(melancholic piano music) - [Mr. Loconto] So if there are no more further questions, I'll entertain a motion to approve the interim superintendents recommendation to close West Roxbury Academy and Urban Science Academy effective June 30, 2019.

Ms. Sullivan, will you please call the roll?

- [Ms. Sullivan] Ms. Oliver-Dávila?

- [Ms. Oliver-Dávila] Yes.

- [Ms. Sullivan] Mr O'Neil?

- [Mr O'Neil] Yes.

- [Ms. Sullivan] Ms. Jerry Robinson?

- [Ms. Jerry] Yes.

- [Ms. Sullivan] Ms. Regina Robinson?

- [Ms. Regina] Abstain.

- [Ms. Sullivan] Dr. Coleman?

- [Dr. Coleman] Yes.

- [Ms. Sullivan] Mr. Loconto?

- [Mr. Loconto] Yes.

- [Ms. Sullivan] It's five yea's and one abstention, the motion closes.

(melancholic piano music) (birds chirping) (melancholic piano music) - I don't feel like you can find a community like ours anywhere.

We're very welcoming, it's almost unusually welcoming.

When I just moved here, it took me approximately a month or a month and a half to get used to West Roxbury.

It was a very short period of time.

I think it was because I really liked my teachers most of all, because they made me feel comfortable enough to ask them anything from day one.

(bus engine revving) - You come into the school and you feel comfortable with yourself.

Most schools, you can't do that.

I've never really been a school type of person, I just feel like school isn't for me.

Freshman year it was really crazy for me.

I was like one of the kids who just always distracted or always in trouble, always getting kicked out of school.

Right now, I have teachers who I'm very close with.

I care more about what I'm doing, I don't really get into trouble.

- Willie is 20 years old, he'll be 21 in September.

He's autistic.

He was diagnosed when he was three.

We've been at Urban Science Academy I wanna say for the last six years.

it checked off every single block.

I mean, the staff, the environment, the student body was everything a parent of a special needs student would want.

(birds chirping) - I first learned of the challenges at the West Roxbury Educational Complex within days of being appointed as interim superintendent in July of 2018.

I was notified by the commissioner of inspectional services that there were serious concerns with the safety of the building.

- The quality of construction from the 1970s when the building was built, does not seem to be what it should have been at that time.

They gave us a much longer life for this building.

Number two, I think that that the district probably did not make the best decisions for some period of time in terms of its funding allocations related to building maintenance.

- We had an emergency meeting October 15th after school.

And the superintendent was there, and so we heard that they put in repairs that would get us safely through this year.

But as of June 20th at midnight, the school was no longer safe.

Some of the people in the building were like, okay, well, if that's the case, we don't want to be unsafe, but we want you to find a space for us, we want the community to stay together.

- Keeping intact is literally that taking these kids from point A and moving them all to point B with all of the people that they've got to know, they've got to respect and they've got to trust.

- The timing was driven by the emergency of the building closure, but it's also true that these two high schools in particular had had long standing enrollment declines, also had struggled with very uneven academic performance and in some cases, true low performance.

Those were all factors in the overall weighing of, could we find other space?

Could we keep them open?

What made most sense for the students?

(melancholic piano music) - To say, we have not taken care of your building for so not long that now it is not safe and you have, your whole community has to be dissolved.

Like, that for me is a huge issue.

Like, how did this happen?

- The atmosphere at school when the district came, it was bad.

(chuckles) A lot of students were really angry, they were like almost screaming at the district.

Like, why are you doing this to us?

- There were not a lot of good choices in front of us.

To have to deal with this kind of crisis it's the hardest thing that any school system does, it's the hardest thing that any leader does and it's the hardest thing that anyone who cares deeply about education has to figure out.

- When they just said, nope, this is what we're doing, We're closing you and you're all getting dispersed, it was a shock, it was like a death And then it was okay, We gotta get our fighting shoes on, you know, and rally the troops.

And that's what we did.

(melancholic piano music) - [Man] The damage caused by the school closing is extensive and generational.

- [Woman 1] We have a moral obligation to find a path forward for WREC that does not sacrifice the present for the sake of the future.

- My children are not the problem to be solved or something to be pushed aside to make way for something bigger and better.

- Even though we repeatedly talk about how good of a community we are, you guys still focused on just numbers, numbers, and more numbers.

That's what we are to you guys.

