City councilors continued to vent concerning the present interim management of the Boston Public Schools as they once more pushed off a listening to about security plans in a district that’s seen reviews of incidents rise.
“I was disappointed that the interim superintendent did not show up. I thought it was disrespectful, in my opinion,” City Council President Ed Flynn stated in a listening to Monday morning. “As the city council president, I do expect when a city official is invited to present information to the city council and to the public, I do expect that they will be here.”
Monday’s very temporary council occasion was a public security committee listening to about faculty security, a sizzling subject final educational 12 months and now into this one.
This was a continuation of final week’s listening to through which a number of councilors fumed that the Acting Superintendent Drew Echelson didn’t present up as they’d requested, and as an alternative despatched some underlings.
That’s what Flynn was referring to, with City Councilor Michael Flaherty, the general public security chair, and City Councilor Erin Murphy, who’d filed the listening to order, expressing comparable sentiments within the unique listening to on Thursday.
“He is the acting superintendent – he should be here,” Flaherty had stated on Thursday about Echelson, who’s bridging the hole between former Superintendent Brenda Cassellius, who departed on the finish of June, and Mary Skipper, who begins this coming Monday, Sept. 26. “If he needs a ride, we have a city messenger — I’m happy to lend him my car.”
Flaherty within the Thursday listening to additionally chastised the district for sending staffers who centered on different areas relatively than the safety-response matters the listening to was statedly about. On Monday, although, Flaherty took a extra conciliatory tone with new faculties chief of workers Rochelle Nwosu, who confirmed as much as ask for the listening to to be postpone so Skipper herself may come and discuss faculty security.
Flaherty talked concerning the “calamity of errors” that got here final 12 months with muddled responses and typically no 911 calls after violent incidents, however he stated of Skipper, “I appreciate the new superintendent’s commitment to public safety and the willingness to work with the council moving forward.”
Nwosu, who informed councilors she began final month, was a former BPS instructor who most lately was a principal at a dual-language faculty in Waltham.
“I speak for Acting Superintendent Echelson and incoming Superintendent Skipper when I say that there is nothing more important to us than the safety of our students — their health, their safety and overall well-being is what really makes our schools run,” she informed the council.
Flaherty gaveled the assembly out, and inside a few hours the committee had scheduled one other listening to for Oct. 18, after Skipper has a few weeks below her belt.
The district had a sequence of high-profile incidents final 12 months, together with lecturers being attacked, weapons present in faculties and varied assaults. Flaherty and Murphy, studying off stats, stated there have been 1,925 reported incidents within the faculties final 12 months, bullying reviews have been up from 243 to 440 a 12 months since 2018 and reported sexual assaults up from 439 to 744.
Some sparks flew on the listening to final Thursday even with out Echelson there. City Councilors Kendra Lara and Julia Mejia pushed again on audio system who have been advocating for utilizing steel detectors and having extra police presence in faculties.
The Rev. David Searles of the group Save Our Schools referred to as the state of affairs final 12 months “an unresolved school safety crisis that needs a comprehensive plan” as he referred to as for varied steps, together with extra early intervention and steel detectors in faculties.
Of the feedback from Searles and others, which Lara characterised as “some of it helpful, most of it not,” she stated that the district should “not continue to endanger our students by bringing the police state into our art classes.”
Source: www.bostonherald.com”