Last Night At School Committee
170 episodes - English - Latest episode: 16 days ago -A bite-sized summary of Boston School Committee meetings, and "Deep Dives" on the biggest issues impacting public schools nationwide.
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Episodes
Boston School Committee: 4·10·24 Meeting Recap
April 11, 2024 21:35 - 26 minutesThe agenda for last night's meeting appeared to be rather light and straightforward, but the meeting proved to be much different. The meeting began with the Superintendent’s Report, where the majority of the discussion centered around the exam school admissions process. The Superintendent announced that the district had released decisions to applicants at 4:30pm and applauded the BPS team for releasing the decision earlier than last year. However, this timing was not early enough, as many fam...
Boston School Committee: 3·27·24 Meeting Recap
March 28, 2024 22:01 - 24 minutesLast night’s meeting concluded the district’s FY25 budget process, with a vote by the School Committee to approve the Superintendent’s budget proposal. Before the vote, the School Committee heard dozens of public testimony about three issues. There were about half a dozen public commenters speaking about funding cuts for librarians across the district, urging for the continuation of this funding. There were also more than a dozen families and staff from the Henderson Inclusion School communit...
Boston School Committee: 3·20·24 Meeting Recap
March 21, 2024 17:37 - 31 minutesLast night’s School Committee meeting was the last meeting before the School Committee votes on the Superintendent’s FY25 budget. The meeting was preceded by the last public budget hearing for the Superintendent’s FY25 budget proposal. During the hearing, nearly 30 individuals offered public comments, the bulk of which concerned the district's shift towards a new inclusion model. A considerable number of teachers shared their concerns and confusion regarding the planning and approval process ...
Deep Dives: How To Talk to Your Kids About Social Media
March 07, 2024 08:00 - 56 minutesToday's parents and caregivers face the unique challenge of guiding kids through the complexities of social media, trying to ensure a safe and positive experience in the digital landscape. Over the past two decades, social media usage has skyrocketed among kids and teens, and right alongside it, we have seen mental health issues increase at an alarming rate. While legal action against social media companies aims to hold them accountable for their platforms' effects on kids and teens, and rese...
Boston School Committee: 2·28·24 Meeting Recap
February 29, 2024 22:50 - 26 minutesLast night's meeting featured a significant announcement about school facilities, a focus on student data and the continued theme of School Committee members advocating for more detailed planning. The meeting also saw City Councilor Brian Worrell emphasizing the City Council's intention to play a greater role in managing the school department's budget. The meeting began with the Superintendent's Report, in which Superintendent Skipper revealed that the O’Bryant School of Mathematics and Scie...
Deep Dives: How To Move the Needle on Special Education
February 22, 2024 08:00 - 41 minutesThere are more than 7 million students with disabilities in the United States, representing a variety of needs and abilities. Schools across the country continue to struggle to meet the needs of students with disabilities in the least restrictive environment possible, and gaps have only grown over the past decade. In today's episode, Jill and Ross are joined by two leading experts to explore this topic: Valerie Williams and Bill Henderson. Valerie Williams serves as the Director of the Office...
Boston School Committee: 2·7·24 Meeting Recap
February 08, 2024 22:10 - 24 minutesLast night's meeting initiated the district's annual budget process. It started with the Superintendent’s Report, followed by concerns from school committee members about their previously requested agenda items not being addressed. Members Brandon Cardet-Hernandez and Stephen Alkins requested updates on several issues, including student outcome data for the district's key initiatives and the level of support school leaders are receiving from the central office, but received no responses. The ...
Boston School Committee: 1·24·24 Meeting Recap
January 25, 2024 19:30 - 21 minutesLast night’s meeting lasted about five hours with only one report and nearly 50 speakers testifying during public comment. The meeting began with the Superintendent’s Report, where Superintendent Skipper spent the majority of the time discussing the School Quality Framework (SQF). The district made changes to the SQF last month without a full presentation or discussion, and School Committee members have been seeking clarification since those changes were announced. Member Cardet Hernandez req...
