ON SUNDAY, the doors of Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, the New England Aquarium, and four other Boston arts and cultural institutions were flung open to welcome Boston Public Schools students and family members for free. 

It was the inaugural day of a new city initiative that Mayor Michelle Wu announced to great fanfare last month in her State of the City address. 

In her speech, Wu shared the emotional story of visiting a Chicago art museum as a child with her Taiwanese immigrant mother on a Tuesday – when admission was free – which she said made all the difference for her cash-strapped family. “And in this moment, this mom with no money and no words in this language feels like the best mom on earth because she has given her daughter the world for a day,” she said, recounting the scene. 

After months of planning and negotiations with Boston institutions, Wu announced that Boston Public Schools parents will soon be able to revel in that same feeling. 

Under the new seven-month pilot program, dubbed BPS Sundays, on the first two Sundays of every month, Boston Public Schools students and up to three family members will have free admission at the Museum of Fine Arts, the Aquarium, the Boston Children’s Museum, the Museum of Science, the Institute of Contemporary Art, and the Franklin Park Zoo. 

At an event last Friday at the Children’s Museum to celebrate its launch, Wu called the program “the clearest demonstration that we will do whatever it takes to be the very best city for families in the country.” She said the initiative reaffirms a belief that the city’s “world-leading arts and culture institutions are public infrastructure in the same way that our roads and bridges, libraries and parks, and schools are,” and they “belong to all of our residents, especially our young people.” 

But the free admission program doesn’t apply to all young people in the city. 

While the program was welcome news for the 46,000 students in the Boston Public Schools, the roughly 13,000 Boston students who attend public charter schools are out of luck, as they aren’t included. Neither are the 2,800 Boston students who attend suburban school districts through the METCO program. 

“It is really disappointing that it’s not an option for enriching our students’ lives,” said Nicole Mack, the executive director of the Conservatory Lab Charter School, a pre-K to 8th grade school in Dorchester that includes music study as part of its curriculum for all students. “I’ve actually had to speak to a few families who were excited about this opportunity and was the one who had to share that, unfortunately, that was not an opportunity for their children.” 

Mack said it was particularly disappointing because the district schools and charters, which are publicly funded but independently operated, serve similar families, many of which would struggle to pay admission fees at the participating institutions.  

For a family of two adults and two children under 11, the regular admission cost at the Aquarium is $118.

Of the Conservatory Lab school’s 450 students, 72 percent come from low-income households, slightly higher than the 70 percent figure for the Boston Public Schools. 

The mayor’s office declined a request to speak with Wu about the program, and did not provide an explanation of why charter students weren’t included in the effort. 

The program is considered a pilot, and is currently scheduled to run until August. City officials estimate it will cost $1 million, with $300,000 coming from federal pandemic relief funds designated for arts programming. The balance is coming from philanthropic donors, including the Barr Foundation, Highland Street Foundation, Jim and Cathy Stone, Barbara and Amos Hostetter, and Amazon’s charitable foundation. 

There has long been tension between Boston’s district public schools and charter schools, chiefly driven by criticism that charters were “draining” money from the district because public dollars flow with students under the state’s per-pupil funding formula. Nearly 15 years ago, however, Boston leaders came together in an effort to tamp down the tension. 

Then-Mayor Tom Menino and Boston charter school leaders signed a “compact” pledging a new day of cooperation. Under the agreement, charter leaders vowed to increase their outreach to enroll more English language learners and special needs students, while the district agreed to consider leasing surplus buildings to charters. Beyond those specifics, however, the compact signaled a new willingness of city and charter leaders to view students in all publicly-funded schools in Boston as their shared concern. 

In that spirit, Mack said she hopes the new museum program is expanded over time. “I’m hoping this pilot grows quickly to include all public school students in the city of Boston,” she said.