So there's another whole bucket of capital dollars and then there's the strategy and the plan of like

How we put that to the human beings in the buildings and hold up the vision of what everybody has told us. It's not my vision, it's the vision the community has created. about what that high quality experience looks like and honor that by putting forward a plan every year that considers all those things. and that's what makes it so complex and that's why the blueprint is important of knowing by 2030 we need to get to a certain place. Without that you're just literally year to year kind of guesstimating and making decisions. like a plan on the whim and the district did that for way too long which is why you end up with elementary with high schools and elementary buildings so I think different than that we really are trying to hold to the blueprint trying to hold to the number of schools not go faster than that Not go faster than we have the capacity to serve the kids and families.

And at the same time, from a fiscal standpoint, be as responsible as we can within the district itself, everything from central office to our schools, and partners to the buildings.

In the case where there are a number of schools, these schools that have smaller focus programs, What is the ability of moving programs as a cohort or relocating them as a cohort? I still think back, Mr. O'Neill and I have the pain of the closing of West Roxbury and a promise that Special needs strands would be kept together and it did not happen. And we continue to ask about the outcomes of those students and We're glad that you're keeping that now, but that wasn't happening then. So again, so we're sort of sensitive to how are we really thinking about particularly those most vulnerable cohorts of kids.

Yeah, so I mean, I think we always try to go in thinking about how can we have groups of kids be able to go together. At the high school level, it becomes kind of tough because kids have choice and they use it, right? They have different feelings about where they want to go and what they want to do. but we're always trying to balance that but I think to member Skerritt's point like we also have to be very cognizant of not creating tipping points or actually maybe You said that, right? I heard it, Cardet-Hernandez. So I think while it might be nice to think about moving a whole program Now all of a sudden we're taking the issue we see at cash with 70% of the students being programmed and we've now transferred it to x school. So there's just a bunch of things we have to do, which is why on the secondary level,

Getting all the secondary schools involved in this when it comes to special education, when it comes to multilingual learners is really important because it gives us more options for the kids. and at the elementary there's just more opportunity there in the sense of like when we merge like we have a pretty good strategy of taking a bigger building doing some stuff to it and then being able to get communities to come together and then in that way the kids get to co-hold. They get to move.

I think my last question is really more of an acknowledgement to acknowledge the work that both the Henderson and the Lyons did in terms of leading the way in this district for Students with Special Needs, and creating programs that were renowned across the country and are now seeing those things get reconfigured You know, to some degree because there's been change and there now are more opportunities for students as well. But don't want to lose leadership or the recognition that they have played as even we are talking about.

No, fully, and I think it's very much alive in Lyons K-6 and will be very much alive in Pre-K-8 at Henderson. Are those models... that they've provided to the district, to other schools. So certainly we want to be able to continue to hold those up.

I just want to remind you all we have another hour of public comment. So I want to thank you for the presentation. We certainly will be continuing. Thank you, Chair.

We will now continue public comment on Zoom. Please remember to raise your virtual hand when I call your name. Our first three speakers are not in the meeting, so we will continue with Cheryl Buckman, Edith Bazil, Sequoia Craig, and Johnny McInnes. Cheryl Buckman. Cheryl Bachmann, please accept the prompt.

You can start. My name is Cheryl Bachman and I'm a parent of a 7th grader at the Ruth Batson Academy and the lead for the Dever. I'm a long life resident of South Boston. I'm here to speak about the recommendations regarding the long term facilities plan. We understand that optimizing the district to match shifting enrollment projections is a challenging task and we appreciate the goal of creating a sustainable district with high quality options for all families. As a parent, advocate, and former student, I recognize the emotions families at the affected schools are feeling right now. However, closures and reconfigurations will deeply disrupt students, teachers and families. As I said in a recent Boston Globe article, BPS must prioritize

Equity protect all student well-being and ensure meaningful community input before any decision is made. The proposed changes include reducing the numbers of schools and closing three. will impact hundreds of families. And these are just not numbers. They represent communities and children's futures. While I appreciate the effort to share this information ahead of school choice season, The timeline for community input must be more than just briefing on decisions already made. We need clarity on how these are selected. I hope the I hope the committee and BPS have learned from past closures and improved on how information is shared and feedback is handled. We must approach this process with transparency and care.

