Controversy over school redistricting intensifies
Controversy surrounding proposed changes to the way Boston assigns students to schools intensified last night as Superintendent Carol R. Johnson presented a revised plan that would strip citywide access to two schools highly sought by parents and would also greatly limit busing to parochial, private, and charter schools.
The revisions would also preserve a desire by Johnson to scrap the city's three sprawling student assignment zones in favor of five smaller geographic regions to reduce busing costs, even though many parents, educators, and advocates criticized the concept as inequitable. Two of the five zones with some of the city's poorest neighborhoods in them would have a disproportionately larger share of potentially failing schools.
Johnson and her staff justified the five-zone map at a School Committee meeting last night, arguing that they have a plan to improve schools where student achievement lags state and federal standards. But Johnson kept open the possibility of more changes to the plan as the district gathers public opinion at five public meetings next month.
"If there are better and stronger ideas out there we want to hear those," Johnson said.
Mayor Thomas M. Menino directed Johnson last year in his State of the City address to cut $10 million from the district's $76 million transportation budget by redrawing the city's three-zone student assignment map. The revised plan, school officials said last night, could save between $8.5 million and $10.4 million annually.
The School Committee will vote on the proposal by the end of June. If members approve the plan, the changes would go into effect a year from September, and the district will stop busing any student who attends a school that is no longer in their assignment zone - a move that could affect hundreds of students.
One of the biggest problems in Johnson's original plan that she attempted to remedy last night was a shortage of about 600 middle school seats in a zone that stretches from the North End through parts of Roxbury to Jamaica Plain.
To that point, Johnson proposed adding a middle school program at two elementary schools, Blackstone in the South End and Agassiz in Jamaica Plain, even though the state considers the schools among the worst in Massachusetts.
She also proposed stripping citywide status from Timilty Middle School and Rafael Hernández K-8 School - the last two schools with such status and both located in Roxbury - so they could cater to students who live in that zone, which stretches from the North End to Jamaica Plain.
The change immediately drew fire from parents, teachers, and students at Hernández School, which is one of just three schools in the city that teaches students in English and Spanish. School Committee member Helen Dajer said she received 48 phone calls yesterday about the change in about a three-hour period.
"I got calls from students, teachers, and parents in English and Spanish expressing concern about this dramatic announcement," said Dajer, who questioned the wisdom of shutting off citywide access to Hernández, which would leave large chunks of the city, including Latino-rich East Boston, without a dual-language program in English and Spanish.
In an interview, Megan Wolf, who has two children at Hernández, called the change "tragic. You don't limit access to a program that is so successful."
Johnson defended the change, saying that eliminating citywide status from Hernández and Timilty would carry the benefit of reducing busing costs by $1.3 million. Eliminating citywide school designations, she said, could enable the district to restrict busing to private, parochial, and charter schools within the same boundaries of the city's school assignment zones, instead of transporting children across the city.
But Gregory Groover, School Committee chairman, questioned whether it was legal for the School Department to limit busing to charter schools.
Charter schools are independently run public schools overseen by the state, which establishes school district boundaries for them. Under state law, local communities are responsible for picking up the busing costs of charter students.
Some groups, including Black Educators Alliance of Massachusetts, remain opposed to changing the student assignment system until the district improves the quality of more schools.
James Vaznis can be reached at jvaznis@globe.com. 
