A mix of nerves and excitement filled the air Thursday morning outside Lee Elementary School in Dorchester as the Boston Public School system welcomed students back for the new year.
“I’m terrified, I’m shivering, but I’m excited to see new people,” Irelis Dominguez, a fifth grader, said as she stood outside the building before the opening bell. “The only things I’m not ready for is when I walk in that classroom, people are turning their heads looking at me.”
Superintendent Mary Skipper joined Boston City Council president Ruthzee Louijeune, Mayor Michelle Wu and new Boston Teachers Union president Erik Berg to greet students outside the school building on the sunny and seasonably warm day.
They high-fived new students and waved as the K-8 school’s roughly 500 students walked into the building for the first time this school year. Louijeune said she enjoys the first day of school tradition of city leaders handing out pencils, even if kids are doing more work digitally these days.
“I love being here and handing out these objects,” said Louijeune, referring to the handful of pencils she was carrying. “Pencils are maybe not what they are using so much.”
The state’s largest school district will enroll 50,600 students this year based on a preliminary count. The first day of school for grades 1 through 12 is Thursday, while pre-K and kindergarten students will start school on Monday.
But despite the positive first-day energy, the tragedy of another school shooting — this time, at a high school outside Atlanta in which a 14-year-old student is accused of killing two students and two teachers and injuring nine others — weighed on educators.
“As an educator, as a parent, as a human, it’s highly, highly disturbing and certainly something that is unfortunately kind of not far off the front of my mind always,” said Lee Elementary Principal Paul Kennedy.
Kennedy added he’s very happy to see kids “face to face” on the first day of school and is eager to continue making sure students “feel safe and supported” and “families feel engaged and welcome.”
Other Boston city officials addressed the Georgia school shooting during first day remarks.
“It’s really, we know, building relationships with kids, and making sure that we’re attending to mental health needs that can prevent these tragedies,” Skipper said. The superintendent said the district has been investing in mental health supports, such as posting more social workers to school sites and ensuring safety specialists are trained in detecting red flags.
“Over the summer, we worked very hard … to ensure that students could be engaged,” she said. “We know that the students most at risk of these kinds of behaviors tend to be those that do not feel a place in the school system. They feel disengaged. They do not feel connected.”
Bus delays and no new teacher contract
The first day back for Boston students featured its share of usual challenges, namely, buses arriving to school on time, although officials said they’re optimistic a fully-staffed bus driver force and new bus tracking app for parents and drivers will improve things.
Most of the Lee Elementary K-8-bound school buses arrived after the school’s 7:30 a.m. start time. One group of buses was just four minutes late. But another set of buses came in 20 to 30 minutes after the morning bell.
About 22,000 kids rely on school bus transportation in BPS. This year, more than 740 bus drivers and 750 monitors are on hand to bring students to class. The school bus system is starting the year fully staffed, Skipper said at an Aug. 28 school committee meeting.
BPS is debuting a new bus tracking app, called “Zum,” that promises to give parents a better idea of where their child’s school bus is at any time. It will also provide drivers directions for their routes.
The new technology is one of many steps officials have taken to try and improve on-time arrival of district transportation services. The school system is under a state mandate to raise the on-time arrival rates to 95%. BPS ended last year at 90% on-time arrivals for morning drop-off.
“Some of these things will start to smooth out over the next day or two as the bus drivers get more accustomed to the routes,” Skipper said Wednesday about on-time bus arrivals.
Another challenge this year is the fact that teachers are working without a new contract. The Boston Teachers Union’ 2021-2024 contract expired in August and despite 19 bargaining sessions since the start of negotiations in late February, no deal has been reached.
The Boston Teachers Union has 10,000 members, including teachers, school psychologists, guidance counselors and other instructors. This year, 95% of teaching positions are filled
while 83% of paraprofessional roles are filled, according to Skipper.
Erik Berg, BTU president, told WBUR on Thursday the two biggest contract sticking points right now are wage increases for paraprofessionals — some make less than $30,000 a year, he said — and the BPS practice of having a single teacher perform roles of both a general ed and special education teacher.
He said the union is pushing to ensure that the district’s highest-needs students who require special supports receive instruction from an additional specialized teacher, rather than relying on just one dual-certified classroom teacher. “It’s what students deserve and we think it’s best for our school system as well,” he said.
Madison Kronheim is in her fourth year at Lee Elementary serving as an applied behavioral analysis teacher for grades 4 and 5. She said the impasse over a new contract is “very frustrating.”
“It’s hard to stay excited about the school year when you’re going into it without a contract and knowing that a lot of things that are going to be a safe place to keep our kids, you know, doing well this year are not in place,” she said.
Nevertheless, “I think it’s going to be a great year. I have high hopes,” Kronheim said. She added she’s most looking forward to “building good, positive relationships with the kids.”
“I feel especially with our kids with autism, things can be a little rigid or they can be kind of misunderstood,” Kronheim said. “I want to kind of continue to connect with the kids, build these relationships to let them know they’re in a safe place.”
Reflections at newly merged Shaw-Taylor Elementary
Over at the newly merged Shaw-Taylor Elementary school in Dorchester, parents and students were adjusting to a new normal. This will be the first year the two schools will operate as one: kindergarten and first grade will be at the Pauline A. Shaw building on Norfolk Street and grades two through six will be at the Charles H. Taylor School on Morton Street.
The schools’ merger was approved in the spring of 2023. Families who opposed the merger feared the tight-knit community of the Shaw would fracture.
School officials, however, said merging the schools was necessary to adjust to declining enrollment and to make way for new state-of-the-art buildings. The other merger on deck is between the Philbrick and Sumner schools, which is scheduled to start in fall 2025.
Nicole Anderson, a parent whose sons are in fourth and sixth grades, said she was excited about the Shaw-Taylor school merger. Anderson said her sons have been bullied in the past and she hopes adding in new students would be beneficial. “Hopefully, [the merger] brings in different teachers and different kids so they can make different friends,” she said.
Several families interviewed outside the Taylor school building on Thursday spoke less about their preoccupations with the school merger than about their kids’ well-being and school bus transportation.
Aleisha Conille, whose daughter is going into the third grade at Shaw-Taylor, was worried about the afternoon commute.
“The morning bus typically gets here with zero issues,” she said. But the afternoon bus is her biggest frustration. “Sometimes it’s delayed up until like an hour and a half and it’s tough, you know, coming out of work, having a toddler and everything else that’s going on.”
Conille is mostly hoping for better communication and accurate tracking this year. She says she hasn’t signed up for the new school bus tracking app, Zūm, yet but is open to it.
“I’ll give it a go I guess,” she said.
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