We all want sustainability in the district that serves our students well, but we cannot come at a cost of equity and quality for students losing their school communities.

Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Edith Pazil.

You can start. The Henderson represents the innovation of visionary district leaders in deep, consistent work of exceptional teachers. It is a nationally recognized proven model for inclusion where students with disabilities thrive. Instead of expanding it, BBS is eliminating the only successful high school inclusion pathway in the district Erasing decades of success and leaving students with disabilities with no viable option. ACC, Cash, and Lee Academy staff deliver extraordinary life-changing support to students with disabilities. Dropping closure announcements right before the holidays is destabilizing. Suggesting families asked for this because they completed an unrelated survey is not engagement, it's manipulation.

Families are asking, how does this align with the city's $50 million inclusion investment when your facilities plan dismantles inclusion instead of protecting it? You can't scale inclusion by closing inclusion programs that work. Today the only thing that's being scaled is school closures with students with high needs being displaced. You cannot claim equity closing schools serving students with highest needs. You cannot claim family engagement when the media learns about closings before families do. You cannot fast track this change without facing the data. School committee members, you have the duty to protect students, not rubber stamp a plan that reacts to problems instead of leading with vision, a plan rooted in maintenance rather than accelerating achievement. Our students deserve a plan that delivers real progress, not disruption, and empty rhetoric. Thank you.

Our next speaker, Sequoia Craig, is not in the meeting. Johnny McInnis.

Okay, here I go. Greetings, Chair Robinson, Superintendent Skipper, and members of the Boston School Committee. My name is Johnny McInnis, the Political Director for the Boston Teachers Union. We are requesting that the vote on the school closures that are being discussed this evening be postponed until next year. As a parent of a BPS graduate, I know firsthand how school closures have long-term effects on children. My daughter lived through three school closures during her years of education in BPS. She attended the Rogers Middle School, which closed after her first year while she was attending. Then went on to the Timothy Middle School. She then attended Dorchester High, which closed while she was after the first year. Then attended Boston XL High. The effects of those disruptions while trying to receive a high quality education did not allow her any consistency with the educators who taught her with the district prescribed school curriculum.

and weaken the social experiences with educational friendships she had developed. Any decisions about our school buildings must put the voices of educators, students, and families at the center. Furthermore, to hold a vote of the school committee less than a month after the recommendation is submitted in the midst of the holiday season is no way to allow for school communities to respond to the devastating news of their closure. The BTU has a comprehensive facilities resolution. Through this resolution, which was developed with member and community input, we urge BPS to prioritize new construction and renovations. We call on BPS to prioritize the stability and preservation We ask for a clear plan that shows how students impacted by closures and mergers will end up at schools with better facilities and programs, and we urge the city and district leaders to ensure that any proposals

Thank you, your time is up. Thank you. Thank you.

Our next speakers are William Cramer, Lisa Graff, Winifred Rankin, Mike Heisman, and Chelsea Falco. William Cramer.

Can I start?

You can start, yes.

My name is William Kramer. I'm an ESL teacher at Cache. I respect the work that you guys do, but this is a bad decision. You need to understand who my students are and who this is going to impact. My students are Haitian. They are running away from their country because it's been taken over by gangs and a lot of their families have unfortunately been killed. They have finally found a home here in cash. They have found a community. And they found a community because they understand what the other students in the class have gone through too. And so what you're going to do is rip that community apart. You are going to destroy the stability that they have found. You are going to destroy the community that we have found at Cache. You think these students are going to be able to find these connections that they finally found a home?

in this school building and now you're going to rip it away from them. So you can talk about transitions and you can say these euphemisms for these Thank you for joining us. And, you know, you can use lots of fancy terms to talk about what you're doing to them, but you're taking a community and a home that they have, that they finally found after running their entire lives away from... 30 seconds. These conflicts, and you are giving them extreme displacement again. You are once again putting them... on the run and you are destroying the stability that they've finally found. So please take that to heart.

The real impact that you're going to have on these kids and think about that before you make this decision.

