Wu vetoes elected Boston school committee after proposal squeaks by City Council earlier in week

In a letter sent to the City Council on Friday, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu vetoed a proposal to convert the Boston School Committee into an elected body. Wu wrote that she “deeply respect[s]” proponents’ commitment to students, but that she “cannot support legislative changes that would compromise our ability to stabilize and support the Boston Public Schools during this critical period.”

The veto did not come as a surprise given Wu's tepid support for the proposal.

Her letter comes several days after Boston City Council voted, by a slim majority, on Wednesday to restore an elected school committee, after three decades in which members have been appointed by the mayor.

But before the switch to an elected committee became a reality, the council needed something it didn't have: the blessing of Mayor Michelle Wu, who told GBH News Tuesday that she has “never been supportive” of the change.

Her veto makes the 7-5 City Council vote moot, for now.

But there is popular support for the change.

Back in the fall of 2021, 79% of voters in Boston supported switching from an appointed to elected school committee. Boston is the only municipality in Massachusetts that does not elect members of its school committee, which hires the superintendent and approves the district budget.

On the campaign trail in 2021, Wu said she would support a partly-elected “hybrid” committee. After she took office in November 2021, though, Wu has argued that it’s a bad time to make big changes in the state’s largest school district.

At Wednesday’s hearing, at least one city councilor argued that the mayor’s position flies in the face of democratic norms — though the 2021 ballot measure was a non-binding advisory question.

“At the end of the day, we were all elected — including the mayor — to represent the people. Those who put us in office expect us to do the work,” said Julia Mejia, one of the measure’s co-sponsors. “This is not a time to cop out.”

The council voted Wednesday on a revised version of a petition first filed in 2021. It proposes phasing in a 13-member elected school committee over roughly four years, according to co-sponsor Ricardo Arroyo. The measure also proposes adding an additional non-voting student member — for two total — in the fall of 2023.

The current school committee is comprised of seven appointed members, plus one non-voting student member. Two of the current members were appointed by Wu, while the others were appointed by her predecessors.

Among the skeptics of the switch to an elected body were Ed Flynn, council chair, who voted "no" and Councilor Kenzie Bok, who voted “present,” effectively abstaining.

Bok said many of her constituents, too, favored a hybrid, partially-appointed model — which was not an option on the ballot in the fall of 2021.

“What I’ve heard is a desire for stakeholder accountability,” Bok said, listing as an example members who have expertise with students with disabilities or English learners — something only mayoral appointments could guarantee.

Flynn sided with the mayor’s argument on the question of timing, saying, “Now is not the time to make major change in the governance of our public school system.”

Flynn added that Wu and Mary Skipper, the superintendent of the Boston Public Schools since September 2022, “deserve a chance to show us what they can do,” given surging budgets and state-mandated reforms to transportation, school safety and other areas.

If the passed measure were to have won Wu’s signature, it would then have needed approval from both houses of the state legislature and Gov. Maura Healey. 

Councilor Kendra Lara of West Roxbury argued an elected school committee would fix what she argued was a historical wrong. “When Black and brown people in the city of Boston were being shut out from … their municipal government, the elected school committee was really a place where they could go to have their [voices] heard,” she said.

Lara argued that the move to full mayoral appointment in 1992 took that outlet away.

Meanwhile, Councilor Michael Flaherty proposed an amendment Wednesday to cut the proposed size of the elected committee down from 13 to 7.

Flaherty called the prospect of a 13-member body “unwieldy,” but the amendment failed, with nine City Council members voting against it.