Flaherty education plan to back choice

Flaherty's platform also opposes a proposed change in the way the city assigns students to schools, fearing it could leave parents in some parts of the city with less access to quality schools.

In releasing the platform, Flaherty, a longtime city councilor, is challenging Menino on a key issue. Since taking office in 1993, Menino has made school improvement a priority, but some education policy observers have criticized improvement in recent years as being too slow.

"For me, education is personal," said Flaherty, who has three school-age children who attend Boston public schools. "It's about my children and children across the city."

The platform is being released amid a public uproar over Superintendent Carol R. Johnson's proposal to shorten bus routes by replacing the city's three sprawling school assignment zones with five smaller geographic regions. Menino directed the school department to redraw the city's school assignment map in his State of the City speech in January 2008 to achieve $10 million in savings, believing the money should go to classrooms.

But many parents and community activists have alleged that the proposal would cause two zones to have a dis proportionate share of failing schools - contributing to Johnson's decision last week to temporarily remove the plan from School Committee consideration so her staff can do further analysis.

Flaherty said he doubts any of the savings could go toward school improvement, given the dire fiscal crisis the city is confronting.

At best, he said, the savings would maintain what he considers to be a troubling status quo: poor standardized test scores and low high school and college graduation rates.

Flaherty's opposition to the five-zone map represents somewhat of a departure for the councilor, a longtime supporter of neighborhood schools.

The five-zone map would actually create two small neighborhood zones, Allston-Brighton and Charlestown-East Boston, while the others would be much larger, encompassing several neighborhoods.

But Flaherty said that he also is a strong advocate for equal educational opportunities and that right now, a return to a neighborhood school system would not achieve such equality.

Another mayoral candidate, City Councilor Sam Yoon, also has raised concerns about the zone changes.

Dorothy Joyce, a Menino spokeswoman, said yesterday that she could not comment on the specifics of Flaherty's platform because she has not seen it, but noted it comes one day before the mayor is to give a major education speech.

"It's great that the candidates for mayor are focused on education," Joyce said.

"Mayor Menino has been focused on education from the very beginning."

Flaherty's support for more charter schools also runs counter to the position of Menino, who has long argued that the funding formula for charters is unfair. For each student who attends a charter school, a portion of state aid gets redirected from the city school system to the charter school.

Boston is near the state's maximum limit of allowed in the city, and Flaherty said the city needs to convince the Legislature that it should raise the limit.

Another key aspect of Flaherty's platform calls for reducing the size of the central office so more money is available to the schools.

He believes school principals should have more discretion on spending money and developing programs that serve their students.

He also proposes a new review team, made up of administrators and union members.

"For far too long, bureaucracy has gotten in the way of real education reform, Flaherty said. "Parents don't need more red tape. They need more quality schools."