Thank you. Your time is up. Our next speaker is Lisa Graff. Please unmute yourself.

Sorry about that. Thank you for giving me this opportunity to testify today. My name is Lisa Jean Graff. I'm a 2023 LEND Fellow and a Boston's Bed Pack board member. Today, I will speak as an individual with the lived experience of an autistic person. There is a BPS proposal for school closures that if approved would impact both students with disabilities and students of color. I will make the following requests of the district. First, to share the data and analysis that gives the reasoning behind each school closure that has been proposed. Second, to share the racial and disability equity impact assessments. for each proposed closure. Third, to develop a plan for high school inclusion that is built around meeting students' diverse and specific needs. Fourth, to develop a long-term comprehensive strategic facilities plan including a plan for the Mel King schools.

In addition, I have related requests that a facilities plan for schools include sensory comfortable spaces and trauma-informed spaces. Also for the district to audit what is currently available and share that information for use in IEP and 504 meetings. For BPS to support the Henderson inclusion model in all inclusion seats district-wide throughout all grades. For BPS to reach out to all SPEDPAC caregivers and their children for true community engagement about what they are looking for and need regarding supports and services for BPS students. This would allow the district to learn the effectiveness and preferences of services, but also see where there are unmet needs. For BPS, fourth is for BPS to offer substantially separate and Inclusion classrooms for autistic students that are neurodiversity affirming and don't embed ABA practices.

One approach would be to open more multiple disability classrooms with sensory comfortable spaces. If schools are closed, please offer more options for students, not less.

Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Winifred Rankin. You can start.

All right, so my name is Winifred Rankin. My son is a living testament to the transformative power of the community of Academy of Science and Health. When he first joined CAS, he was struggling to advocate for himself certainly in all academic subjects and was only expected to receive a certificate of attendance. However, thanks to Cash's dedication and detailed attention to each student's needs, he is now thriving. Today, he has successfully passed MCAS and is on the cusp of earning his high school diploma. For families like mine, cash represents more than just a school. It is a beacon of hope and a pathway to success. Your plan is devastating, not just for my family, but for countless others who rely on CASH's unique student-centered approach with small classes and incredible supportive staff. According to a report by the Boston Globe, such specialized schools have seen increased graduation rates of up to 15%

Compared to traditional institutions, the personalized attention and customized curriculum at CASH enables students from challenging backgrounds to overcome obstacles, build resilience, and reach their potential. A vital opportunity that should not be discarded in favor of generic solutions that tend to leave underserved communities of children with or without developmental issues behind. that thrive in a smaller, more focused learning environment. Diverse communities are at risk. Closing cash would disproportionately impact minority students and families who have already faced numerous hurdles, according to Boston Education. Equity Partnership. Minority students in Boston are already at 1.5 times more likely to be underserved in large traditional schools. Instead of closing cash, let's focus on possible consolidation and support by combining cash's successful model with similar

Learning Facilities, BPS can enhance the educational landscape for more students across the city.

Thank you. Our next speaker is Mike Heisman.

Mike Heisman, Dorchester. Thank you, Blanca Polanco Garcia and Dr. Stephen Alkins for your commitment to equity and justice as expressed by your no vote against the re-segregation of the BPS at your most recent meeting. Dr. Elkin was right when he said that the purpose of the reform of the admission process was to promote equity at exam schools. The reform has been successful as more of our black and brown students have enrolled and these elite schools. The third rail for the superintendency has been, thou shall not change the admission policy in ways that would harm privileged white families. Superintendent Chang years ago attempted to diversify the elite schools, fired by Mayor Walsh. Superintendent Casillas, supported by the school committee, courageously decided to make the exam schools more diverse.

Fired by Mayor Wu. Superintendent Skipper has reversed direction away from equity to embrace privilege and white supremacy. Some examples. At the beginning of her regime, the harassment and firing of many black and brown central office workers. The failure to use the ratio equity tool in the making of policy. The killing of the equity roundtable. The unsuccessful effort by Wu, Skipper to move the O'Brien from the heart of the African-American community. 30 seconds. The closing of schools only with large majorities of black and brown students. And on November 5th, the school committee approved the Wu-Skipper plan to re-segregate the exam schools. The worst part is that the top 20% will automatically have a seat and won't be part of the lottery. Privilege trumps equity. As a reward for her work, the school committee voted to extend Ms. Skipper's contract and gave her a big pay raise.

