Squeaky wheels win

It’s disappointing that the School Department has backed down on its long awaited plan to revamp public school start times, but it’s far more disappointing that the long knives appear to be out for Boston Schools Superintendent Tommy Chang.

What Boston Public Schools need more than anything else is the kind of stability — and creative energy — that Chang has been able to provide for the past two and a half years. A relative handful of exceedingly vocal parents, some of them with a political axe to grind, shouldn’t be allowed to dominate the discussion.

The aim of the proposed new start times — later starts for sleep-deprived teens and efforts to get younger children home during daylight hours in the winter — remain worthwhile aims. And the fact remains that the system’s 56,000 students cannot all board buses at the same time.

The plan advanced with the aid of a group of computer wizards at MIT — after 18 months of public comment — likely made some students (and their parents) happy. Not surprisingly we haven’t heard from them — although surely their opinions count too.

Some parents, especially those whose youngsters got those 7:15 a.m. start times, have some genuine concerns about how they are going to make it all work, including arranging for after-school care. Could that be solved with a tweak here or there — rather than throwing out the whole effort? Wouldn’t it be worth a try?

But clearly some are less interested in solving the problem and more interested in scoring political points.

Like City Councilor Annissa Essaibi-George, who insisted, “We need to have a very honest conversation about the direction of the Boston Public Schools... We need to make sure we have the right leader to do that.”

And where has she been for the last 18 months?

Then there’s a Boston Latin Academy parent, Heshan Berents-Weeramuni, who also just happens to be a former aide to failed mayoral candidate Tito Jackson, who told the Herald, “Yeah, there needs to be a change in leadership in the city of Boston, frankly.”

Well, that question was answered in November.

The squeaky wheels in this city ought not to be allowed to halt a needed reform.