Bye-bye commercial real estate lending | Battling to keep Massachusetts schools accountable | Not listening to parents at BPS |
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For Wu administration, big wakeup call on BPS: Worried about safety, parents support bringing in police, metal detectors, new survey finds
Concern over violence in Boston schools has reached the boiling point, with students caught with everything from guns to a meat cleaver and a taser in one case.
Yet Boston Mayor Michelle Wu has adamantly opposed to calls to once again station police officers in schools and roll out more metal detectors as well.
While Wu’s stance may earn her plaudits among activists, it is not apparently doing her any favors among parents with students in the Boston Public Schools system, according to new polling data reviewed by Contrarian Boston.
Three quarters of BPS parents either strongly or somewhat support bringing police officers back into city schools, with roughly the same number supporting the installation of more metal detectors, according to a survey by MassINC Polling Group.
Support for the two measures was strongest among Black, Latino and Asian parents, who were significantly more likely than White parents to say they were very or somewhat worried about the physical safety of their children while they are at school, the survey finds.
The percentage of parents saying they are somewhat or very dissatisfied with the BPS system has more than doubled to 25 percent since August, 2021, mostly under Wu’s watch.
Wu’s approach to school safety, far from winning over parents, appears to be alienating them.
And if that is not reason enough for a course correction, well then we don’t know what is.
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Credit crunch alert: Bank favored by local developers savaged by industry turmoil
That would be San Francisco-based First Republic, which built a thriving business lending to Boston-area developers and wealthy home buyers.
The bank released its first quarter financials on Monday, and they were downright hideous, triggering a 20 percent drop the value of First Republic’s shares in after-hours trading.
First Republic lost $100 billion in deposits during the first quarter in the wake of the collapse of the now notorious Silicon Valley Bank.
And First Republic would very likely have joined SVB in the graveyard of defunct financial institutions but for the $30 billion rescue effort mounted by banking giants like State Street.
Now the bank is clearly in survival mode, with plans to jettison office space and lay off as much 25 percent of its employees in the months ahead, according to Reuters.
Just like that, a major source of commercial real estate lending, in the Boston area and other cities as well, has all but closed up shop.
The result is likely to be more projects stuck on the drawing boards in Boston and in the suburbs as well.
Finally, some pushback: New coalition forms to save the MCAS as teachers’ union ramps up attacks
By David Mancuso
The system of standardized testing used for decades now in Massachusetts schools faces an uncertain future as the state’s powerful teachers union ramps up a lobbying blitz aimed at scrapping the MCAS.
But a newly minted coalition of business and education groups on Monday launched a campaign to save the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System, which has been credited with transforming the Bay State from an educational laggard to national leader.
In an opening move, Voices for Academic Equity released a report touting the importance of MCAS in casting a “spotlight on student outcome disparities, which allows Massachusetts to face the difficult reality of persistent achievement and opportunity gaps.”
The group, whose formidable roster includes Democrats for Education Reform Massachusetts, the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education, and Teach for America Massachusetts, faces an equally formidable opponent in the Massachusetts Teachers Association.
The teachers union has spent years railing against the MCAS as “destructive and punitive,” and a misuse of education dollars - objections that go all the way back to the Massachusetts Education Reform Act of 1993 which implemented the test.
Fresh off a big win - having spent millions last fall in a successful campaign to pass the millionaire’s tax - the MTA is now ramping up efforts once again to kill the test.
However, Voices for Academic Equity isn’t just launching a blind defense of the MCAS.
Rather, the group, which also includes The Boston Schools Fund, The Education Trust Massachusetts, and the Teachers’ Lounge, Massachusetts, among others, is also calling for changes to improve the three decade old assessment system.
The report calls for getting the test results out sooner to families and educators. Other recommendations include making MCAS results more actionable, both to improve classroom instruction and prepare students for life and careers.