Weekly Transcript Round-Up for 7/11/25

Council's sharply disagrees over City Hall oversight, internal process, July 4th resolution; School Cmte loses a member but no word on replacement, grades Skipper "proficient" with little data

This week marks Boston’s City Council and School Committee first meeting of the new fiscal year. Both meetings saw important issues discussed, but the Council was where most of the action happened. Sharp disagreements over several different issues in the Council Chamber spilled out onto social media on Wednesday and Thursday, as Councilors posted statements on social media criticizing their colleagues & responding to that criticism with varying amounts of specificity:

• The Council’s first sharp disagreement was over Docket #1274, a citizens petition to add a non-binding question asking voters about creating an Inspector General to the November 2025 ballot, an issue that Councilor At-Large Julia Mejia has championed and been working on since 2024. Despite Mejia’s plea for support, the Council soundly rejected the question, in a 3 to 9 vote that showed an unusual split on the Council - the debate starts at the 38:31 mark & ends at the 56:03 mark in the transcript.

• The Council’s second sharp disagreement was over Docket #1258, a $1.2M grant for environment resiliency work on South Boston’s Moakley Park, which the responsible Committee Chair, District 1 Councilor Gabriela Coletta Zapata, attempted to move forward without a hearing - she is Speaker 13 & starts at 1:18:33. District 2 Councilor Ed Flynn objected to that move - he is Speaker 8 & starts at 1:21:28 - forcing the Docket to a committee and prompting dueling statements on social media from first Coletta Zapata & then Flynn.

• The Council’s third sharp disagreement was over Docket #1379, which is titled in the agenda, “Resolution for July 4, 2025, in support of democracy and calling for a return to the constitutional principles that are the foundation of this republic.” This resolution was blocked by Councilor Flynn, which prompted statements posted to social media from the docket’s sponsors District 5 Councilor Enrique Pepen and District 6 Ben Weber - the debate starts at the 3:33:29 mark & ends at the 3:45:29 mark.

• Wednesday night’s School Committee meeting was School Committee Member (SCM) Chantal Lima Barbosa’s final meeting, which appears to create the first ‘open’ SC seat for Mayor Wu on the 7 member panel, and the first mid-term resignations since 2 SCMs resigned in 2021 over sending racially charged texts. There was no word at Wednesday’s meeting about the timeline for appointing a replacement for Lima Barbosa, whose term was set to expire January 3, 2028, but whenever that starts the attention will be on the School Committee Nominating Panel, a board composed of representatives from various business and civic groups, along with the Mayor, whose membership is above. One thing to watch for: there is widespread support for an elected school committee among Boston voters and City Council members, so the Council may make an effort to get involved in filling this vacancy.

• The School Committee voted unanimously to approve the Superintendent’s Evaluation for the 2024-2025 school year, but a number of voices noted how little data was used to make that decision. SCM Brandon Cardet Hernandez gave a short statement about it at the meeting - he is Speaker 3 & starts at the 1:04:53 mark of the transcript - and the Last Night at School Committee hosts noted how little data School Committee members used to make that determination - the debate starts at the 1:01:09 mark & ends at the 1:10:27 mark in the transcript:

Here at the Shah Foundation, we decided to conduct our own analysis of the committee members’ evaluations, and we found a few notable pieces of data. First, across 48 written pages and more than 9,000 words of evaluation on the four standards, there were fewer than 50 data points cited. Second, two of the members did not cite a single specific number in their evaluation of the superintendent's performance. Third, just two members used more than 10 specific data points. Clearly, quantifiable data is not a crucial aspect of the members’ evaluation process.

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