Mayor plans to revamp Boston's school assignment policy

Tucked into Mayor Michelle Wu’s Jan. 5 inaugural speech was a pledge to revisit the Boston Public Schools student assignment system.

“We will revisit school assignment to be simpler and more predictable, reduce time students spend on the bus, and reinvest in advanced coursework, arts, and athletics,” she said in her remarks, given at Symphony Hall after she was sworn in for her second term.

It was a reference that has some activists wondering: ‘Why now?’

If the mayor makes good on the pledge, it will be the first change to the student enrollment system since the administration of former Mayor Thomas Menino created the current Home-Based Assignment Plan in 2013.

For some education activists, the call for altering the current busing system appears to be part of a decades-long push to return to neighborhood schools, a model that in the past has meant Black and Latino children have been concentrated in majority low-income schools with fewer resources than those serving predominantly white student bodies.

“This is like déjà vu,” said Barbara Fields, a former BPS administrator. “Every so often – without parents requesting a change – we end up spending time and resources changing student assignment. Our schools become more segregated and there are less opportunities for our kids to attend schools considered more desirable.”

In response to a Reporter request for more information, a spokesperson for Wu noted the following:

• The administration intends to “undertake a review of school assignment this term. The first step will begin in the spring with an update to the school quality tier framework, the foundation of the home-based assignment system.

• “We will engage with school communities as we make progress in shaping how systems could be revamped. Over the last several years, the City and the District have been working to create high quality seats at every school by focusing on academic standards and curriculum, as well as reforming special education and investing in literacy, advanced coursework, bilingual programs, sports, and the arts.

• “Implementing the inclusive education plan has resulted in expanded school choice for English language learners and students with special needs [and] over the next two years, we will complete the rollout of inclusive education in every school and at every grade level.”

Desegregation and resegregation

For most of the last 200 years in Boston, students were assigned to schools closest to their homes. As residential segregation in Boston intensified in the 1950s and 1960s and the city’s Black population began a period of post-war increase, the city’s schools became increasingly segregated.

At the same time, education activists in Boston’s Black community noticed that Black students were concentrated in schools that were over-crowded and lacking the same level of resources found in schools in predominantly white neighborhoods. During the ’60s, Black parents sought to allow students to transfer to less crowded schools and pushed for more equitable resources for schools in the Black community, as well as for schools to hire black teachers and staff.

After years of butting up against an all-white Boston School Committee that refused their demands, Black activists took the panel to court, winning a desegregation order from a federal judge in 1974 that ordered students of different races to be bused to schools outside their neighborhoods.

Three years after court-ordered desegregation ended in 1988, the administration of then-Mayor Raymond Flynn implemented a “controlled choice” system that allowed parents to select elementary and middle schools from within three zones in Boston while admissions to high schools remained city-wide.

In that year, just 15 percent of Black students were enrolled in schools that were considered intensely segregated, but by 2003, that figure had risen to roughly half of the Black student body and parent activists again complained of unequal allocation of resources to schools.

At the same time, the share of white students in BPS schools had dropped to 15 percent after decades of white flight. That percentage has remained steady over the years, and white students account for 14.5 percent of students today.

The Menino administration’s “home-based” assignment plan was implemented in the 2014-2015 school year, relying on an algorithm designed to give students in every corner of the city a chance at enrollment in schools the district considers high-quality. In the years that followed, white and Asian students became increasingly concentrated in a handful of schools.

A 2018 Boston Globe analysis found that 60 percent of the city’s schools were “intensely segregated” — having concentrations of white students or students of color at 60 percent or higher — up from 42 percent 20 years earlier.
A 2024 WBUR analysis found that white students were twice as likely to be placed in schools rated in the top two tiers in the BPS school rating system as were Black students. Black students were twice as likely to be in the bottom tier schools.

Unequal resources

Given this history of unequal distribution of resources in BPS schools, some education activists are questioning why Wu is revisiting the issue now.

“Each time they change the student assignment policy there are fewer and fewer options for Black and Brown students,” said former BPS administrator Fields. “We see more schools closed in our community. We see schools in predominantly white communities invested with more resources while schools like Madison Park have to wait seven years to be rebuilt.”

Travis Marshall, a BPS parent and member of the group Quality Education for Every Student, said the resegregation of BPS schools brings with it a set of challenges for students and families.

“It’s about resources that white students inordinately enjoy,” he said.

He points to the Eliot K-8 Innovation School in the North End, which has a parent council that raised $946,629 in 2023. The student body in the school is 60 percent white, 16 percent Latino, and 5 percent Black. The Blackstone School in the South End, with a student body that is 66 percent Latino, 25 percent Black and 3.7 percent white, last year raised $4,755.

Historically, Black and Latino students have been bused outside of the communities in which they live for numerous reasons, including a shortage of seats in the schools serving their communities. While declining student enrollment may alleviate that problem, many parents are still looking to schools outside their communities to provide their children with resources not available locally.

Marshall points to the 3,000 students currently enrolled in the METCO voluntary desegregation program that sends students of color to schools in suburban districts.

“They’re looking for resources and opportunities that don’t exist in their neighborhood school,” he said.

This article was originally published in the Dorchester Reporter.