Mayor Thomas M. Menino is expected to announce plans tonight to rejuvenate efforts to care for the city's children with a $1 million program he is calling the "new Boston Miracle," according to two city officials involved in preparations for the mayor's State of the City address tonight.
Using the nationally recognized buzzword for Boston's crime-reducing community policing programs of the 1990s, Menino plans to coordinate the programming of schools, branch libraries, and community centers to boost test scores and graduation rates in the school system while decreasing dropouts and youth violence, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The earlier Boston miracle cut homicides in the city by 80 percent by uniting the efforts of clergy, police, prosecutors, and other stakeholders against violence.
The new program will link tutoring and after-school programs with local public schools, branch libraries, and eventually with neighborhood groups and nonprofits. The program, dubbed "community learning," will emphasize four areas of child development: arts, education, sports and recreation, and character and leadership, the officials said.
Fifty-three percent of students at the city's regular high schools graduate in four years, a rate that lags far behind the state average and below the average for urban school systems in the state, a Boston school system report concluded last fall. The annual high school dropout rate, 9.1 percent during the 2005-2006 academic year, was up more than 25 percent from five years earlier.
At present, city agencies serving children work mostly independently, each with its own programming: Boston public schools, overseen by the superintendent and School Committee; Boston Centers for Youth and Families, which oversees neighborhood community centers; and the Boston Public Library system, which is over seen by the library president and board of trustees.
The branch libraries offer homework assistance programs, community centers provide afterschool programs, and the schools provide education and their own extracurricular programming. Under the mayor's proposal, a neighborhood school that had to cut music or art classes because of a lack of funds could ask the neighborhood community center or library to offer the class. The same could hold true for sports activities.
Details of the unified efforts have to be ironed out, the officials said. New Superintendent Carol Johnson and the executive director of Boston Centers for Youth and Families, Daphne Griffin, both new in those roles, are meeting regularly to discuss the program. A new leader of the Boston Public Library is expected at the end of June and will be included, they said.
As part of tonight's address, the mayor is expected to tout the progress of Police Commissioner Edward F. Davis, who was appointed by Menino in December 2006. During Davis's tenure, the number of homicides in the city fell to 66 last year, down from a 10-year high of 75 in 2005 and also in 2006, according to Police Department statistics posted last week. Violent crime fell 9 percent, from a 2006 total of 7,472 reported incidents to a total last year of 6,806 reported incidents.
However, Mattapan reported a 47 percent jump in homicides, from 15 in 2006 to 22 in 2007, and an increase in the number of rapes and aggravated assaults, the statistics show.
Jamaica Plain recorded some increase in crime, with three homicides last year, compared with one in 2006, and slightly more rapes and robberies.
It is unclear whether Menino will address the feud with firefighters, who have been working without a contract since July 2006 and applied for a permit last week to stage an informational picket of tonight's speech.
Firefighters have been under intense scrutiny since autopsy results indicated that one was drunk and another had traces of cocaine in his system when they died fighting a restaurant fire in West Roxbury last August.
The mayor has been pushing for Fire Department policy changes, including the implementation of random drug and alcohol testing, but the union has balked at any concession without a stiff pay raise.
Donovan Slack can be reached at dslack@globe.com.
