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Boston School Committee to vote on several school closures Thursday
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Welcome to spring. If you missed last night’s State of the City, Mayor Michelle Wu jammed in a lot — including an expansion of the city’s Boston Family Days program offering free admission to performing arts institutions, new energy efficiency incentives and more. WBUR’s Berto Scalese has four takeaways from the speech here.
Here’s a look at what’s ahead today:
Boston’s School Committee is set to vote tonight on whether the upcoming school year will be the last for several BPS schools. The list of proposed closures next spring includes Dorchester’s Dever Elementary, Southie’s Excel High School, Brighton’s Mary Lyon Pilot High and the high school diploma-granting portion of Community Academy, a small alternative high school in Jamaica Plain. The city is also recommending the merger of two Dorchester elementary schools.
- Why? BPS officials say the schools slated for closure were chosen due to poor facilities and underutilization. “We believe this step, while difficult, is essential to ensuring the district remains sustainable, continues to grow, and is the first choice for Boston families,” Superintendent Mary Skipper wrote in a recent letter. (BPS also considers factors like whether families are choosing the school as a top choice and how many of its students live nearby.)
- Still, as WBUR’s Chinanu Okoli reports, some parents and activists want more details on the thinking behind these closures. The Boston Teachers Union has also questioned the approach, calling on the city to do more to prioritize the construction of new schools. “I hope they would have actually listened to families and educators that have been coming in and pouring their hearts out about the impacts that this will have,” said Suleika Soto, a parent organizer with the Boston Education Justice Alliance.
- What’s next: Skipper has said BPS could recommend closing or consolidating between seven and 14 additional schools by 2030.
- Go deeper: The closures are part of a larger plan for addressing long-standing problems with Boston’s schools by envisioning larger, newer, greener — and fewer — standalone buildings.
Uber, Lyft and Massport have struck a deal on the controversial proposal to hike fees on ride app trips to Logan Airport. After Uber in particular campaigned aggressively against the hikes, both sides are getting some of what they want in the compromise revealed last night.
- What Uber and Lyft get: Massport will still raise the $3.25-per-ride fee to $5.50 this July, but won’t hike it to $7.50 in 2027 as previously planned. The airport will also, at least temporarily, allow curbside Uber and Lyft pickups and drop-offs again, rather than forcing ride apps to use the current designated parking garage location.
- What Massport gets: Several initiatives by the ride apps to limit airport traffic congestion, including a new shared ride options with reduced fees to the airport, a “last mile program” to encourage use of the Logan Express bus and a jointly planned airport shuttle service.
- Go deeper: Massport’s board will vote on the changes today. And while the ride app fee debate garnered the most attention, the plan to raise money for infrastructure upgrades includes other things such as parking rate hikes. MassLive has more details here.
Going once, going twice: An icon of Boston’s skyline is hitting the auction block today. One Lincoln Street, the mildly villainous-looking hard-to-miss tower that long served as the headquarters of State Street Corp, is being forced into auction this morning by unpaid lenders. According to Commonwealth Beacon, it’s the first newer “class A” office building in Boston to go belly up since the pandemic. Banker & Tradesman first reported the news last month.
- What happened? The building had a 50% vacancy rate, after State Street moved its offices to a newer building by City Hall and its next largest tenant, WeWork, downsized from 11 floors to three. While the private equity firm HarbourVest has taken over the tower’s top floors and naming rights, the building’s owners haven’t been able to climb out of debt, according to The Boston Globe.
Han Lee, the Massachusetts woman accused of operating a high-end brothel network in the Boston and Washington, D.C., suburbs, was sentenced yesterday to four years in prison. Two men facing charges related to running the brothel are also set to be sentenced next month.
P.S.— There are just a few hours left until the first games of this year’s NCAA basketball tournaments tip off (sorry, “First Four,” we still don’t count you). If you need to finish a bracket for your office pool, check out NPR’s March Madness guide on tournament favorites, trendy Cinderella picks and games to watch this weekend. (Already finished your bracket? Take this March Madness quiz!)
