Boston school plan would create 700 new seats, Johnson says
About 700 new seats would be created under a proposal to expand several high-performing Boston schools, Superintendent Carol R. Johnson said this morning.
Johnson confirmed the details of her proposal that were reported today by the Globe, and also released the rest of her facilities proposal, which is being released at tonight’s School Committee meeting.
She also explained her decision to abandon an unpopular proposal to relocate Boston Latin Academy to the former Hyde Park High School. That proposal, pitched more than three months ago, sparked widespread protests from students, teachers, parents and alumni from Latin Academy, who did not want to leave their location at the Roxbury-Dorchester line near Grove Hall.
While Johnson said she thought there was adequate space at Hyde Park to accommodate Latin Academy — an assertion that opponents disagree with — she said she was motivated to drop the proposal because it lacked broad support from the school.
“It’s never our intent to create a stressful situation for families, students and staff,’’ Johnson said. “We heard from parents who thought [the proposed move] was a great idea, but we heard from many more parents who thought it wasn’t a great idea.’’
The new information Johnson provided included a new proposed site for the Mission Hill K-8 School — moving it from a hilltop in the neighborhood the school is named after to the recently shuttered Agassiz Elementary School in Jamaica Plain.
Mission Hill would share the Agassiz with a new high school that is slated to open next fall: The Margarita Muniz Academy, where classes will be taught in both Spanish and English, as they are in such K-8 schools as the Hernandez, the Hurley and the Sarah Greenwood.
She also said that the Edward Kennedy Health Careers Academy, which is located on Northeastern University’s campus, would get a second building, the vacant Farragut Elementary School in Mission Hill, to accommodate growing enrollment.
Three other empty school buildings — the Stone, Dickerman, and Endicott — would be leased to charter schools or other educational institutions.
Johnson said that she did not expect that all families, students, and staff may support the proposal and said a series of meetings will be scheduled next month to gather feedback. She said that she will likely ask the School Committee to vote on the proposal sometime this fall before implementing it.
“We want to make sure that in every neighborhood we have high-performing schools that families feel confident about and would choose to send their children to,’’ Johnson said.
Principals of the affected schools have or will be sending out letters from the superintendent today explaining the decision. Latin Academy’s headmaster emailed that school’s letter to families and staff this morning.
“When we first discussed this possibility nearly four months ago, we said we wanted to hear from parents and staff,’’ Johnson wrote in the letter that was obtained by the Globe. ’’Our decision to keep Boston Latin Academy in its current location is directly related to what we heard from you.’’
James Vaznis can be reached at [email protected].
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