Boston School Committee votes to close Dever Elementary, despite pressure from advocates

Update: The School Committee voted 5-1 Thursday night to approve the closures, as well as merge Roger Clap Elementary School and Winthrop Elementary School into the Lilla G. Frederick Middle School in Dorchester.

The Boston School Committee will vote Thursday night on a proposal to close four schools at the end of the 2025-26 school year.

Boston Public Schools have recommended closing K-6 Dever Elementary in Dorchester, Excel High School in South Boston and Mary Lyon Pilot High in Brighton, and closing Community Academy in Jamaica Plain as a diploma-granting school but maintaining some of its other functions.

The district announced the proposal in January, a year after its long-term facilities plan signaled the need to close or consolidate schools due to student enrollment patterns. In meetings with affected school communities in January, district officials told attendees that the four schools were chosen for closure based on factors such as poor facilities, underutilization of buildings, and an inability to offer a complete set of services such as elective or advanced classes and after school clubs.

Though the school committee is expected to sign off on the proposal, parents and advocates continue to ramp up opposition against the move. A letter signed by 17 local groups and posted to Schoolyard News earlier this month argued the closures will disproportionately hurt low-income Black and Latino families. It also said the process of identifying the schools for closure was “completely opaque,” and that the district didn't include the school communities in the process.

“I don’t think anyone is operating under the illusion that BPS will never need to close a school, that’s not what we’re trying to say,” said Krista Magnuson, a co-chair of Jamaica Plain Progressives, one of the organizations that signed the letter. “The problem is that we’re not going about the school closure process in a transparent or equitable or long-term planning focus kind of way.”

Magnuson, along with other advocates, said that instead of a piecemeal approach where the district announces a new round of closures every year or so, it should release a long-term plan that highlights all of the facilities that will be closed, built, and merged over the next five to 10 years.

“It’s just really, really difficult to see the rationale behind what BPS is doing when you don’t have the long-term vision and data to work with,” she said.

District officials said the closures will save $10 million to $20 million and are a necessary step toward developing a sustainable, high-quality school system for the city's 48,500 students.

The district currently operates 112 total school buildings, but is forecasting that it will need to reduce that down to approximately 95 facilities by 2030 to adapt to a smaller student population: enrollment is down 15% from where it was a decade ago.

Nearly 900 students attend the schools marked for closure, according to a recent district memo.

The memo acknowledged parents’ desire for more details on which schools they’re targeting to close by 2030 but said officials do not feel “getting into specifics is positive overall for the district.”

Still, that’s not stopping some parents from demanding more answers.

Magnuson said it's especially hard to understand why Dever Elementary is being targeted for closure since enrollment has increased over the last few years and its inclusion model — one that allows for two full-time teachers in all classrooms and has integrated students with emotional disabilities in general education classrooms — has been well-received.

The Dever has operated under state receivership since 2013, when the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education determined the school was “chronically underperforming.” The school, with over 96% of students designated as “high needs” learners, has improved in several areas since then, including math percentile scores, the institution of a culturally responsive teaching framework, and higher staff retention rates, according to the July 2023 turnaround plan. But the Dever remained in “chronically underperforming” status and its turnaround plan was renewed for another three years in 2023.

Nearly three-quarters of the total 444 kids enrolled at the Dever — located in Columbia Point in Dorchester — don’t live in the neighboring community, according to the district, which has said offering more “high quality schools close to home” for families is a priority.

Cheryl Buckman, a Dever parent who previously spoke to WBUR about the closures, said that her sixth grader, Landon, who has autism, ADHD and anxiety, has benefited from the school’s programming.

“He was focused, he was learning more, he was having fun in school,” she said on Wednesday. “I mean now, all he does is talk about his favorite teachers.”

Buckman said the school plays a critical role in engaging students, particularly those with disabilities.

“I hope, as I am praying on everything right now, that they do not close the Dever,” she said. “That is your blueprint for inclusion and they want to get rid of it.”

Buckman joined families, advocates, and students at a rally Tuesday outside BPS headquarters at the Bruce Bolling Municipal Building in Roxbury. The small demonstration, attended mostly by members of the Dever School community, was a last-ditch effort to dissuade committee members from voting for the closures, according to Suleika Soto, an organizer with the Boston Education Justice Alliance.

“I hope [the school committee] would have the courage and would actually listen to families and educators that have been coming in and pouring their hearts out about the impacts that this will have and how their communities will be affected,” she said.

Soto is not optimistic school committee members will vote against the proposal.

“They’re appointed by the mayor,” she said. “They almost always vote unanimously on things.”

In her State of the City address Wednesday night, Mayor Michelle Wu struck an optimistic tone on the city’s schools, saying they’re on “the right track” and noting that enrollment is up (it's a marginal increase, up by a half-percent since last year) and chronic absenteeism is down. She made only allusory reference to school closures, saying “we’re making the hard but necessary decisions to right-size our district and best serve our students.”

Soto said she and other advocates will continue pressing for answers regardless of the outcome of Thursday’s vote.

“We know that this is coming every year,” she said. “We’re going to continue to push for that long-term plan.”