Artful effort
Councilors circle back on push to expand free museum program
Undeterred by attempts to squash their push for immediate expansion of the mayor’s free museum initiative to all Boston schoolchildren, two city councilors have filed a communication to speak on the matter again at this week’s meeting.
City Councilors Erin Murphy and Ed Flynn filed the communication to press the chair of the Council’s Education committee, Henry Santana, to hold a hearing on a resolution they put forward on the matter “as soon as possible,” in the wake of the hearing his office “abruptly canceled” earlier this month.
“On March 18, Councilors Murphy and Flynn reached out to Chair Santana requesting that he reschedule the hearing as soon as possible, but the chair refused to reschedule, stating that he wants to wait until the pilot program is over,” Flynn and Murphy wrote in the communication filed for the Wednesday Council meeting.
“Councilor Murphy and Flynn are requesting that the Education Committee hold a hearing as soon as possible so we can all learn more about this pilot from the administration and be able to use that knowledge to help advocate for its expansion,” the two councilors wrote.
The communication outlines the sequence of events in what has been the councilors’ contentious push for an expansion of the BPS Sundays initiative Mayor Michelle Wu announced in her state of the city address in late January.
The program waives admissions fees at six city cultural institutions for Boston Public School students and up to three family members on the first two Sundays of each month through at least August.
The communication cites Santana’s decision to abruptly cancel the hearing without speaking with them on March 8 and Councilor Sharon Durkan’s objection to their call for an immediate favorable vote on the resolution they put forward on Feb. 28.
Durkan, in making her objection that automatically sent the matter to committee for a hearing, said she wanted more information. It was placed in the Education committee, chaired by Santana, who said he canceled the hearing because he wanted more data beyond the first few Sundays of the program.
Durkan and Santana are former employees of the mayor, who has stated that she will not be reopening negotiations for a possible expansion of the $1 million free museum initiative until after the pilot period is over in August.
Murphy and Flynn have been critical of the mayor’s exclusion of non-BPS schoolchildren, “over 70%” of whom they said “come from low-income households,” since the mayor’s pilot initiative was announced.
“We applaud the mayor for rolling out this program, but we are concerned that tens of thousands of deserving students and families are being left out of this free program if it is not expanded to include all Boston families, regardless of what school their children attend,” their new communication states.
MassGOP Chair Amy Carnevale has described the mayor’s decision to exclude charter school students as “politically motivated,” a claim Wu has denied, saying that the funding isn’t there to expand the program during the 7-month pilot period.
A March 18 email Santana sent to Murphy and Flynn, obtained by the Herald, keeps to the mayor’s stated timeline, in terms of when he plans to hold a hearing on his colleagues’ push for a possible expansion of the program.
“In terms of next steps, the pilot program is only 14 Sundays, only the first four of which have happened,” Santana wrote, citing his desire for more data around how many students and families are visiting the participating institutions and how funding is working for the pilot program.
“I appreciate your request for scheduling a new hearing date, and as chair of Education,” Santana said, “I believe the soonest we can productively hold that hearing is once the current pilot program is complete, and we have a full picture of how the program is utilized, and what it would take to make an expanded version of the program going forward.”
He also said that Murphy and Flynn’s 17F request for information for data from the first three Sundays of the program, which the Wu administration provided answers to in a filing for this week’s meeting, accomplished what he had “hoped to get out of” the hearing he scheduled for March 18, which led to his decision to cancel it.
“I apologize if that seemed abrupt,” Santana wrote. “My office had reached out to you and your offices earlier on Friday before even reaching out to central staff, but I know we all get a ton of email, so it might have been overlooked.”
Santana did not respond to a request for comment.
The data show that 10,949 BPS students and family members attended the participating museums in February and March. Paying for the program has been $300,000 apiece in ARPA funds and donations from Amazon and other for-profit businesses, with the rest coming from philanthropic individuals and organizations.
Murphy said she will try to persuade Santana to reconsider his decision at the Wednesday Council meeting, saying that she would push for the resolution to be moved to a different committee if it weren’t against council rules — which only allow for committee consideration at the time a docket is put forward.
“Unfortunately the charter doesn’t allow for us to reconsider after the fact,” Murphy said. “Maybe the intent is more to hopefully persuade the chair that this is an important issue that I hope he’ll reconsider and schedule it sooner rather than waiting until the program’s over.”