COUNCIL PASSES SCHOOL COMMITTEE OVERHAUL
Proposal would make positions elected
The Boston City Council has approved an elected school committee by a narrow vote — though the proposal is now staring down the barrel of a potential veto from Mayor Michelle Wu, who’s been reiterating her opposition to it this week.
The council, by a 7—5—1 count in its Wednesday meeting, passed a bill seeking to change what’s now an all-mayor-appointed school committee to an eventually 13-member elected panel in its own image.
If this goes into law, it would have nine district school committee slots up for election in 2025, and then four additional atlarge in 2027, phasing out the mayoral-appointed seats. That setup — nine geographic districts plus four elected citywide — mirrors the council.
This is a home-rule petition, so it would need the mayor’s signature, the approval of both houses of the state Legislature and then the approval of the governor.
Home-rule petitions of any level of ambition are always tricky to get through the state house, but this one might not even get there — Wu has stated opposition to this change, and if the mayor doesn’t sign it, it doesn’t even have to climb Beacon Hill. The council can’t override mayoral denials of home-rule petitions.
A Wu spokesman kept it neutral in a statement following the vote, “The mayor will be reviewing the school committee dockets voted on by the Council today in the coming days.”
But Wu’s office said that, “in the meantime,” people should look to what Wu said on GBH radio earlier this week, which included: “I have never been supportive of an elected school committee.”
She previously has expressed support for a hybrid appointed-elected body, but now has said she thinks this would just add instability as the district tries to make progress.
City Councilor Ricardo Arroyo, the government operations chair and main sponsor of this legislation, said it’s clear the mayorappointed version of the school committee in place for the past three decades “has not served us well.”
He cited the non-binding ballot question in 2021 for an elected school committee that garnered around 80% approval as the school district continues to struggle with an assortment of problems and barely avoided state receivership last year.
“The city as a whole spoke overwhelmingly and resoundingly,” Arroyo said.
Co-sponsor City Councilor Julia Mejia said of the current iteration, “Who are they accountable to? No one.”
City Councilors Frank Baker, Michael Flaherty, President Ed Flynn, Erin Murphy and City Councilor Brian Worrell all voted against. City Councilor Kenzie Bok voted present, expressing her concerns that an all-elected school committee might not include important groups in the district such as special-education advocates and English language learners.
All this marks the second time in the past two weeks that the body’s relative conservative block — Baker, Flaherty, Flynn and Murphy — have ended up on the side of the progressive mayor, as Baker, the most outspoken of the crew, noted ironically at one point.
This school committee overhaul, while not an issue that breaks down cleanly on typical left-right lines citywide, is a top priority this year for progressive councilors and their advocate allies. This now becomes the latest example of the council’s left wing at odds with a mayor who ran on a progressive platform, trying to pull her toward more activist-aligned positions. Last week, the matter was the makeup of the participatory budgeting board, and up next is the scale of rent control and then the city budget.
Before passage, Flaherty had sought to amend the petition from 13 members down to seven — five at-large pols plus two voting student-body reps — to avoid what he characterized as an “unwieldy body” that’s too big to function well.
That proposal failed, 4—9, with Flaherty, Baker, Flynn and Murphy being the votes in favor.
A second home-rule petition to grant the two student members votes later passed by an 11-2 count, with Flynn and Baker voting against.
These school committee discussions have come up every few years way back to when the city by referendum moved to the current model starting in the early 1990s. Previous mayors Thomas Menino and then Marty Walsh both sought to keep mayoral control, with Walsh saying that this makes the buck stop with the mayor.
Opponents, noting that Boston is the only city in the state not to elect its school committee members, have said that the mayoral role in this simply creates a body that’s just a rubber stamp for what the mayor and superintendent want.
Others, like multiple of the “nay” votes and Wu, have sought a hybrid models where some are elected and others, generally mayor-appointed, would be chosen for subject-matter expertise or to fill specific stakeholder categories.