Quality Schools are Not Close to Every Home

On the home page of the website created for the School Choice project, Boston School Choice, BPS states:

Boston Public Schools is working to improve school choice and student assignment. Join us to create a system that supports great choices with quality schools, close to home.

On the Why the Time is Right? page, there are many good reasons stated for why a change should be made now. I would not argue that many of the reasons are valid, but there is one glaring omission to the reasons behind this push which is also the major reason why there is such a huge push to change this now: to lower the budget costs for busing students all over the city. BPS spends an exorbitant amount on busing, and not just for the students who actually attend the BPS schools either:

BPS also provides – and pays for – bus transportation for charter school, private school and parochial students who are not enrolled in the Boston Public Schools. State law requires BPS to drive charter school students to their schools even if they are outside their home zone, which is a much higher level of service than is provided to most students in BPS. Transportation costs are expected to rise by $2.6 million in FY13 and $20.3 million in FY14 as the number of charter school students in Boston increases. http://www.bostonpublicschools.org/budget

I have no issue with cutting our transportation costs, as a Boston Public School parent though my children qualified for busing, due to several horrible incidents with their busing, I transport them to and from school myself. We do have to retain busing for students with disabilities of course and I suppose because the state law requires BPS to provide transportation for charter school students they will need to continue providing that also (at a higher service level than for their own students!)*.

Some questions that need to be answered by BPS:

1. Why is the City of Boston paying for transportation of parochial students?
2. Many buses are not full, in fact some are practically empty, has BPS looked at expanding routes to include more students on each bus and therefore cut down the amount of buses used? 
3. Can BPS show a detailed break-down of the exact costs for all categories of students transported by BPS? 
   • District regular education students
   • District special education students
   • "In District Charter Schools" transportation costs
   • Non-BPS Charter School students with sub-categories for special and regular education students
   • Parochial school students
   • Other students
4. Detailed list of number of students per route/trip, per bus should also be examined.

No matter what we do, there will be those who go back to the Garrity decision of 1974, which desegregated Boston's schools and started busing here. The violence that ensued after forced busing was put in place still scars this city that I love and still scares many. Given Boston's racially diverse population and neighborhoods it is highly unlikely that we would see the schools segregated the way they were prior to the Garrity decision, but it is still a slim possibility in a couple of areas. 

However, there is a bigger segregation issue that may come into effect with the way BPS has changed recently and will continue to do so according to the proposals: our special education students could end up being the ones who are segregated despite the "Least Restrictive Environment" mandates within both state and federal special education laws. I will get into that again in a different post soon. 

The biggest problem I see with ALL the proposals as they stand are this: NONE of the proposals can ensure that every student receives a seat at a quality school close to home. 

Why is that? Simple: because not all schools in BPS are created equal and are not all "quality" schools, so therefore there can't possibly be a quality school within walking distance of EVERY CHILD in Boston.

Wasn't that what this whole process and these proposals were supposed to guarantee?