EVERY BOSTON CHILD deserves access to a high-quality education. Despite years of discussion about the need to close achievement and opportunity gaps, this has been an unfulfilled promise to Boston children and their families caught in a system of “haves and have-nots” when it comes to high-quality school options. As a result, our city’s education outcomes have lagged further and further behind, enrollment is historically low, and families are frequently pitted against each other for access to a high-quality education for their child. And while the ongoing pandemic did not create these problems, it has exacerbated them, with profound impacts on student learning and student mental health. 

The way forward to delivering high-quality education does not have to tread in the path of previous mayoral administrations. Past efforts have largely worked around the margins, yet such efforts don’t change the reality that most of Boston’s students — the majority of whom are Black and Latino — do not reliably have access to high-quality schools from pre-K through 12th grade. It’s time for the city to forge a path forward with a more comprehensive approach that centers access to high-quality schools for every child, in every Boston neighborhood.

Our new mayor, herself a mother of BPS students, has stated her willingness to confront Boston’s “culture of no” in pursuit of transformative changes, both big and small. With education as a top-three priority among Boston’s voters in this last election cycle, the impetus for such changes within the city’s education landscape is both urgent and overdue. To that end, this new administration can seize upon three interconnected policy pathways that would signal to all Bostonians that our city values the potential of all of its children; further, Boston doesn’t have to reinvent the wheel to make progress, as several cities have engaged in similar efforts with success.

School buildings must be safe and inspiring places to learn. The foundation of school quality – and the most visible signal of our investment in children– is the condition of the physical spaces in which students learn. In Boston, our outdated facilities can neither provide the most basic assurances of health and safety nor meet the demands of present-day instructional practice. Despite the city’s $1 billion, 10-year investment in BuildBPS announced in 2015, there is more disruption than progress to show.

Boston needs a new approach to school building modernization that addresses the scope and urgency of the challenge. The city should consider centralizing planning in the mayor’s office to lead the development of a community-driven, resilient five-year school facilities master plan that provides a comprehensive, strategic vision for this critical city infrastructure. Such a plan can be made possible with increased, dedicated public and private funding for school building projects that matches the full scope of needs while maintaining fiscal health. Major cities such as Washington, DC, and New York demonstrate that with centralized city leadership, transparent community engagement, creative financing and ambitious public goal setting it is possible to modernize 10 or more buildings a year, rather than the slow approach preferred in Boston that too frequently creates winners and losers. 

High-quality school options must be more readily available. Both what and how students are taught within their schools are critical components of school quality. Our city needs more high-quality schools: those that demonstrate academic progress for all student groups and close achievement gaps for Black and Latino students, English learners, and students with disabilities. Currently, families are forced to navigate a zero-sum game for what they perceive is scarcity of high-quality options, exhibited most clearly by controversy over exam schools, pre-K enrollment, and debates over which elementary schools might get a 6th grade. 

To answer the plea of thousands of Boston families, we must place strategic focus on increasing the number of high-quality school options throughout our city. This requires more than just adding staff to every building, or increasing annual budgets: it takes city leadership to catalyze an effort to both establish a holistic definition for high-quality schools, set goals for increasing access to them over the next five years, and provide funding and support to educators to undertake school transformation and design, driven by and centered around the authentic engagement of families, students, and community stakeholders. Boston could set goals similar to those in cities such as Denver and Nashville, where each focused their communities on school options and were able to bring in resources and support necessary for educators to design the types of schools that families wanted while also giving youth access to internships, early college, the arts, dual-language, and STEM.

School enrollment must be simplified and more equitable from the start. Finding and enrolling in our city’s schools can and should be easier for families. Currently, every family must navigate a complex and decentralized myriad of options, processes, and deadlines across multiple school sectors. This puts the most vulnerable families at a disadvantage while catering to those with insider knowledge and adequate resources (time, money, and social networks). 

As we look to expand pre-K access, Boston should simultaneously redesign and simplify the pre-K enrollment system to be more accessible and equitable for families of our youngest learners. Drawing on similar policies in Washington, DC, Seattle, and Tulsa, Boston would benefit by launching its own citywide, unified, equity-centered pre-K enrollment process, as well as building a centralized information hub about all Boston school options and enrollment procedures not unlike Boston School Finder, a resource my organization, Boston Schools Fund, launched in 2017. Eventually, changes to how we enroll families at the pre-K entry point could be scaled for all grade levels.

While we recognize the many important and urgent issues competing for the mayor’s attention, the breadth and scope of issues affecting education in Boston command long-overdue action. In times of pandemic or otherwise, Boston’s children always need safe, enriching places to learn. Fixing our schools isn’t an overnight process and the city has never faced a more urgent moment to act in service of every child, in every neighborhood.

Kerry Donahue is chief strategy officer of Boston Schools Fund, a nonprofit advancing educational equity. The fund’s new education policy report, Every Child, Every Neighborhood, is now available.