Is your school a possible target for merger or closure?
A new spreadsheet from a community coalition can help parents gauge the risk and push for an open, equitable plan
More than 9,000 students go to school in buildings that can’t fit any of the four preferred models that BPS officials say represent the future of the district.
That fact can easily be calculated with a new spreadsheet of information created by the BuildBPS/Green New Deal Stakeholders Coalition. The Coalition is an alliance of community and school organizations that was originally called the BuildBPS Stakeholders Coalition. It was renamed after Mayor Michelle Wu announced her successor plan to former Mayor Marty Walsh’s BuildBPS.
The spreadsheet includes information on the racial and ethnic makeup of each school. There is also BPS information about the condition of the building and the degree to which officials say the building is over- or under-utilized.
And there’s a column that shows whether, according to BPS officials, the building can contain one of their four preferred school models.
That last set of information comes from a BPS web page that shows, for each building, which school model it can support with a renovation, with an addition, with a new build on the existing site, or if it can’t support any of the four models at all.
When officials first showed the four models to the School Committee last November, they presented a map showing these no-model schools as black dots — and refused to name them.
The new BPS website listing does name the schools and shows them on a map as dark blue dots — less scary.
The four school models are:
- Elementary schools with either 356 or 712 students (two or three strands), and
- 7–12 secondary schools with either 1150 or 1620 students.
A dark blue dot doesn’t mean officials have decided to shutter or merge a school, officials say. “Schools with other great configurations will continue to exist and be considered for major investments,” Chief of Capital Planning Delavern Stanislaus told the School Committee in November.
Some of these buildings are already part of a multi-campus school.
No list, no timeline
Officials are not saying which buildings will be merged, renovated, added to, torn down and rebuilt, or simply closed, or when any of that will happen. They have refused to get specific about what they are planning. Their practice has been to propose one or a few school closings or mergers at a time, with no explanation for why they chose those schools rather than others.
In June, 2022, Mayor Wu signed an agreement with the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education pledging, among other things, a “comprehensive, long-term, master facilities plan” by the end of December, 2023.
Such a plan would have met a key demand from the Stakeholders Coalition. The Coalition has been pushing for a master plan with a timeline and information about funding. Transparency would make it possible for community members to judge for themselves whether officials are living up to their claims that they are constantly advancing racial and social equity.
The Stakeholders Coalition has repeatedly called for a moratorium on closures and mergers until that plan is made public.
But Superintendent Mary Skipper said last November that “I cannot imagine in what world we could have had an entire master plan” by the deadline. And state officials are apparently going along with that.
Instead, Wu and Skipper submitted a plan that lays out a “rubric” for making decisions about closing and merging schools, but doesn’t say which schools, when things will happen, or even when the administration will decide.
In the absence of a plan, the Stakeholders Coalition spreadsheet may help to shed light on whether the next batch of administration proposals are equitable.
Promise vs reality
Administration officials have often promised to build modern, beautiful facilities to replace old buildings that close. But while closures and mergers have happened, most of the new facilities have not. No new buildings have yet been started under former Mayor Walsh’s BuildBPS or Mayor Wu’s Green New Deal.
In two recent merger proposals, officials told the Sumner and Philbrick communities and the Shaw and Taylor communities they would have to merge with no provision for new facilities.
Sumner and Philbrick parents were eventually able to win an agreement that they would get the renovated Irving Middle School building, and that their merger would only take place after the Irving is ready.
But the Shaw and Taylor communities are being forced to merge next fall with just the promise of a new building. The Massachusetts School Building Authority has given initial approval for partial funding, but there is no timeline.
In a statement accompanying release of the new spreadsheet, the BuildingBPS/Green New Deal Stakeholders Coalition demanded that “prior to the merging or closing of a school, BPS must have a new, modern facility ready for students in the affected school.”
The full Coalition statement is posted here.
Virtual “town hall” Thursday on BPS buildings
The Coalition invited community members to a town hall-style virtual meeting on Thursday, May 9, to talk about the facilities situation and the looming decisions to close and merge more schools.