Deep Dives: How To Pivot When Enrollment Declines
January 18, 2024 08:00 - 41 minutesAcross the country, public schools are seeing big declines in enrollment, with more than one million fewer students enrolled in public schools over just the past four years and the steepest drops in the highest-need districts. With declining birth rates, increasing alternative school options, and the looming cut-off of federal relief funds all creating a perfect storm for public schools, districts are faced with a choice: stay the course, or adapt to the new reality? In today’s episode, Jill...
Boston School Committee: 1·10·24 Meeting Recap
January 11, 2024 21:46 - 34 minutesLast night’s meeting began with the Superintendent’s Report, where Superintendent Skipper spent the majority of her report discussing the district’s recently released long-term facilities plan. This long-term facilities plan was submitted to the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, as required by the state’s Systemic Improvement Plan, and indicated that as many as half of current buildings could close. The Superintendent clarified in her report that this would not be happening an...
Boston School Committee: 12·13·23 Meeting Recap
December 14, 2023 22:17 - 30 minutesLast night was the last Boston School Committee meeting of 2023, and for the second consecutive week, the Superintendent’s Report included a memo with information typically presented as a larger standalone report. This week’s memo shared an annual update from the Office of Equity regarding increased incidents of student-on-student misconduct - a topic that has been highlighted in recent news coverage - and members asked that the Superintendent come back with more information in a fuller repor...
Boston School Committee: 12·6·23 Meeting Recap
December 07, 2023 20:34 - 15 minutesLast night’s meeting began with the Superintendent’s Report, where Superintendent Skipper discussed two memos released earlier that day. The first memo addressed long-term facility planning, a comprehensive plan for which is due to the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) by the end of the year. The memo noted that just 71 out of 119 schools meet standards for optimal school size, and just 18% of school buildings provide most or all of the elements defined by ...
Deep Dives: How To Support Our Most Vulnerable Students
November 30, 2023 08:00 - 36 minutesIn Massachusetts, there are 9,000 young people in the foster care system, and 50,000 engaged with the Department of Children and Families. These students face a unique set of challenges, and in today’s episode, Jill and Ross are joined by the leaders of two organizations at the forefront of helping them succeed. Lauren Baker, Former First Lady of Massachusetts, is the Founder and CEO of the Wonderfund, a nonprofit that supports youth engaged with the Massachusetts Department of Children and ...
Boston School Committee: 11·15·23 Meeting Recap
November 16, 2023 20:51 - 17 minutesLast night’s School Committee meeting was primarily focused on discussion of a new facility rubric released last week by BPS to guide decisions around school closures, mergers, and new construction. The meeting began with the Superintendent’s Report, after which the School Committee Chair and Vice Chair shared their experience from a recent visit to the BCLA/McCormack School, expressing concern that the renovations promised by BPS have not been implemented. The Superintendent also responded t...
Deep Dives: How To Get Kids Back In School
November 09, 2023 08:00 - 45 minutesChronic absenteeism rates in every state are skyrocketing – continuing a trend that started before the pandemic and leading the White House to double down on efforts to get kids back in school. In Massachusetts alone, 23% of all students were chronically absent last year – meaning they missed more than 10% of school days – with rates among high schoolers as high as 30%. There are many factors that have led to this increase, from disengagement with content, to new responsibilities at home, to ...
Boston School Committee: 11·1·23 Meeting Recap
November 02, 2023 20:25 - 23 minutesLast night was a short meeting beginning with the Superintendent’s Report, in which Superintendent Skipper addressed the news earlier this week that nine members of the School Committee’s English Learners (EL) Task Force resigned in response to the BPS inclusion plan presented at the last meeting. The plan called for full inclusion of multilingual learners and students with disabilities into general education classrooms, but it did not include information about budget, professional developmen...
Bonus Episode: How BPS Changed the Exam School Policy
November 01, 2023 10:00 - 21 minutesOn July 14, 2021, the Boston School Committee unanimously approved a new admissions policy for Boston's three exam schools: Boston Latin School, Boston Latin Academy, and the John D. O'Bryant School of Mathematics and Science. Now, after the policy’s first full year of implementation, questions have been raised about its “unintended consequences.” School Committee members and the public have called for changes to be made to this policy to address these unintended consequences, and at the las...
