Wu pledges new support for BPS students if elected
Mayoral candidate Michelle Wu would seek to create a “children’s cabinet” to work on youth issues and a “family corps” of guidance councilors in Boston Public Schools that would follow students throughout their time in the system.
“What happens in the classroom is deeply tied to what happens at home and in our communities,” Wu, currently a city councilor, told the Herald. “We’ve tried nibbling at the edges with pilot programs and new initiatives here and there, but the most that has happened is incremental change. Now is the moment to be bold and do more for our families.”
Wu described the job of a member of the family corps of councilors as a “personal navigator for every student from the day they entire BPS, all the way through graduation.” She said the goal would be to “ensure that that child and their family are connected to every resource our city has to offer outside the classroom, so students come into school healthy, happy, and ready to learn.”
She said the “children’s cabinet” — which would be made up of adults — would be meant to make sure the various services in and apart from schools aren’t each operating in a vacuum without knowledge of what the others are doing.
Wu also said she’d create a “family policy adviser” senior staff position in her administration to work on these issues.
Wu provided a quote from former state Education Secretary Paul Reville, who called it “an extraordinarily thorough, farreaching plan for the well-being and educational success of Boston’s children.”