A Desert Still Thirsty for Schools

Students from the Eliot K-8 Innovation School sat in an empty office building on March 14, waiting for the arrival of Mayor Thomas Menino and for the cameras to roll. Bouquets of colorful helium balloons livened up the space, which was also filling with expectant adults and news media assembling for an announcement: This North End waterfront building will become the city’s newest Boston Public School.  

The happy atmosphere was appropriate to an undeniably positive development for families in the northern reaches of Boston. While the city says the new school should open in 2016 to serve about 500 children, Eliot students will be its first beneficiaries, with 585 Commercial Street serving as temporary classrooms during the Eliot’s expansion to other renovated buildings nearby.

To further demonstrate the need for this building, the mayor’s press release the next day highlighted that BPS enrollment is expected to increase by eight percent next fall, to its highest level in eight years. It adds, “Over the past 10 years, the number of school-age children has increased by 23 percent in downtown Boston; by 36 percent in the Back Bay; and by 20 percent in Beacon Hill.”

City Councilor Michael Ross spoke after the mayor at 585 Commercial, pointing out that families two decades ago were running away from the city, in search of good schools for their children. Today, he said, they are demanding them right in Boston, because of improvements Mr. Menino has helped make in BPS.  

Mr. Ross’s enthusiasm is notable, because many of his constituents live too far and likely won’t benefit directly from the new school. He’s a veteran of the decade-old effort to bring schools back to parts of his district, and a time when the city was not supportive of a new school for the neighborhoods just west of the North End.

Under the new BPS assignment plan ­– approved by the School Committee the day before the mayor’s waterfront announcement – school choices won’t be as far-flung as the current system. Starting in 2014, a student’s school options will be based on home address and quality measures of nearby schools. The options offered to a particular address could change over time, depending on how popular a school is and its MCAS performance. But when the BPS goal is to give children good options in their own neighborhoods, 585 Commercial is too far from many downtown families to serve that purpose.

Yet the newest group advocating for more public schools in the city, Downtown Schools for Boston, is hewing to a position similar to Ross’s. While Downtown Schools’ focus is on the neighborhoods with no public elementary schools at all, they also want more seats in good schools for all Boston students. Years ago, parents who were willing to enroll their children in underperforming schools – such as the Eliot and the Hurley in the South End – helped make those schools two of the most successful and sought-after in the zone today. A new school will help relieve the demand on these high-quality, established schools and spread resources to more families.

In January, the group was encouraged when then-State Rep. Marty Walz was instrumental in getting BPS to include her Boston constituents in its proposals for a new assignment plan. Among other promises to BPS families – such as grandfathering and sibling priority ­– BPS said that it was “committed to identifying space for a downtown school, so that downtown families have a great school option close to home.”

In this context, the idea of “Downtown” has expanded. Officially, Downtown is just the Financial District, South Station, Government Center, Bulfinch Triangle, and Haymarket. About 400 children aged 0 to 14 live in this area alone. Downtown Schools for Boston, meanwhile, also includes in its neighborhoods Beacon Hill, West End, Back Bay, and Fenway/Kenmore – stressing that a few thousand children in all these areas have no public elementary schools close by. 

The promise of 585 Commercial St. in the North End still leaves these neighborhoods without a school, and Back Bay and Fenway/Kenmore in particular are beyond the reach of the building. But Downtown Schools for Boston and Mike Ross stress that it’s great progress in the right direction. Yet making the mayor’s idea a reality means approval from the School Committee, and also the City Council for the $13 million it will cost to buy the property from the owners, whose plans to raze the old building and construct a taller one were opposed in the neighborhood.

For his part, City Council President Stephen Murphy wasn’t going to completely rain on the balloon-festooned parade, but “not done yet” were some of his words. In this election year, the politics of this school are hard to ignore. Councilor John Connolly, chair of the Council’s education committee, was not present for the mayor’s announcement. When Mr. Connolly and five other city leaders proposed their own assignment plan reforms in October, the plan did include recognition of the need for a new downtown school. Connolly is currently the only declared candidate for mayor who is building a sizeable campaign bank account, and he was not invited to the announcement at 585 Commercial, according to his staff.

The mayor himself joked that some of the parents he’s heard from over the years who’ve wanted nearby schools might now have grandchildren – it’s taken awhile for Boston to come around. In truth, some of the 450-plus members of Downtown Schools for Boston have outgrown their own need for BPS. But Menino also says “public education is the most important thing we do as a society.” If we all agree on that, then Boston’s neighborhoods with no schools are still owed their own.