Boston schools at a crossroads
Traneal Holloman-Rodgers (left) and Antonio Stroud rally against proposed school closings before the Boston School Committee last week. Holloman-Rodgers is a math special education teacher at The Engineering School at the Hyde Park Education Complex and Stroud is a junior at the school. (John Blanding/ Globe Staff)NEARLY EVERY major issue facing Boston’s public school system — educational quality, excess building capacity, parent satisfaction, staff morale, and budget challenges — ricocheted around the auditorium of English High School Tuesday night during a turbulent School Committee meeting. With so much stuff flying around, some people were bound to get hurt.
Ostensibly, the meeting was about school superintendent Carol Johnson’s recommendation to close three poorly performing elementary schools and two high school programs. But it was more about the long-term survival of the Boston schools. Boston can’t afford to keep dozens of small, inefficient schools in operation while it faces a roughly $60 million budget shortfall in the next fiscal year. The system supports 135 schools for just 56,000
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