#BlameGameatBLS
The sight of faculty and staff — a rainbow coalition in fact of faculty and staff — on the steps of Boston Latin School in support of the school’s embattled headmaster should have been a sobering one for Mayor Marty Walsh and School Superintendent Tommy Chang.
For months now a relative handful of students, their parents and so-called leaders in the black community have had a virtual monopoly on the megaphone to air their grievances about what they believe is a climate of racial hostility at the elite exam school. The students took to YouTube and Twitter and got the attention of city officials and eventually of U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz, who launched an investigation.
An internal School Department probe found one incident cited by the students was indeed inadequately addressed by Latin’s administration. Other incidents, for example, involving racially hateful tweets were found not to come from other students at all but from outside of Massachusetts.
Unlike those who purport to know what goes on at the school without ever setting foot in it, we find it impossible to secondguess either Headmaster Lynne Mooney Teta, who this week submitted her resignation, or the obviously aggrieved students. But we do know that having the Justice Department breathing down the necks of faculty and administration at any educational institution, calling in teachers and asking them to recount conversations or lectures or teaching moments that happened years earlier is almost Stalinesque in its abuse of the process.
Mooney Teta in her letter of resignation, as quoted in The Boston Globe, wrote, “It is unfortunate that at a time when Boston Latin School has made tangible progress to combat racism in our community through constructive dialogue fostered by the student body, others outside the school continue to condemn us, denounce us, and hold us responsible for district policies and practices over which the school has no control.”
Her words — especially from one who has remained publicly silent for so long — have the ring of truth.
She was supported by Assistant Headmaster Malcolm Flynn, who was resigning after a 52-year career at the school. Flynn in his letter referred to “recent false representations of the school, in which politicians and others outside the school have partnered with a vocal group of dissatisfied parents ... to portray Boston Latin School untruthfully.”
It is one thing to respect and even admire student activism and quite another to have it drive the political agenda of adults. It’s time for Carmen Ortiz to wrap up her probe and tell all Bostonians whether there is more or less here than meets the eye.