Letters to the editor Exam school policy
The zip code exam school acceptance policy came to Boston this week. In mailboxes across the city, students were notified of their fate at the elite public high schools. In neighborhoods like mine, many white and Asian parents were surprised by rejection. Parents thought their children’s marks and exam scores were high enough to hurdle barriers designed to parse excellence. They are now scrambling for seats at a private high school or settling for less. Anecdotal complaints will yield to a factual analysis of the tiers, the zip codes and the bonus points. In the future, a federal judge will see what is very plain to even the most casual observer, the zip code policy is carefully cloaked racism masquerading as a race neutral policy. If the top product you offer is corroded by racism, faith will never be restored in a school system further plagued by administrative intransigence, truancy, crime and school buildings in need of upgrade.
Joe Battenfeld’s Herald column championing of the Pioneer Institute’s plan avoided the real issues destroying Boston Public
Schools: a woke mayor, her appointed school committee and woke president of the Boston Teacher’s Union all at the vanguard of a national leftist movement to turn schools into indoctrination centers. State control will not change this dangerous devotion to wokeness and the bigotry of affirmative action.
It must always be remembered that at the appointed school committee meeting which ushered in the zip code quota plan Chair Alexandra Oliver-Davila texted voting member Lorna Rivera, ”I hate WR (West Roxbury). To which Rivera replied she is “sick of westie whites” to which Oliver-Davila responded, “Me too I really feel Like saying that !!!! ” These texts were hidden by the City of Boston and were only exposed later by the Boston Herald. Judges refused to say these texts demonstrated racial animus. The thing that holds our country together is a base level respect for neutral rules grounded in our Constitution; exam scores do that quite well. Restoring the exam and grades, as the only criteria for the exam schools is a start to reforming Boston’s beleaguered public school system.
— Louis Murray, Chair, West
Roxbury GOP Ward Committee