Deep Dives: How To Improve Public Schools
October 26, 2023 09:30 - 36 minutesSchool districts across the country are facing similar challenges, and “Deep Dives” aims to unpack why things are the way they are and what it will take to create change. In each episode, Jill Shah and Ross Wilson bring together national experts for a roundtable discussion about a key issue in our schools - diving deep into root causes and innovative solutions. Today, in the first episode of “Deep Dives,” Jill and Ross are joined by John Deasy, President of the Bezos Family Foundation and a ...
Boston School Committee: 10·18·23 Meeting Recap
October 19, 2023 21:50 - 33 minutesLast night’s meeting began with the Superintendent’s Report, in which we heard positive updates on transportation. Superintendent Skipper shared that on-time bus performance has dramatically improved since last year, with data from September showing 84% of buses were on time in the morning and 96% arrived within fifteen minutes. Bus times in the afternoon showed similar trends. The Superintendent spent the rest of her report providing an update on the exam school admissions process. At the la...
Coming Soon: New “Deep Dives” Podcast
October 12, 2023 11:00 - 2 minutes“Deep Dives,” a new ongoing podcast series from the Shah Family Foundation, explores the biggest issues impacting America’s schools, bringing together local and national experts to discuss why things are the way they are and what it takes to create change. Listen to the first episode in your podcast feed on Thursday, October 26. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Ep. 93, Last Night @ School Committee: 10/4 Meeting Recap
October 05, 2023 21:02 - 30 minutesLast night’s School Committee meeting began with the Superintendent’s Report, which led to a lengthy discussion of the exam school admissions policy in response to a request from member Brandon Cardet-Hernandez to amend the allocation of the ten bonus points. First, Superintendent Skipper spoke about the release of a facilities condition dashboard that gives each building in the district a condition score. She also discussed a recent open house at the West Roxbury Education Complex for O’Brya...
Ep. 92, Last Night @ School Committee: 9/27 Meeting Recap
September 28, 2023 18:34 - 14 minutesLast night’s School Committee meeting began with remarks from Chair Jeri Robinson in which she addressed her comments at the last School Committee meeting on the troubled state of Boston Public Schools. In her remarks last night, Chair Robinson claimed that her unscripted comments were used to promote a negative image of the district and that public criticism of the district following her remarks was unproductive. These comments struck a negative chord with several community members during pu...
Ep. 91, Last Night @ School Committee: 9/13 Meeting Recap
September 14, 2023 21:43 - 27 minutesLast night was the first School Committee meeting held in-person since the start of the pandemic, and it was conducted in a hybrid format with both in-person and remote public testimony. The meeting began with the Superintendent’s Report, which featured a number of positive back-to-school updates, including a low number of teacher vacancies, a high number of schools with fully operational kitchens, and improvements in on-time bus performance. There are still 10 percent of educators without ce...
Ep. 90, Last Night @ School Committee: 8/31 Meeting Recap
August 31, 2023 22:01 - 29 minutesLast night was the first School Committee meeting of the new school year, and it began by introducing the Committee’s newest member, Chantal Lima Barbosa. The first report of the evening was on the results of an external investigation into allegations that BPS leaders discriminated against administrators of color, which concluded that there were no findings of racial discrimination. The meeting continued with the Superintendent’s Report, which focused on back-to-school readiness. Superintende...
Ep. 89, Last Night @ School Committee: 7/26 Meeting Recap
July 27, 2023 19:59 - 26 minutesLast night’s School Committee meeting was a special meeting with only one agenda item: Superintendent Skipper’s self-evaluation of her performance over the past school year. Superintendent Skipper framed her evaluation in four standards: instructional leadership, management and operations, family and community engagement, and professional culture. For each standard, the Superintendent provided a list of areas in which she felt BPS made progress over the past year but did not provide baseline ...
Ep. 88, Last Night @ School Committee: 6/21 Meeting Recap
June 22, 2023 20:35 - 28 minutesLast night was the last School Committee meeting of this academic year, and it was an unusual one. There were no reports on the agenda (other than the Superintendent’s Report), and the meeting came in the wake of multiple controversies in the BPS community. The meeting began with an update from Chair Jeri Robinson on the new admissions policy for Madison Park proposed last month. Chair Robinson shared that this policy created unintentional barriers for students, and that BPS will be reconsid...
