Loss of two leaders is high price to pay
The teachers who make Boston Latin School the best public school in this city, and one of the very best in the nation, are pushing back against Marty Walsh and his hand-picked school boss, Tommy Chang.
They donned purple T-shirts, inscribed with Latin verbs, and gathered on the front steps at Avenue Louis Pasteur to surround Headmaster Lynne Mooney Teta, and her assistant headmaster, Malcolm Flynn, in an expression of love and support that was as boisterous as it was emotional.
Rather than see the storied legacy of the school muddied any further with what’s become a media circus straight out of “Bonfire of The Vanities,” Teta and her assistant tendered their resignations after nearly 75 years of combined service to the Latin School.
“We don’t want them to leave,” one faculty member told me last night, “no one does. Their lives are entwined with this school. Everyone knows what they’ve meant to the students here. Our fear is that now Chang and Walsh will run the show and neither of them really understands how Latin School works, or what makes it great.”
It’s all about the academic rigor at Boston Latin, not race. Long before Meggie Noel and Kylie Webster-Cazeau capped their school careers with a YouTube video about being “Black at BLS,” they had to get in to Boston Latin.
And that wasn’t a matter of race, but of passing the Latin entrance exam.
“If you are here,” the teacher said, “it’s because you passed the test. It’s not about white, black or other. It’s about the scores.”
But this teacher wanted it known that Teta and Flynn, who’s been at Latin for 52 years, devoted themselves to helping students stay at the school.
“At every Latin graduation I can remember,” the teacher said, “Mr. Flynn has received a standing ovation. That’s how deeply the students love him.”
Marty Walsh and Tommy Chang, who are now being backdoored by the pelt-hungry U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz, will have to decide just how much they want to tinker with the crown jewel of Boston’s public schools. Do they even understand what they’re toying with?
Let’s be honest. Boston Latin is worlds apart from every other public school in this city. That’s why Meggie Noel and Kylie Webster-Cazeau wanted to go there. And it fostered in them the independence to do exactly what they did. Couple that independence with the savvy to take a grievance viral on social media and what you have is the essence of Latin School learning.
I don’t know if what they started has turned into a witch hunt, but Flynn, in his letter of resignation, hinted that the school’s teachers are living in fear of saying the wrong thing — or anything that can be misinterpreted.
There is no doubt that the best school in this city will have to adapt to a new generation of bright students adept with smartphones, but that should not come at the price of losing a singular pair of educators who made Latin School what it is … the very best in the city.