As a former middle school teacher in urban schools, there is nothing I care more about, and nothing I work harder for, than improving our City’s schools every day. For many of us, no matter what neighborhood we live in, the quality of our City’s schools is the issue we care about most. Whether you have children in Boston schools or not, we all have a stake in our schools because great schools equal great neighborhoods.
As the Chair of the City Council’s Committee on Education, I am a leading voice for improving our schools by:
Budgeting for the Classroom First: In these tough economic times, we must recognize that our children’s education is an investment that is too important to cut. Our first priority must always be to support learning. That means making sure that each school offers a broad range of challenging and enriching courses that offer our children the opportunity to learn. We cannot cut courses or teaching positions and expect our children to develop skills that will ensure their future success.
Fostering Parental Involvement: There are many reasons that some schools succeed where other schools fail. However, there are three essential building blocks for any school to be successful. An empowered principal and a talented, energetic faculty are two essential building blocks, but more than anything, parental involvement lays the true foundation for any school’s success. We know that many of our children face daunting odds because they lack parental involvement in their lives. At the same time, we should not make any assumptions about our ability to foster parental support in every school. In New York, I taught at-risk Latino youth living in poverty and growing up on streets where violence and addiction were all too common. In almost all cases, my students were being raised by single, working moms who spoke limited English. Our school succeeded because we had phenomenal parental support. Ultimately, a school with strong parental support will be the school that allows every child the best chance to thrive and, as a City, we need to do everything we can to encourage that parental involvement.
Supporting Innovative Schools: We need innovative approaches to learning. This is why I am leading an effort on the City Council to create a cutting edge Environmental Science Academy in the Boston Public Schools. Accepting that each child is unique, has different needs, and will thrive in different settings demands a range of schools with varying approaches to learning. Too often, the public is presented with the politics of “either or” when it comes to pilot schools, charter schools, and regular BPS schools. The key is to offer a range of options, support successful schools, and replicate success including support for the expansion of pilot and charter schools. I would encourage any skeptic to visit schools like Roxbury Preparatory Charter School, Brooke Charter School, Boston Preparatory Charter School, or Codman Academy and see students not only closing the achievement gap, but also excelling beyond expectation and conventional wisdom. I also commend the many great successes at pilot schools like Another Course to College in Brighton and the Patrick Lyndon School in West Roxbury. If we are to break the “either or” mentality, saluting the successes of charters and pilots should go hand in hand with celebrating BPS’s tremendous success stories like Dorchester’s Murphy, Charlestown’s Warren Prescott, and Roxbury’s Timilty.
Closing the Achievement Gap: We cannot have a school system where a child’s community, race, or ethnicity dictates his or her test performance. Research and test scores show that children from underserved communities and, in particular, children from communities of color are much more likely to fall behind early, and fail to ever catch up academically. Neither outcome is acceptable. We must find creative solutions to closing the achievement gap, and preventing its very existence in the first place. At the core, we must have a city and society committed to a culture of lifelong learning and literacy. Preventing the achievement gap starts with the need to recognize that early education starts early, very early. We know that our society is capable of changing our actions based on critical information. In the same way that almost every person knows about the dangers of smoking or drinking during pregnancy before even becoming expectant parents, we must engrain in everyone the importance of parents reading to children from the very outset. We must have a city and national culture that has a lifelong commitment to literacy and learning. That commitment starts with parents reading to their children starting during pregnancy. Our City has a key role to play in creating a culture of literacy and learning by ensuring universal access to quality early education including pre-K and K-1 options. Closing the existing achievement gap demands expanding the school day and lengthening the school year. We must identify when, why, and in what areas students fall behind, and then create a daylong, yearlong culture of learning aimed specifically at closing the gaps. When a school cannot offer extended learning time, we must provide afterschool programming aimed at closing the achievement gap through programming at our libraries, community centers, and community based organizations. It is essential that we link such afterschool programs with our schools so that we identify every students’ individual needs and offer an afterschool program that is focused on getting the child to grade level and in a position to excel.