- Because a change needs to happen, but not like this.

And it's not sitting in front of all these kids basically saying that you're giving up on them.

- [Woman 2] Right.

- [Woman 3] Yes.

- Because that's exactly what closing their school, their home, says.

(crowd clapping and cheering) - I don't think they would be closing a majority white school.

They would not be doing that.

They would probably find, and if they had to close it for like "building issues", they would probably find them another building.

(chuckles) - I don't think it's a coincidence that certain schools are being closed, while other schools are being "tweaked".

- Most of the kids in my school don't really live out in that neighborhood.

We're all from, you know, South End, Dorchester, Mattapan, Hyde Park, so maybe they're trying to kick us out the neighborhood, you know?

- We were hopeful that we would be able to find a solution that would allow the school building to remain open beyond this year.

It's important to take a pretty broad lens at what equity looks like.

One is about certainly race and in a district that has 87% students of color, then a lot of our decisions about schools are going to impact children of color.

The other is looking at the educational equity of the experience that those students are already having.

- It's not a decision that any of us relished taking, but it is the decision before us, and its the responsibility of this committee to act accordingly.

Ms. Sullivan, would you please call the roll?

- Ms. Oliver-Dávila?

- Yes.

- Mr. O'Neil?

- Yes.

- [Catarí] We really had our hopes up to save our school, to maybe win the battle.

So when I heard that vote, I, you know, it was just devastating.

- [Ms. Sullivan] It's five yea's and one abstention, the motion closes.

(crowd chattering) - The next day I went to school It was really dead.

Some teachers called out, it was like a depressing day.

(speaking foreign language) - This is the year that we should be preparing for college.

For example, me, I'm worried about my grades.

I wanna be an honor roll.

I have to study, I have to like do projects for school.

And we had to like, take a step back and pulled all of that aside just to fight for the school.

I feel like it was unfair and it was not a good thing for like any student.

- I'm afraid that, you know, when you're in a different environment, you start to act weird a little bit.

And I just hope I stay the way I am now and I don't go back to not caring.

A lot of kids are coming to school really late, a lot of kids are not going to the classes that they don't like.

They're trying to, they're kind of pushing it to the side.

- You know, it's this constant stress and turmoil that the students and the staff feel.

Everyone's dealing with it differently, but it's been a really hard year for everybody.

- I don't really think about it anymore.

I just, I guess I'm at this point in the year where I just want to finish school.

I'm up to here with school, honestly.

I'm not, I feel like this was a very overwhelming year.

We did our fight but it's just nothing we could do now anymore, so just kind of move on.

- I just want everything to be over with, you know.

The best thing ever would be my diploma in my hands and me walking across the stage.

(cars passing by) - [Molly] What do you think that they're gonna do with the land?

- (chuckles) That's a loaded question, Molly.

Well, there's always scuttlebutt.

We've heard a lot of very loud rumors that it's gonna be a police academy.

People believe it's gonna be, there's a charter school they're trying to build in West Roxbury, people have heard that they're gonna go there, people have said, oh, it's gonna be condos.

I don't know what it's gonna be, I'll be surprised if it's what they say it's gonna be.

- Our current recommendation is that it'd be another high school.

And, but I think there needs to be at least, you know, a couple of years of community conversation of where we go with that.

Not everything is a conspiracy theory, some is figuring out where, what needs to happen and what best meets the needs of our students.

- You gotta catch it.

- Yay!

You did it!

- [Mike] You know, a question that's been asked to me so many times over the years is why is it that Boston public school parents?

So I'm trusting on the school department and lately I've been going, this is another example.

You tell us one thing, and then things change.

And because thousands of us don't show up yelling and screaming and hiring lawyers, they just do it.

All right, now we're going to catch it.

- You tried.

You gotta go get it now.

- That was close!

- I cannot underscore how profoundly aware we have been at every step of how difficult and painful this decision is.

Because we still made it, doesn't mean that it wasn't hard.

(melancholic piano music) - We want great schools for our kids.

We want people to choose BPS, I believe in BPS.

I'm a product and my kids are going, and I worked there, but also just being involved and being a teacher for 20 years, you see some schools get this pot and other schools get this and it seems like it's not equitable.

Change isn't necessarily bad, but if we can find a way to not harm people as much as we harmed the people at West Roxbury Education Complex, that would be better.

There has to be a better way.

(melancholic piano music)