Boston activists fight racist school plan

A new coalition of parents, teachers, students and community activists has come together in Boston to defend the right to equal, quality education for the city’s African-American, Latino/a and Asian communities. The Coalition for Equal, Quality Education came together in response to plans by the school department to change Boston’s student assignment plan in a way that would reduce community access to the best educational resources.

The measure, which would increase the number of transportation zones in the city from three large zones to five smaller ones, was proposed as part of the school department’s money-slashing 2009 budget proposal.

Because of strong community opposition during hearings on the budget, this part of the proposal was stripped out when the School Committee voted on it at the end of March. The superintendent is scheduled to present a revised version of the plan to the School Committee on April 29, and hold hearings on it leading up to a vote on June 24, after school is closed for the year.

The coalition is calling on students, parents, teachers and community activists to come together in a Community Summit on May 14 at Roxbury Community College Student Center to find out the facts and to plan mass action to stop the racist plan.

Coalition activists are distributing leaflets to inform the community that the school department’s proposed student assignment plan will result in resegregating the schools and promoting inequality. It points out the plan’s effects will include limited school choices for parents and students; decreased access to high-performing schools in Roxbury, Mattapan and Dorchester; and denial of access to specific cultural programs critical to students’ needs. English language programs and special education services will continue to be underserved, along with decreased opportunities to eliminate the “Achievement/Opportunity Gap.”

The new Coalition for Equal, Quality Education includes the Black Educators’ Alliance of Massachusetts; Work-4-Quality Schools, Fight-4-Equity; United Steel Workers Local 8751, the Boston School Bus Union; Boston City Councilors Chuck Turner, Charles Yancey and Sam Yoon; New England Human Rights for Haiti; Community Change; Union of Minority Neighborhoods; Minister Don Mohammed; Bishop Filipe Teixeira OFSJC; Women’s Fightback Network; Bail Out the People Movement; Boston Parents Organizing Network; The Powerful Students from CASH (Community Academy of Science and Health) and the youth organization Fight Imperialism, Stand Together (FIST).

When Mayor Thomas Menino and his appointed school committee attempted to dismantle desegregation with a plan for a racist return to “neighborhood schools” in 2004, a similar community coalition organized and succeeded in stopping it. Menino pushed it again last year in his State of the City address, and has charged the new African-American superintendent of schools, Dr. Carol Johnson, with the task of making it happen.

Back in 1974, Menino was a leader of the racist “anti-busing” movement that sought to stop the African-American community’s access to equal quality education. Racist mobs threw rocks and attacked school children on buses. A national march against racism in Boston—25,000 strong—took place on Dec. 14, 1974, and turned back the racist tide.

For more information on the May 14 Community Summit, or to get involved with the Coalition for Equal, Quality Education, call 617-756-3657.