THE BOSTON School Committee deserves a medal for bravery. After an hours-long barrage of threats, insults, and interruptions Wednesday night, the seven members of the board voted unanimously to close or merge 18 schools because they knew it was the only way to save more than 100 others from massive, across-the-board budget cuts that would eviscerate every classroom in the city.
Each school board member, in turn, faced hundreds of angry parents, students, and teachers to describe how they had arrived at this painful, but necessary decision. Marbled throughout the crowd were blow-ins from fringe political groups, who tried their best to intimidate the board and incite the crowd, deriding school board members as “stooges’’ and tools of “parasitical financial institutions.’’ It was all political theater for these throwbacks to the 1960s. But for the hundreds of parents, teachers, and students who came to make last minute appeals to spare their schools, it was as real as a padlocked door on a school they consider a second home.
With 5,600 empty seats in the city’s schools and a projected $63 million budget shortfall for next year, school Superintendent Carol Johnson has no choice but to take funds now used for unneeded buildings and apply them to classroom improvements and teacher training. The school board members listened carefully to the appeals of distraught parents and students from some of the low-performing schools on the closure list. They responded with their heads, not their hearts.
Voting “yes,’’ for the closure plan, school board member Michael O’Neill spoke of going door-to-door at the State House for an increase in school aid. But now, he said, it would be a “dream allocation,’’ if Boston can even maintain its current level of state support.
Voting “yes,’’ board member John Barros said he needed to make sure that the “core of the organization“ remains “strong and functioning.’’
Voting “yes,’’ member Mary Tamer said, “It’s not about one child or one school,’’ but “the greater good of 56,000 students.’’
Voting “yes,’’ member Marchelle Raynor described how she had made a decision in an earlier round of cuts to close her own granddaughter’s school in the interest of protecting the entire system. “That’s cold,’’ yelled an audience member. Actually, it was courageous.
Voting “yes,’’ member Alfreda Harris used her time to shore up Johnson, who earlier had been verbally pummeled by the crowd when she presented her justifications for the closures.
Voting “yes,’’ board chair Rev. Gregory Groover said that such tough decisions presaged a day when every Boston student could attend a top-notch school. “Sellout,’’ called out a heckler.
The constant verbal abuse from the audience would get the better of school board member Claudio Martinez. His eyes narrowing like a fighter’s, Martinez turned on one especially obnoxious protester who had been howling like a banshee and bouncing around the English High School auditorium like a billiard ball.
“When I need a comment from a white, privileged kid like you, I’ll let you know,’’ said Martinez, who has devoted his professional life to improving the lives of low-income students in the city’s Jamaica Plain neighborhood.
Tossing a racial quote into this combustible mix won’t go down as one of Martinez’s finest public moments. But there’s a limit to the amount of verbal abuse anyone can take.
“I probably would have done the same thing,’’ said Mayor Menino in defense of his appointed school board member.
Menino received plenty of criticism from the crowd for his speech the previous day at the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, where he defended the cuts and called on the teachers’ union to adopt reforms, such as longer school days. It was exactly the right audience, however — the future employers of the graduates of the Boston Public Schools.
The meeting ended with several teachers in tears, hugging their colleagues. And more tears are on the way. The closures approved on Wednesday address only about a quarter of the excess seating capacity in the system, according to the nonprofit Boston Municipal Research Bureau.
Boston’s school system is shrinking, a result of decades of erratic quality, demographic change, and, more recently, increased competition from charter schools. But the school committee and school superintendent should be commended for standing tall and saying — unanimously — that they will make this right.
Lawrence Harmon can be reached at harmon@globe.com.
The Boston Globe Opinion, December 17, 2010
