MAYOR EMBARRASSMENT
Chang will take heat for school times flub
That rumbling coming from inside City Hall is Mayor Marty Walsh’s patience about to blow.
Walsh has to be furious at Superintendent Tommy Chang’s bungling of the rollout of new start times at Boston Public Schools — but the question is, is it enough to cost Chang his job?
Chang has become a big political liability for the mayor, and that usually means change is coming. Rumors have been trickling out of City Hall for months that Chang’s job was in jeopardy — and that was before the schools’ chief took flak from angry parents over the start-time debacle.
Now with Chang forced to shelve the proposed starttime changes, it looks more and more like he may not keep his job much longer. The superintendent’s contract runs out soon anyway and it would be a convenient time for Walsh to unload him and his $267,000-ayear salary.
The start-time controversy could have become a major embarrassment for the mayor if the new plan went through. Parents, activists and students had been planning to protest Walsh’s inauguration next month and that couldn’t have sat well in the mayor’s fifthfloor office.
So rather than risk the potential of ruining the swearing-in ceremony, Chang instead had to pull the plug on the new schedule.
It was the second major fumble by Chang in just the last month. The first came when it was revealed that the city had to pay nearly $1 million in penalties to the feds after an IRS audit found the school department was misusing student activity accounts.
Chang sat on the audit for months — not even telling the School Committee. The penalty was actually paid by the city on Election Day, but Chang waited several weeks to even tell Walsh about it. Not exactly full transparency.
The scenario was similar with the school starttime changes, with Chang enacting them without much input from parents and not even asking the individual schools if they wanted them. Then parents got the word, and it went over like a lead weight.
If this were the corporate world, Walsh would be held accountable since he’s the one who appointed Chang. But this is the political world, and Walsh was just re-elected overwhelmingly by voters. So he’s not going anywhere.
That means it’s Chang who’s taking the full force of the heat. And he deserves it, because he’s the one who should have anticipated the angry reaction. If you’re a parent who suddenly gets word your kid is going to school at 7:15 a.m. and getting out of school at 1:15 p.m., what do you think the response would be?
Walsh said he stands behind Chang. But he could be poised to push him out the door.