This is what liberal racism looks like.

Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Chelsea Falco.

Hi, I'm Chelsea Falco, an Alston resident and high school ELA teacher at the Henderson. In my four years working at the Henderson, I have seen what makes this community truly unique and wonderful. In many school environments, we foster inclusivity with our youngest learners, but by the time they get to high school, we start separating students based on ability. But students who stay at the Henderson for several years don't face that separation. They still see each other every day. They greet each other in the hallway and support each other on their assignments. They dance together at prom and celebrate as they toss their caps at graduation. They have the opportunity to build a genuine community together. We provide students with the experiences they deserve, the experiences that other schools might deny them. Our enrollment is declining and that is limiting the high school experience we are able to provide for our students. But why did we wait until now to do anything about those concerns?

High school teachers and students at the Henderson have spent years advocating for more support and resources in order to provide the best experience possible for our learners. When we don't get the support and resources we need, we rally and do our best with what we have. We are consistently showing up for our students and making magic happen for them. The Henderson community has been struggling for years, but no one wanted to help us. Now the district is suddenly worried about providing a high quality experience for our students. With the proper support, we could have solved these problems years ago. As the district moves to an inclusion model across the board, they should be turning to staff at the Henderson for guidance, but instead, they're choosing to hold the plug on our nation's only inclusive K-12 public school. The loss of grades 9 through transition at the Henderson will have a huge impact on this community, and I hope that the city does not let this pattern continue. Whether our high school programming lives on or not, I hope Boston Public Schools recognizes the opportunity they have now

to do something truly innovative by investing in the Henderson community and building the high quality programming that students of all abilities deserve. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Our next speakers are Stephanie Ward, Jessica Giuliao, Arianna Angus, Michael Colanti, and Barbara Fields. Stephanie Ward.

Hi, my name is Stephanie Boda-Ward. I live in JP and have a student at ACC. When my oldest was at the Hernandez, a fellow parent, A teacher at Green Academy, where many students from Hyde Park High landed after you closed it, asked me to help because no one was talking to the seniors about pathways after graduation. He said those seniors from Hyde Park were completely abandoned. Recently, I had dinner with a young man who was in the last class to graduate from West Roxbury High School before you closed it. He told me that no one has ever reached out to him or his peers to learn from their experience around closures. When I asked what his experience was, he said, basically BPS abandoned us. I wrote some of you about how impressed I am with ACC culture. I shared how welcoming they are and how they see everyone's full humanity. It's a place where they have institutionalized welcoming and belonging.

We know from a wide body of research that this is more common in small schools. I was shocked to hear that you're planning to destroy this learning community. You're ignoring the research and inflicting chaos on a community that is 90% high needs. Eviewing has written about the collective mourning and community grief that accompanies a school closing. I've never heard you acknowledge the grief, much less share a plan to mitigate it. 30 seconds. What? 30 seconds. Oh, thanks for that. I've not heard BPS proposing anything creative to find ways to keep cohorts and educators together. You're closing small learning communities that serve some of the most vulnerable. So what am I? I don't even know why I'm here testifying. I have so little faith. I guess I'm asking you to do no harm.

Who am I kidding? I'm asking you to at least minimize the harm you intend.

Thank you. Your time is up. Our next three speakers are not in the meeting. So Barbara Fields is the next one. Barbara Fields, please accept the prompt. Please accept the prompt. We will continue with the next speakers. Karen Mond, Sherland Mercy, Christine Van Brite, Giovanni Fox. Karen Mond.

Please unmute.