Ep. 87, Last Night @ School Committee: 6/7 Meeting Recap
June 08, 2023 20:40 - 32 minutesLast night’s meeting began with a discussion of a big announcement made the previous day by Mayor Wu and Superintendent Skipper regarding changes to several BPS high schools. On Tuesday, these leaders announced a vision that included relocating the O’Bryant School to the vacant West Roxbury Education Complex in a new, state-of-the-art facility and expanding the Madison Park School to fill the space vacated by the O’Bryant, allowing Madison Park to double its enrollment. Superintendent Skipper...
Ep. 86, Last Night @ School Committee: 5/24 Meeting Recap
May 25, 2023 20:21 - 34 minutesLast night’s meeting began with the Superintendent’s Report, which started with a moment of silence for the recent loss of two students. The Superintendent then discussed a recent Boston Globe article on chronic absenteeism, noting that BPS has seen a 7% improvement in its chronic absenteeism rate but still has a long way to go (chronic absenteeism is currently around 40%). School Committee members pressed the Superintendent for answers on two other issues that have been in the news recently....
Ep. 85, Last Night @ School Committee: 5/10 Meeting Recap
May 11, 2023 23:27 - 32 minutesLast night was a short School Committee meeting beginning with the Superintendent’s Report, which focused on summer program enrollment. School Committee members pressed for details on exam school admissions, a topic notably absent from the Superintendent’s Report despite students having just received invitations last Friday, and multiple parents joined public comment to express frustrations with errors that led to their students being incorrectly rejected from their top choice schools. The S...
Ep. 84, Last Night @ School Committee: 4/26 Meeting Recap
April 27, 2023 21:34 - 23 minutesLast night’s meeting began with the Superintendent’s Report, which focused on acceleration academies and summer programming. The Superintendent discussed the district’s expansion of summer learning seats, announcing that BPS now has the capacity to serve 17,000 students this summer, with about 4,500 students already enrolled. There was no discussion of the process for choosing and enrolling in specific programs, which is a frequent concern among parents. There were over a dozen public comment...
Ep. 83, Last Night @ School Committee: 4/12 Meeting Recap
April 13, 2023 20:45 - 28 minutesLast night was a short School Committee meeting, with only one report on transformation schools. The meeting began with the Superintendent’s report, in which she touched on two issues. First, Superintendent Skipper discussed an error in the exam schools admissions process that led to the miscalculation of student GPAs, affecting eligibility for dozens of students. The exam schools admissions process has been a major focus area for the Committee over the past three years, despite representing ...
Ep. 82, Last Night @ School Committee: 3/22 Meeting Recap
March 23, 2023 21:01 - 27 minutesLast night, the School Committee spent the majority of its time discussing and voting on the Superintendent’s final budget recommendation for the next fiscal year. The School Committee was split on the budget: some members expressed hesitance about adding to the district’s hundreds of vacancies and creating a fiscal cliff in future years, while others applauded the investments in the budget and emphasized the necessity of approving it. This conversation ultimately turned to confusion, as the ...
Ep. 81, Last Night @ School Committee: 3/15 Meeting Recap
March 16, 2023 22:12 - 33 minutesLast night’s meeting began with a one-hour budget hearing, followed by a lengthy discussion of three main topics: budget, transportation, and school mergers. Superintendent Skipper began her report with an overview of a new organizational chart for BPS, increasing the number of department chiefs reporting to three deputy superintendents. School Committee members raised questions about the number of new positions created and how the Central Office will fill these on top of existing vacancies. ...
Ep. 80, Last Night @ School Committee: 2/15 Meeting Recap
February 16, 2023 20:49 - 21 minutesLast night’s meeting began with the Superintendent’s Report, the majority of which focused on transportation and transformation schools. Superintendent Skipper discussed the recent controversy over a pending RFP for management of the bus system that received only one bidder – current management company Transdev. She also celebrated the addition of new electric buses to the BPS fleet, the beginning of a $259 million effort to replace all 739 yellow school buses with electric alternatives. Scho...
