< Back to front page Text size – +

Menino praises education overhaul passed by House

E-mail|Link|Comments () January 7, 2010 12:01 PM

By Michael Levenson, Globe Staff

Mayor Thomas M. Menino today applauded an education bill that passed the House just after midnight, saying it would allow Boston to radically transform its underperforming schools and close a persistent achievement gap between white students and students of color.

Mayor Thomas M. Menino

The mayor said the bill will allow him to deliver on his plan to shutter some of Boston's underperforming schools and reopen them as city-controlled charter schools. The bill, he said, will also allow Boston to apply for a portion of $250 million in education funding that the Obama administration is making available to Massachusetts.

"This is a new era for all of us when it comes to public education," Menino declared in a press conference with several state legislators outside his office on the fifth floor of City Hall. "The lines between pilot and charter and public schools are being eradicated. We will have one school system in Massachusetts, and we'll all be able to work together."

Asked if there was anything in the bill he did not like, Menino said, "This bill was made in heaven."

The measure must still be reconciled with a version that passed previously in the Senate. Representative Martha M. Walz, a Boston Democrat who is co-chair of the Education Committee, said she expected a conference committee to begin ironing out the differences today and to deliver a bill for final approval in the Legislature next week.

Walz said she did not anticipate any obstacles to its final passage. But
there is at least one key difference between the versions, she said.

The House bill includes an important provision that is not in the
Senate version that will allow Boston to shutter four underperforming
schools and reopen them as city-controlled charter schools without
union approval. The amendment was strongly supported by the mayor and
passed at the last minute, just around midnight, she said. Without that
amendment, she said, teachers unions would be given a role in deciding
which schools could be shut down and reopened as city charter schools.

Aides to the mayor say he was on the phone throughout the day and into
the night, calling House leaders and urging them to include the
amendment and pass the bill, which was strongly opposed by teachers
unions that said it would unfairly strip teachers of their rights and
penalize them for larger problems in the management of poorly
performing schools.

Walz, however, argued that the House bill paves the way for "deep and dramatic and disruptive change."

"This legislation, when it's signed into law next week, is going to
make great strides to close the achievement gap in our state," Walz
said. "So we are focused very clearly on the children who right now we
are leaving behind. Our goal is to make sure we stop leaving them
behind by turning around our underperforming schools."

Superintendent of Schools Carol R. Johnson said city official have
identified 14 underperforming schools in Boston, but have not yet
decided which of them might be converted into charter schools
controlled by the Boston School Committee.

"Now the pressure is on us and it's on our superintendent," said the
Rev. Gregory G. Groover Sr., chairman of the Boston School Committee.
"We believe she's the one to deliver, and to make sure we close the
achievement gap with the leadership of our mayor."