To Bus or Not?

Boston Public Schools wants to save money by reducing the amount of busing that happens. To do this, they plan to have more, smaller school zones and remove the city-wide status of two of their most popular schools (Hernandez K-8 and Timility Middle). As part of this plan, they are proposing to stop busing charter school students outside of their BPS zones. This would effectively limit the reach of Boston charter elementary and middle schools by taking away transportation to those students that live outside the zone in which the school exists. There's a piece in today's Globe that discusses the pros and cons of this proposal.

Menino Grands at Boston Collegiate?

This website purports to have information that Mayor Menino's grandchildren received a lottery spots for Boston Collegiate. I have no idea how reliable this information is, especially given the anti-Menino slant of the site, but it's interesting that they chose a non-BPS option for their kids after having them in BPS for elementary school. It'll be interesting to see if they use BCCS as a bridge to the exam schools.

Codman College Speed Dating

Almost 2 months since Codman Academy's last flashy piece in the Globe, they're back. This time the article is about an event in which colleges and Codman juniors try to learn more about one another using the principles of speed dating. It's an interesting concept.

This is Codman's fourth Globe article of the year. You can check out their PR record here.

KIPP Wants In

In an op-ed in Friday's Globe, Scott Lehigh reported on an event at the Boston Foundation at which KIPP CEO Richard Barth was the keynote speaker. Barth discussed KIPP's interest in expanding to Boston and its inability to do so because of the 9% charter cap. Lehigh posited that the potential of Boston KIPP schools should motivate local politicos to lift the cap. I doubt this is how our local pols think.

Lehigh's overall view is that the cap should be lifted and KIPP should be welcome here in Boston. I wholeheartedly agree. But he sets KIPP up as saviors for both charter school expansion and for the kids of Boston. It's a shame that he doesn't include in his argument the successful charter schools here in Boston that are itching to serve more kids and can't because of the cap. You would think that Bostonian politicians would be more inspired by local kids' exceptional success at schools like Excel or Roxbury Prep than the results of kids in other states.

Michael Goldstein "Goes Wild" of MATCH says that the risk of losing federal "Rae to the Top" money is a much better motivator and that changing the cap will allow local success stories to expand. He's probably right. Money trumps all.