Good evening. My name is Karen Maughan. I'm a resident of Dorchester, Massachusetts. I'm also the president of the Black Educators Alliance of Massachusetts. I'm a graduate of the Boston Public Schools, Boston Tech to be exact. I'm a parent of three students who I did not attend Boston Public Schools for many, many reasons. I'm an educator who did teach in Boston Public Schools for over 30 years. Special education and 10 years of that service was done at the McKinley School. I ended up at the Burke High School, which I'm very proud to say we did a great job receiving a whole group of students. that were removed from the West High School. Excuse me, it's late and I know I'm tongue-tied. and the ABA strand that came to the Burke. And I'm really concerned about what is happening at this time.

I've heard a lot of conversation tonight, a lot of thinking that has gone into what you're trying to do. I ask that you stop what you're doing right now and give more time to thinking that I'm in agreement if I act like a preacher's daughter. I'm in agreement with Stephanie Ward, Lisa Graff, Mike Hutchinson, and a lot of things that have been said. I'm in agreement with some of your newer members on the school committee. that we need to take time to look at what is being done in all the communities in equity. It's the plan, while it may have been thought through by different players and the words that have come out of your mouths, are words that sound good, but we really need to look at the human side of it. And I go back to when you first dismantled the Jerry and moved those girls over to the Rosendale High, and that was back in the 70s. We saw it then and we're seeing it now.

So let's slow down. Let's rethink. Let's regroup. Thank you. Your time is up.

Thank you very much. Our next speaker is not in the meeting. We'll continue with Christine Lambright. Please unmute yourself. Thank you.

Thank you. May I start? Yes. Hello, I am Christine Lambre, a parent of three BPS students who have attended the Lee Academy Pilot School across the past nine years. Lee Academy is more than a school. We are a community. They educate some of Dorchester's most marginalized students with care, compassion, and attention to each student's unique academic and social-emotional needs. Every educator in the Lee Academy is tri-certified, and equipped for BPS's inclusion model through teacher and paraprofessional teaming. For many years, they have completed each academic year fully enrolled. When my son was four years old, they recognized his speech delay and they immediately connected him with an SLP. When he later experienced reading delays and was diagnosed with ADHD, they stepped in with a commitment to assess and fulfill his needs with a comprehensive IEP

and individualized services that have fostered tremendous growth. By following a pilot school model, Lee Academy empowers families to take an active involvement in their child's education with a sense of respect and belonging. Students are greeted by name every morning. The team knows each caregiver and their family needs closely which increases student attendance and retention. Most of these students and their families have historically been pushed to the margins by society. 92% are people of color. 80% of their families are living below the poverty level.

30 seconds.

These students' needs easily go unnoticed and supported if they are uprooted, separated from their supports and forced into an unfamiliar school. Closing Lee Academy will displace these students without clear future academic pathways and leaves them to navigate a difficult school selection process that is uncertain. Please consider creative alternate options such as mergers or turning Lee Academy School into an EEC.

Thank you. Your time is up. Our next speakers are Giovanni Fox, Catherine Camacho, Lindsay Aviles, and Linda Freeman. Giovanni Fox. You can start.

Thank you. Good evening. Good evening, committee and superintendent. Just want to start off saying that I was very, very happy and love to see all the love that the Academy received earlier during the collage portion at one of the school showcases, but I'm very disheartened to hear that you guys are putting them on the chopping block. Tonight, the committee has shared lots of buzzwords, family first, student first, staff first, yet at the very core of who we are as a lapsed community, this abrupt decision of closure shows us how you view us. This decision largely punishes small communities regardless of success models, enrollment numbers, etc. To us, you are showing us our lack of value. Although we are a small community, we are a strong and vibrant multicultural community in Dorchester which serves a large BIPOC demographic. At LAPS, we continuously excel at and champion the work that we do at Nurturing Young Minds in the classroom setting.

It was that feature alone that led me to the school. My daughter, who is a LAPS alumni and now in the eighth grade, is an honor roll student and an SGA vice president because of what she fostered and was fed into her at LAPS. In my past tenure at LAPS as Family Council President and also on the Governing Board, our community is constantly falling victim to the larger BPS machine. LAPS deserves investment, not closure. Thank you so much for your time.

Thank you. Our next speaker is Catherine Camacho. You can start.