Reducing Truancy, Chronic Absence and Dropping Out: I have seen the problems of chronic truancy first-hand as a teacher, but it doesn’t take a teacher to know that if a child isn’t in school, he or she can’t learn. To keep children on a path of learning and opportunity, we must address dropping out before it ever happens. Chronic absence is the absolute predictor of a child who will ultimately drop out. When a chronically absent student drops out, what started as one child’s issue or one school’s issue quickly becomes a public health and public safety issue for the community. Kids who drop out are far more likely to end up in and out jail, out of work, addicted, and mired in poverty. This is why I am leading the effort to create a new approach to truancy prevention by focusing on parental accountability and addressing truancy as a family issue and not one child’s issue. Similar programs in other cities have met with great success. A summons requires the parent or parents to be involved from the outset, then the court and the family identify the underlying reasons behind a child’s chronic absences, and finally, community based organizations work with the family and the school to provide any needed support services not just to the child, but to the child’s family.
Meeting Every Student’s Needs: All parents want what is best for their children. We must ensure that our students with special needs, whether developmental, physical, behavioral, or emotional, have access to an inclusive, quality education. In so doing, we can show ourselves to be a city that truly views all children as equals. For far too many children with disabilities and their families, there will be a struggle to find services from day one, and as a child gets older, he or she will too often face a devastating social isolation from their peers. I have had the opportunity to hear about the experiences and struggles from parents of children with special needs – through my two close friends whose children have Down’s syndrome, and numerous parents I met with during my first term whose children have been diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorders. With these parents in mind, I filed a city council order to examine how best to provide services for children with special needs. In too many cases, parents are alienated by a lack of programming and an impersonal bureaucracy. I strongly support prioritizing three key reforms. First, when a child transitions from the 0-3 early intervention stage, we must make the assessment/IEP process one which leaves no doubt that all parties are focused only on what is best for the child’s development. Second, we must ensure access to quality programming in every neighborhood with an emphasis on fully equipped, fully staffed resource centers. Third, we must offer true integrated and inclusion style programming in our schools in every neighborhood. All children stand to benefit from schools committed to integration and inclusion.
Supporting a Whole Education: For many students, school can be a miserable experience if they are not the high achievers in core subject areas. How many of us know a child who blossomed as a student once their school day included a real arts, music, computer, or foreign language program? How many of us know a child who came to love school because of the extracurricular options like athletics, debate, or drama? When we offer a full range of courses and programs, we allow our children to find their untapped potential and talent, and in turn, their confidence as students. These programs are not secondary to a child’s education – just the opposite – they are of the utmost importance because they are often our best chance at getting a child excited to come to school each day. In fact, we now know that reading and math scores go up when we offer students a full range of courses and programs, especially in the arts. Where schools do not offer a full range of options, we must make sure that every child can access universal, high quality afterschool programs.
Reforming Student Assignment: Boston Public Schools spent over $80 million on school transportation in 2009 and stand to spend over $70 million in 2010 during a budgetary crisis. This is, quite simply, the most divisive issue when it comes to our schools, and we must acknowledge that the scars of Boston’s painful past segregation haunt any discussion around change some 40 years later. While proponents of the status quo point to the range of choices that a student in an underserved neighborhood has, we need to acknowledge the other reality of the status quo – every year, there are just as many if not more underserved students, predominantly students of color, who are administratively assigned to our lowest performing schools and have no other option. The current system fails these students, and it is an enormous injustice. I support a new review of student transportation and student assignment with the understanding that the status quo is unacceptable, and reform is a necessity. To accomplish real reform, we must build consensus across all neighborhoods. We should start by realizing that every parent in every neighborhood wants to preserve a range of choices, and that every parent wants quality schools. We should also recognize that in most cases, it is easier to foster parental involvement, afterschool programming, and community based learning when children go to school near where they live. Finally, we should be committed to a real plan to create quality schools across Boston by taking all savings from student transportation reform and dedicating that money to improvement plans and expanded programming options in our underperforming schools.
Offering Every Student a K-8 Option: I strongly support creating at least one K-8 option in every neighborhood and ensuring that every child has a K-8 option when they first enter our public school system. Continuity is extraordinarily important both to a child’s education and his or her parents’ lives. K-8 schools offer a chance for parents to become truly invested in the life of the school. Parents, principals, and teachers will build working relationships over the course of ten years or more in many cases. This continuity offers the opportunity to build a school culture that works, fostering parental involvement, and reaching each child on an individual level as he or she learns and grows in a supportive, comfortable learning environment.