Ep. 79, Last Night @ School Committee: 2/1 Meeting Recap
February 02, 2023 22:39 - 29 minutesLast night’s meeting marked the beginning of the annual BPS budget process. The meeting began with the Superintendent’s Report, in which Superintendent Skipper discussed the district’s progress in implementing contractually-obligated back-pay for educators and new developments in the school merger process. The Superintendent noted that she has added staff to ensure employees receive appropriate pay, and she announced that the planned mergers of the Shaw and Taylor schools, and of the Sumner a...
Ep. 78, Last Night @ School Committee: 1/18 Meeting Recap
January 19, 2023 21:09 - 22 minutesLast night’s meeting focused primarily on three policy areas. The first dealt with contractually-obligated back-pay for BPS staff. Despite agreeing to pay increases in the most recent union contract, BPS has yet to implement these increases, with Superintendent Skipper noting they hope to have the issue sorted by mid-February. BPS teachers and staff members, including the Boston Teachers Union president, spoke at public comment about their frustration with this issue and the lack of communica...
Ep. 77, Last Night @ School Committee: 1/11 Meeting Recap
January 12, 2023 22:07 - 32 minutesLast night was the first full School Committee meeting of 2023, following last week’s annual Organizational Meeting in which the Committee approved their 2023 meeting schedule and reappointed Chair Jeri Robinson and Vice Chair Michael O’Neill to their leadership positions. The meeting began with the Superintendent’s Report, where Superintendent Skipper provided updates on COVID-19, school safety, and enrollment. The Superintendent also announced the formation of a new transportation advisory...
Ep. 76, Last Night @ School Committee: 12/14 Meeting Recap
December 15, 2022 22:49 - 28 minutesLast night’s meeting was the last School Committee meeting of 2022, and the School Committee spent the majority of the meeting kicking off the process for next year’s budget discussion. The meeting began with the Superintendent’s Report, where Superintendent Skipper discussed student safety, transportation, and rising COVID-19 cases in Boston – an issue raised by several public commenters last night. The main report of the night was a financial update from BPS CFO Nate Kuder. The report sho...
Ep. 75, Last Night @ School Committee: 12/7 Meeting Recap
December 08, 2022 21:56 - 23 minutesLast night’s meeting was five hours long, beginning with the Superintendent’s Report, the majority of which celebrated the district’s Educator of the Year award recipients. The first Committee report last night was on union contracts for food service workers, police patrolmen, and custodians. All three contracts were approved. The second report was a presentation on school and spaces renaming projects, including the renaming of the McKinley School to the Melvin H. King South End Academy. The...
Ep. 74, Last Night @ School Committee: 11/16 Meeting Recap
November 17, 2022 21:33 - 28 minutesLast night’s meeting began with the Superintendent’s Report, the majority of which focused on transportation. The Superintendent reported that on-time arrivals for morning buses increased to 89% in November, up from 88% the previous month. School Committee members asked questions about how many students are actually impacted by these delays and how students are being tracked, and district leaders were unable to provide this information. There were two reports presented to the School Committee...
Ep. 73, Last Night @ School Committee: 11/2 Meeting Recap
November 03, 2022 21:33 - 21 minutesLast night’s meeting began with the Superintendent’s Report, in which Superintendent Skipper covered student safety, transportation, absenteeism, and teacher diversity. The Superintendent highlighted the impact of social media on student behavior, noting that tense online conversations often spill into in-person interactions and calling on everyone to come together to help students re-engage with one another productively. She discussed continued disruptions to transportation, an issue brought...
Ep. 72, Last Night @ School Committee: 10/26 Meeting Recap
October 27, 2022 19:51 - 15 minutesLast night’s meeting was four hours long, with the School Committee hearing only one presentation after deciding to delay their report on hiring and diversity to next week’s meeting. The Superintendent began with her report with updates on enrollment, transportation, and test scores. Superintendent Skipper informed the Committee that, as of this month, there are 48,734 students enrolled in the district, representing a steep decline over the past decade. She then addressed ongoing transportati...
