Weekly Transcript Round-Up for 6/20/25
City Hall's annual economic report "highlight ongoing uncertainties"; School Cmte evaluates Skipper & gets exam school admissions update, Council responds; Forum puts At-Large Candidates on the record
BPI has a new AI-generated transcript feed: Boston’s 2025 candidate forums. In addition to a transcript for Monday’s forum that you can read here, there are transcript for the 3 other forums hosted this this year and posted on YouTube. The others are:
District 7 candidates forum from May 22;
At-Large candidates forum from May 22; and
Mayoral candidates forum hosted by the same group that hosted Monday’s At-Large forum.
All 4 are available on a stand alone feed, which is hosted by Legislata and which BPI is making available for free to the public. As more candidates forums occur, they will be transcribed & posted on that feed, so make sure to bookmark it going forward!
If there is a forum that happened this year & is posted on YouTube but is not on this feed, please email BPI at info@bostonpolicyinstitute.org.
This Juneteenth week was light for the Council, but there was plenty of action outside the Council chamber:
The biggest news this week came at Tuesday’s School Committee meeting, where SC members presented their annual evaluation of Superintendent Skipper, which is important for her salary & future contract and as a demonstration of where the Cmte members stand on her performance, and were given a presentation on BPS exam school admission policy that hinted at potential changes to the current system;
Tuesday’s School Committee meeting prompted two City Councilors to release very public statements about exam school admissions policy, an issue that has been a frequent subject of news articles & in School Committee meetings, but about which the City Council has not held a specific hearing in the 2024-2025 term; and
2 important reports that were released 3 weeks ago attracted renewed attention this week, with one on hunger in Massachusetts from the Greater Boston Food Bank got a long Globe article & an appearance on the Dan Rea show, and the other on Boston’s 2025 economy from the Boston Planning Department attracting significantly less attention than last year’s version of the report.
Read more about each of those items below.
In addition, there was also important policy-related action on the campaign trail, major developments in the White Stadium renovation fight, and a peek at how Bluebikes operates at a Council hearing:
Monday’s At-Large candidates forum, organized and hosted by a coalition of Boston’s Democratic Ward Committees, put incumbents & challengers on the record about important issues from inclusionary zoning to a bell-to-bell cell phone ban in public schools, an issue that is a major priority for State Senate President Karen Spilka, and former Boston City Council President & current MA Attorney General Andrea Campbell, who filed the legislation. The graphic above captured some of the answers, but candidates also provided spoken answers, and there were more yes & no questions, including on that cell phone ban and on whether to spend $700M renovating Madison Park Technical High School. Read the Globe’s run down of the forum.
These are the answers to just some of the yes/no questions asked at Monday’s forum. Check out all the answers & the longer responses, on the transcript. There were two major developments on White Stadium this week, with Boston’s NAACP branch calling for a halt to the project until 4 demands are met, including stronger commitments to jobs for people of color and publishing complete plans for parking, transportation, and climate. The other major development was Josh Kraft’s claim that he had a new cost estimate for White Stadium showing the project would cost Boston $170M+ - read more from Boston Herald, Boston Globe, and Contrarian Boston. Mayor Wu responded on Tuesday, saying “that is not the real cost,” but adding in the same interview that she expected the final cost would be higher than the $91M estimate revealed back in November 2024.
The Council held a hearing on Wednesday afternoon on a new 10 year contract with Bluebike - part of a larger process to pick a Bluebike operator for the entire regional system - and a $9M federal grant for pedestrian safety improvements across Boston - read the transcript.
SCHOOL COMMITTEE RATES SKIPPER “PROFICIENT”
On Tuesday night the Boston School Committee met for its last meeting of the 24-25 academic year, and there were two really important topics on the agenda: the School Committee’s evaluation of Superintendent Mary Skipper, and a presentation on exam school admission policy that hints at potentially wide-ranging changes. For the admissions policy update & the Council’s response to it, check out the next section.
The first major issue was the Superintendent’s evaluation. The School Committee combined to give her an overall rating of 4.0 out of 5 and labeled her “proficient” - check out the individual evaluations from each Cmte members & the Superintendent’s self-evaluation here. Superintendent Skipper starts the evaluation discussion with a presentation on her own self-evaluation starts - find that at the 2:10:20 mark in the transcript, and she is Speaker 1.
Jill Shah and Ross Wilson over at the ‘Last Night at School Committee’ podcast - a must-listen for anyone following what is happening at the School Committee and BPS - had two issues with the evaluation, one process related, and the other policy related:
First, “the evaluation relied on a BPS-specific rubric, diverging from the state’s DESE model, raising questions about alignment and transparency;”
Second, “the Committee did not address major issues in its evaluation, including: the long-term facilities plan, ballooning White Stadium costs, declining enrollment, transportation controversy, and federal funding uncertainty.”
The Committee did not address either of those issues either in its combined evaluation of the superintendent, or in its comments at Tuesday’s meeting. However, in the Superintendent’s own self-evalution both of the leadership issue and the challenges facing BPS were written about at length, showing that there is a discussion about them happening somewhere, just not in public view.
The first criticism is one that has been made in the past, and two lines from the Superintendent’s self-evaluation show why its an issue: the rubric for the Superintendent is a model that is used throughout BPS leadership training. That makes it tough to do apples-to-apples comparison between Boston’s leadership rubric on the one hand, and the state’s leadership rubric on the other - on p. 22:
The Office of Leadership Development continues to provide support and professional development to school leaders, aligned to the administrator evaluation rubric. All school leaders participate in professional learning communities with their region, as well as all leader professional development.
