The hearing will start at 4:00 pm Monday the 11th.

We hope you can tune in to see the whole hearing, but if you can’t make the beginning of the hearing you’ll still have the opportunity to testify!

Beginning at 4, the City Council will hear compelling testimony from panels featuring community leaders, parents, students, teachers and former School Committee members. Councilors will have the opportunity to make opening remarks and ask questions of the panelists. The public will also have the opportunity to offer testimony, likely beginning sometime after 5:00.

The hearing will be broadcast on City Council TV and a recording of the hearing will be available afterwards on YouTube.

Your testimony on Zoom or in writing, can be as brief as you’d like—what’s important is that your voice is heard and your opinion is counted.

Need some help getting started? We’ve included a few bullet points below that you can feel free to use and modify for your own testimony.

• I’m here to express my strong support for a fully elected school committee and to urge the Mayor and City Council to move decisively to approve a Home Rule Petition so this change can be enacted in 2022. 

• The mandate of the people in November was undeniable. Bostonians from every precinct in every neighborhood want to see an elected school committee--not a watered down hybrid version--restored without delay.

• The voters spoke loud and clear. Will you listen to them or the same small handful of special interest groups that engineered the 1991 mayoral takeover?

• Over the past 30 years, Boston voters have seen that mayoral appointments haven’t had the intended effect of creating mayoral accountability. If anything, they’ve served to shield the Mayor from accountability.

• No matter who the Mayor may be, I do not support a hybrid school committee that would dilute the power of the voter.

• Would it be acceptable for Bostonians to elect only a portion of the City Council? Why should we not be entrusted with selecting our own representatives on school committee--just like every other municipality in MA?

• Local control is the cornerstone of American public education. The people’s right to vote is often attacked through Mayoral takeovers like the one that gave us the appointed school committee in 1991 and State takeovers, as is now being threatened by the State Department of Education’s recent moves towards receivership. BOTH of these assaults on community control serve the SAME purpose and BOTH should be rejected by our elected representatives.

• I urge the Mayor to engage in detail on this issue with both the public and City Council to expedite the process of designing a new school committee structure that ensures representation and accountability--and to make this a top priority for the next three weeks to ensure the Home Rule Petition moves from City Hall to the State House in a timely manner.

• This is not just a schools issue. Having an elected school committee is fundamentally a voting rights issue—and a civil rights issue.

• I believe an elected school committee will foster greater engagement of Boston residents in our public schools.

• The restoration of democratic control over the Boston Public Schools is long overdue. Voters from every precinct in every ward in Boston demanded this change in November. In this moment of historic change, the voters’ mandate deserved respect and urgency from our city’s leaders.