Hi, good evening. My name is Catherine Camacho and I'm a second grade teacher at the Lee Academy Pilot School. This is my first year here. In this very short time, I've come to see what makes the Lee so special. A truly inclusive and nurturing community where students are supported and they're celebrated for who they are. We learned just two days ago that our school is going to be considered for closure. because the building was out of compliance and not due to low enrollment. The news came suddenly, giving our families and staff almost no time to process or respond. No one has been surveyed in our community, parent or staff. That's concerning to me. That lack of time, communication, and transparency feels inequitable, especially for families who deserve to have a real voice in decisions that impact their children. That's not the first time that I've experienced this. In the past three years, I've been a part of two schools being murdered or closed. Each time I've seen how these decisions dismantle small elementary school communities instead of building them.

Students lose their sense of belonging, teachers are displaced, and families are left feeling Powerless and Unheard. WE Academy stands for a model of true inclusion, a place where all students, including those with disabilities and diverse needs, learn together in an environment built on compassion collaboration and respect worry really deeply about what's going to happen to our students if our school closes they deserve stability care and access to the same inclusive practices that have allowed them to thrive here. I'm asking the board to postpone this vote. Give our community the opportunity to collaborate, problem solve, and explore solutions. Instead of closure, whether that's addressing the building's compliance issues, looking for another school building, merger, or finding a sustainable plan that protects the heart of our school, I invite you, the board, to come to our school. See our community and hear the voices of the students that you're taking their school away from. Take it into account, Lee Academy is more than just a building.

It's a community, people who believe in what public education and inclusion can be and should be. Please give us the opportunity to preserve that. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Next speaker is Lindsay Aviles.

Good evening. My name is Lindsay Eldridge-Avilaes, and I'm proud to have spent the last decade teaching at the Lee Academy. I implore the committee to reject the proposal to close the Lee Academy. This proposal directly opposes the district's goal to provide a high-quality, inclusive education to all students. Currently, most schools are rolling up inclusion, requiring extensive investment and training in continuing education. We are an established full inclusion school, a school that was founded on the principle belief in the power of inclusive education, a school that's been successfully implementing and fine tuning our inclusion model for over a decade. Any improvements the district has implemented across the city in regards to inclusion staffing models are ones that we had already implemented, using our fiscal autonomy as a pilot school to work around the bureaucracy and put students' needs first.

This includes a full-time prayer professional in every classroom, a full-time school psychologist, BCBA, math specialists, and learning specialists at every grade level, resulting in 1.5 teachers in every classroom. This in conjunction with our small size as a building results in a highly supportive and rigorous experience for every single student. Can we ensure that same level of support at their next school? My understanding is no. We seem to have been passed over for reconfiguration or merge. Why? Our staff isn't in the business of politicking. We're too busy planning our lessons and supporting our families. Every year we start the year with home visits, teaching teams, meeting children and their families in the community. I've seen firsthand the impact our school has on children and families. Year after year, we receive students from other schools who have not met their needs, not at Lee Academy. We band together, we work with families, we adjust, pivot, support until every child succeeds. We agree that our building is lacking. We want better for our students.

But a school is not a building. A school is a community. Communities like the Lee Academy don't happen by accident. They're cultivated purposefully over time.

Your time is up.

Thank you very much.

Our next speaker, our last speaker is Linda Freeman. Linda Freeman, please accept the prompt.

You can start.

Good evening. Thank you for giving me this opportunity to speak. This is in regards to CASH, Community Academy of Science and Health. I'm grateful to them, to the staff and all the teachers that encouraged my son when he was there. He did graduate from Cash. It is a blessing. Without their dedication, he would not be where he is now. They gave him a lot of encouragement, guided him well. and I find that it's very disheartening and I would like you to reconsider not closing, do not close cash. You have dedicated staff, teachers who care about their students and want them to all succeed.

Thank you again.

Thank you very much. Chair, that concludes public comment.

Thank you. Is there any new business? Right, the next school committee meeting will take place in person on Wednesday, December 3rd, 2025 at 6 p.m. If there's nothing further, I'll entertain a motion to adjourn the meeting. Is there a motion? Is there any objection to the motion? Is there any objection to approving the motion by unanimous consent? Hearing none, this meeting is adjourned. Thank you all. Have a good night.