Second, while three of those issues - White Stadium, transportation, and federal funds - got little details in the evaluation, declining enrollment and the long-term facilities did get quite a bit of focus. Here is some of what Superintendent Skipper wrote in her self-evaluation about the long-term facilities plan - on p. 7:
BPS currently operates 112 schools (81 Elementary and 31 Secondary) and - with strategic planning we anticipate our portfolio shifting to approximately 95 schools over the next five years (69-71 Elementary, 23-25 Secondary) to meet the needs of today’s and future students. This is not a cost-saving exercise, our goal is clear: with the goal of reinvesting funds saved into increased student learning opportunities and supports.
These two lines each deserve their own stand-alone Council hearings. At least one hearing should focus on interrogating the district’s consistent claim that closing buildings is “not a cost-saving exercise,” when that appears to be a clear opportunity for budget savings (and possibly even revenue growth if the closed schools are sold and begin paying property taxes) in an era of uncertain federal aid, severely restricted budget growth in City Hall, and falling enrollment.
The other hearing should focus on Superintendent Skipper setting the explicit goal for BPS to close 10-12 Elementary and 6-8 Secondary schools, but without an actual list of school buildings that are being evaluated for possible closure, or notice of which school communities may be moved or merged. While BPS itself has refused to provide a list, it is possible for BPS observers - or City Councilors - to put together a list of school buildings that are eligible for closure because the parameters are simple: any building that is not subject to use restrictions because it utilized Massachusetts School Building Authority funding is eligble for closure. That list is relatively short.
SCHOOL COMMITTEE EXAM SCHOOL ADMISSION UPDATE PROMPTS COUNCIL RESPONSE
That important second topic at this week’s School Committee meeting was a presentation of BPS analysis on its own exam school admission policy. This presentation is being closely watched by leaders outside of the School Committee, as demonstrated by the two very different responses from two Boston City Councilors, which likely indicates that the debate over exam school admissions will coming before the Council in the coming months.
The presentation on the exam school admissions policy starts with a short introduction from Superintendent Skipper - she is Speaker 1 & starts at the 2:55:50 mark. Then the presentation itself was delivered by Monica Hogan, Assistant Superintendent for Data Strategy and Implementation, and Colin Rose, who Superintendent Skipper identified as the “senior advisor for strategy and opportunity gaps,” and who served as BPS’ Assistant Superintendent for Opportunity and Achievement Gaps from November 2015 to June 2020 - Boston Magazine profiled Rose in 2019.
Here is how ‘Last Night at School Committee’ characterized the presentation:
While no changes were proposed, as the district made clear their presentation was just an analysis, data simulations hinted at a likely shift away from the controversial “bonus points” system, especially as exam school applicants have dropped by more than 1,000 students over the past five years.
Check out the memo, report, and deck for the exam schools update here.
The presentation from BPS prompted two City Councilors to post responses on their Instagram grid, a sign of just how important they each consider the issue of exam school admissions. Find the links to the Instagram posts from Councilor Coletta Zapata and from Councilor Pepen, and the screenshots of each is below:
The two responses are very different:
Councilor Pepen’s letter strikes a skeptical tone about the previous changes made to the exam school admissions policy, and reports that he has filed a hearing order. That hearing order should be part of the Agenda Packet for next week’s regular City Council meeting.
Councilor Coletta Zapata strikes a less skeptical tone than Pepen, and rather than calling for a Council hearing to talk about changes, points those interested in providing feedback to BPS, which “plans to provide community engagement opportunities throughout the summer.”
Based on BPI’s review, the current 2024-2025 City Council has not filed a stand alone exam school admissions policy hearing order, and thus has not held a stand-alone hearing on the issue.
Whether Pepen’s hearing order gets a hearing is an open question: Education Committee Chair, freshman At-Large Councilor Henry Santana, has held just 2 hearings and a policy briefing in 2025, and just 9 hearings and a policy briefing in 2024.
TWO REPORTS GET ATTENTION THIS WEEK
Two important reports that were released 3 weeks ago attracted renewed attention this week.
The first was released on May 29 and is from the Greater Boston Food Bank about hunger in MA. It shows that showed 45% of Suffolk County residents were food insecure, and the Boston Globe produced a long article about the report. The CEO of GBFB was also a guest on Dan Rea’s Nightside this week - check out her interview.
The other is City Hall’s annual economic performance report, which comes out the first week of every June. The report shows that while many of the City’s outlying neighborhoods have more than recovered from COVID, the downtown neighborhoods where offices - and office vacancies - are concentrated are still lagging 2019 number, and some are even moving backward.
The last few lines of the report underscore the mixed bag facing Boston’s economy - on p. 68:
Looking ahead, Boston faces both opportunities and challenges. Strong performance in the Information and Healthcare sectors points to areas of continued growth potential. However, inflationary pressures, particularly in shelter, and the uneven recovery across sectors such as Retail and commercial real estate highlight ongoing uncertainties. The long-term impact of remote work, evolving mobility patterns, and recent declines in employment and output in Professional Services could affect Boston's economic trajectory in the years to come.
Perhaps the most telling indicator for the state of Boston’s economy: while Mayor Wu touted the release of this report last year with press outreach and a stand alone web page on the City’s website, this year the report was published without fanfare. Check out the coverage of last year’s report in the Boston Globe, Boston Herald, and WBUR.
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