Shake, rattle: her role

Carol R. Johnson, the Boston school superintendent, doesn't seem to have been in town long enough to know how hopeless her task is presumed to be.

Faced with budget woes to match the system's educational ones, she put the best face on the sweeping changes she is proposing for the Boston public schools.

"We really want the Boston public schools to be every parent's first choice," Johnson said yesterday before presenting her plan to the School Committee. "Innovation is important."

Under the plan, five schools would close. It also represents a retreat from the notion of smaller high schools, once viewed as the model for the future. It would create more kindergarten-through-eighth-grade schools and more schools that run from sixth grade to 12th grade. Johnson argues that parents have been asking for these changes.

"I think that if you have multiple children - one in third grade and one in sixth - it helps you to be more engaged," she said. "I think our preliminary look at this is that it enhances academic performance by increasing continuity."

Closing a handful of schools may not sound like much, but it is a different course for a system long wedded to the status quo. One of the many reasons for that is the system has resisted sweeping changes. In the biggest indication to date of where Johnson would like to take the school system, the willingness to admit that some things aren't working is heartening.

Not everyone is cheering. Richard Stutman, head of the Boston Teachers Union, is among the skeptics. He said he worries that the plan is an overreaction to a temporary problem.

"It involves an awful lot of change, including getting rid of three small high schools that haven't had the time to make a good track record," Stutman said. "I would hate to think that the decision to get rid of the small schools is part of a short-term financial decision." Despite his reservations about the school closings, Stutman has generally positive feelings about Johnson's year at the helm.

"She's engaging, and she's sincerely interested in a good quality education for all children," Stutman said. "It's part of her fabric. At the same time, she has been cursed with inheriting a couple of consecutive budget disasters. I know there are things she wants to do that she doesn't have money to do."

John Mudd of Massachusetts Advocates for Children said: "I think she clearly has a better understanding of the cultures, the needs, and the challenges of the children and families that make up a majority of the BPS. I think she has begun to develop the strategies to deal with that understanding."

From a financial standpoint, this plan is just a beginning. School officials estimate that it will save $13.5 million over five years, almost none of it immediately. That's not a lot when one considers that the Boston public schools needed an emergency infusion of $10 million from the city this year - money that might not be available next year. Samuel R. Tyler, president of the Boston Municipal Research Bureau, said yesterday that he thinks cuts in operations are almost inevitable.

"This is a good foundation over time, but the superintendent and the School Committee are going to have to go back to the drawing board for more cuts," Tyler said.

The most obvious budget problem is also the biggest political problem. The BPS spends a whopping $70 million a year on transportation. Reducing that number will mean reconsidering the policies adopted after busing in the 1970s. Politically, no superintendent has ever been willing to wage that fight. But a reckoning with the huge expense of busing children may be inevitable. The hard choices have barely begun.

But for the first time in recent memory, people are worried that a Boston superintendent wants to shake too many things up, and that is very good news for Boston parents. For a system mired in mediocrity for decades, running low on cash could be just the opportunity it needs.

Adrian Walker is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at walker@globe.com.