Ep. 71, Last Night @ School Committee: 10/12 Meeting Recap
October 13, 2022 22:02 - 29 minutesLast night’s meeting was Mary Skipper’s second as superintendent, and it began with a solemn acknowledgement of recent incidents of violence in the BPS community. Superintendent Skipper continued her report with an update on transportation, in which she discussed continued disruptions for families due to uncovered routes and insufficient bus monitors. The Superintendent next presented data on student absenteeism, which has increased over the last three years, and School Committee members pres...
Ep. 70, Last Night @ School Committee: 9/28 Meeting Recap
September 29, 2022 20:52 - 30 minutesLast night’s meeting was Mary Skipper’s first as BPS Superintendent. The School Committee welcomed Superintendent Skipper back to the district and also introduced and welcomed new student representative Diego Mehta. The meeting began with the Superintendent’s Report, in which Superintendent Skipper discussed her vision for “getting back to basics” on transportation, attendance, school food, and student safety. She acknowledged the continued frustrations felt by families facing bus delays and ...
Ep. 69, Last Night @ School Committee: 9/14 Meeting Recap
September 15, 2022 21:27 - 15 minutesLast night’s meeting was the first meeting since the start of school and the last for Dr. Drew Echelson as Acting Superintendent before Mary Skipper starts on September 26. The meeting began with Chair Jeri Robinson announcing that a report on the Mission Hill School would be postponed to the next meeting. Although there was no presentation during the meeting, the Boston Globe reported yesterday that the district is preparing for two federal lawsuits in response to the findings from this inve...
Ep. 68, Last Night @ School Committee: 8/31 Meeting Recap
September 01, 2022 18:19 - 15 minutesLast night’s meeting was the last School Committee meeting of the summer – the last meeting before students go back to school next week. However, for the second time in a row, there was no quorum. For much of the meeting, there was only one other member besides the Chair. The official meeting lasted just fifteen minutes, with a quorum of members voting on a few action items before continuing to other agenda items that did not require a quorum. The majority of the meeting was spent discussing...
Ep. 67, Last Night @ School Committee: 8/10 Meeting Recap
August 11, 2022 18:56 - 13 minutesLast night was a short meeting, and it began with three unanimous votes: one to approve athletics association membership for several Boston high schools, one to approve $11 million in grants, and one to approve a contract for incoming Superintendent Mary Skipper. Superintendent Skipper’s contract includes a start date of September 26, an annual salary of $300,000, and a new clause allowing for mutual separation in light of recent turnover at the superintendent position. The details of this cl...
Ep. 66, Last Night @ School Committee: 7/13 Meeting Recap
July 14, 2022 18:02 - 8 minutesWhat happens at each Boston School Committee meeting has big implications for our students and our city. In “Last Night @ School Committee,” Jill Shah and Ross Wilson recap the highlights of each meeting, provide commentary and context, and shine a light on the decisions our leaders are making. Last night was a short meeting and the first featuring Acting Superintendent Drew Echelson. Chair Jeri Robinson began by noting that discussions are still underway regarding contracts for Dr. Echelson ...
Ep. 65, Last Night @ School Committee: 6/29 Meeting Recap
June 30, 2022 17:21 - 17 minutesLast night was a big night for Boston Public Schools, culminating in the selection of Somerville Superintendent Mary Skipper as the next Superintendent of Boston Public Schools. The meeting began with the Superintendent’s Report, which included a discussion of the agreement reached earlier this week between BPS and the State Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) to avert a takeover. The agreement includes key provisions for students and families, including a redesign of spec...
Ep. 64, Last Night @ School Committee: 6/21 Meeting Recap
June 22, 2022 21:22 - 29 minutesLast night’s meeting began with the Superintendent’s Report, which included data on summer program enrollment and a preview of a report coming next week on federal ESSER relief money spending. Notably, the report did not include an update on negotiations with the State Department of Elementary and Secondary Education over their audit of BPS, but when questioned on this, the Superintendent noted that negotiations are ongoing and an update will be shared next week. The meeting continued with an...