The challenge facing Boston’s public schools is stark: Years of declining enrollment have left the city with more school buildings than it needs.
Administrators argue they must consolidate children into fewer, larger schools to better serve them. Meanwhile, the district relies largely on aging buildings erected before World War II, many in poor condition and designed without cafeterias, gyms, auditoriums, or science labs.
That means as the district has closed schools, many of the students have moved from one crumbling building with limited offerings to another.
So at the same time the city is closing schools, it must also build new schools and renovate other buildings to ensure students have access to a quality education in modern facilities. It all adds up to a massive task for Mayor Michelle Wu, who just promised to make the public education system the best urban district in the country.
Starting in 2022, shortly after she took office, Wu pledged to work toward the goal of overhauling the schools, with $2 billion dedicated to improving BPS facilities, including $605 million for 14 major school construction or renovation projects in fiscal years 2023 through 2027. Only three renovations have been completed so far, with no other projects under construction, and finishing the rest will require billions more dollars.
In a parallel process, the School Committee has approved a dozen closures and mergers since Wu took office. They have proven largely unpopular with many impacted families and educators, in part because Wu has made so little progress on the 14 major projects she announced in 2022.
“We have too many school buildings, and most of them are old,” said Will Austin, a former public school teacher, principal, and founder of Boston Schools Fund, a nonprofit working to improve BPS. “Those are just the facts, and so it is very difficult to navigate those two things at the same time.”
Martin J. Walsh, a former US labor secretary who served as Boston mayor from 2014 to 2021, said delays in school construction are not about a lack of expertise, but a lack of funds.
It can take about five years to work with the state to obtain school funding assistance, Walsh said. And Boston also has far more schools that need to be replaced or renovated compared with other districts in Massachusetts.
While mayor, Walsh spearheaded BuildBPS, which had a similar goal of building new and renovated school buildings by investing $1 billion in city and state funding.
“It’s easy to criticize from the sidelines,” Walsh said. “Of course, you want to build new schools every year. . . . It’s about the capital, and your ability to have the revenue to do it.”
The three schools that have opened since Wu took office — the Boston Arts Academy, Quincy Upper School, and Carter School — were planned or under construction already when she became mayor, thanks to efforts when Walsh was in office.
Of the 14 projects Wu prioritized in 2022, there has been no progress on eight, according to the district’s website. In two of those cases, the Otis and Blackstone schools, the state rejected requests to help pay, and the proposals were quietly shelved.
A ninth project to renovate the building that houses the Community Academy of Science and Health also appears abandoned: The school will instead close next summer, the district decided.
Three renovations have been completed: East Boston’s PJ Kennedy School, the Irving building in Roslindale, and the Edwards in Charlestown.
And two major school building construction projects are in the planning and design phase required for state funding aid: the Madison Park Technical Vocational High School, which is estimated to cost $700 million, and the Shaw-Taylor Elementary School. It will take years, likely after the end of Wu’s term, before the two projects are completed.
Building the Ruth Batson Academy at Columbia Point, which was announced after Wu’s initial list of 14 projects, is also in the planning stage.
BPS did not respond to questions about the status of the eight projects that Wu announced in 2022 and have not been updated since. The district provided a list of smaller-scale school projects, including new boilers, windows, bathrooms, doors, heat pumps, and building roofs. The district is also providing working air conditioning in 92 percent of schools, up from 32 percent in 2021.
Still, some advocates, such as Mary Tamer, a former School Committee member who served under Mayor Thomas Menino, argue that the city needs to be more aggressive in getting school projects underway and publish a detailed, long-term timeline.
The district’s current facilities program under Wu was a required part of a state improvement plan. In 2024, the state’s K-12 education department reported the city’s plan lacked specific details in some areas, including enrollment projections, and details of the size and number of buildings BPS would need in the future.
“When we’re not putting forth a comprehensive facilities plan, you are creating a level of uncertainty in the district. And that is really unfair to families and to students,” said Tamer, who leads the education policy group MassPotential.
Paul Reville, a former Massachusetts secretary of education, said the district needs more urgency in improving schools if parents are going to accept closures.
“The general strategy on behalf of the school system has got to be, there’s a value proposition for parents who are moving,” Reville said. “It’s painfully slow.”
Boston’s schools were built for a far larger district. In 1940, when many of the current facilities were new, the student population exceeded 110,000. By 2003, there were just about 61,000 students in BPS. Enrollment fell to 53,000 by 2019 and dropped to 46,500 this school year, according to state data.
There was a 30-year period when no new schools were built in Boston. That ended in 2003, with the opening of three buildings. Since then, just four more schools opened, including this fall’s opening of the Carter School, which serves students with disabilities.
Meanwhile, the latest round of closures came in December, when the School Committee approved closing Lee Academy, Community Academy of Science and Health, and Another Course to College, plus eliminating high school grades from the Henderson K-12 Inclusion School, after the 2027-2028 school year.
The closures were part of a plan the district announced in late 2023 to cull the number of school buildings from 114 in 2022-23 to 95 by 2030. Boston now operates 109 schools.
At the time, BPS rated its buildings based on the state of their facilities and other metrics, with an average building score of 38 out of 100 possible points.
Since then, the district has announced a handful of closings once a year, much to the dismay of many residents.
Hundreds of students, parents, and educators demonstrated before the December vote, arguing that they were left out of the decision-making process and that the outcome threatened to rend tight-knit school communities.
“What are you saying to our communities when you say, ‘No, we’re just going to close you,’ with no discussion?” said Jason Lambright, the parent of three children who have attended Lee Academy. “These buildings, maybe they’re not great, but maybe you can still figure out ways that you can fix and help renovate them, versus just trying to push us around.”
The Boston Teachers Union has argued BPS should commit to opening at least three new or renovated school buildings each year until all of its facilities are updated.
Erik Berg, the union president, said the union supports a bill to add funding to the Massachusetts School Building Authority, which distributes state funds to help support school projects. The bill would prioritize districts with buildings with high needs.
“There are definitely some projects happening that are making a difference,” Berg said. “But the unmet need after decades of deferred maintenance is so great that our students deserve more and faster.”
Sign in to read the full article.
Sign in with Google