Boston Mayor Michelle Wu will move one of the city's elite exam schools into a newly rebuilt facility and expand the city's vocational high school in its place as part of a wider plan to rebuild and renovate schools in the city.
The plan will move the O'Bryant School of Math and Science out of its current home in Roxbury, next door to the Madison Park vocational school, relocating it to the West Roxbury Educational Complex four miles southwest. Wu said the O'Bryant school would receive a new and bigger campus, and Madison Park will undergo renovations at a cost of $18 million. Wu did not elaborate on how the money would be divided between the two schools.
“What is before our young people shouldn't depend on which school they attend or what building they've been enrolled at,” Wu said at a Tuesday press conference at City Hall. “The school's physical environment should reflect our academic one, spaces designed to nurture big ideas, not confine them.”
The West Roxbury Educational Complex was previously home to two high schools: the Urban Science Academy and West Roxbury Academy. Former Boston Mayor Marty Walsh shuttered the school there despite outcry from parents and students, and it has sat empty for five years since then.
Wu said the O'Bryant high school has no room to expand at its current location, which means it hasn’t been able to enroll as many students as the city’s two other exam schools, the Boston Latin Academy and the Boston Latin School.
By moving to the complex, the O’Bryant could accept 400 more students, bringing its population up to 2,000 students and expanding its seventh and eighth grade classes. Wu said the brand new building could offer expanded programming in biomedical science, engineering and computer science, as well as state-of-the-art labs and facilities.
The change would give "more young people the opportunity to learn in this wonderful community,” Wu said.
Wu said the city will offer shuttles to the school for students from various Boston neighborhoods. In a nod to the city's significant busing problems getting students to school on time or at all, Wu said her team is already working on options.
“That means ensuring that transportation will not be a barrier to reaching this one of a kind campus, no matter where you live in the city," she said.
Programming at Madison Park vocational school will also expand into the former O'Bryant space. Wu said that the vocational school will add new career technical education programs, like environmental sciences, robotics, biotech and early childhood education.
Officials said construction at both Madison Park and the West Roxbury complex should begin in early 2025.
