Wanted: More School Libraries, Science Labs And Music Teachers For Boston Public Schools

Roughly 40 percent of students in Boston Public Schools don’t have a functioning library in their school building.

That’s according to the Build-BPS Stakeholders Coalition, which includes the Black Educators' Alliance of Massachusetts and the Boston Education Justice Alliance and other groups concerned about equity in education.

More than half of students in K–8 and middle school don’t have a science lab, the coalition said, and many others in elementary and middle school don’t have a music teacher.

“It was really jarring for us,” said coalition member Rev. Willie Bodrick II, chair of the Boston Network for Black Student Achievement who also sits on the city’s Opportunity and Achievements Gaps Task Force. “We’re just trying to make sure that we’re guiding our district in the right direction so that we make sure that each and every child has access.”

Boston district officials did not respond to requests for comment. On Thursday evening, it announced that the city had its highest four-year graduation rate on record, according to data released by the state earlier in the day. The graduation rate for its four-year cohort rose to 75 percent in 2020, up from 73 percent in 2019. It said that included increases among Black, Latino and white students.

Boston Education Justice Alliance Director Ruby Reyes, said the coalition surveyed 190 of its members as well as teachers and students to get results representing 74 city schools out of about 125. The coalition said those schools enroll more than 70 percent of all BPS students. It used the survey’s findings and school population data to determine the percentage of students affected.

The coalition also characterized the results as “approximate” noting that the information was crowd-sourced and that some respondents may not be certain of the situation at their school. Reyes said the coalition also obtained a draft of a central office library staff spreadsheet showing that 40 percent of students attend schools with no library teacher or paraprofessional. The coalition also said that spreadsheet corresponds closely with its findings.

“We did the survey because we know the schools are missing core pieces,” she said. "We're accustomed to these things being missing, and we shouldn't be. Our children should not be accustomed to not having access to a library."

Reyes said some schools rely on parent funding, access to grants or volunteers to pay for libraries or other needed services, while others cannot, deepening inequities.

“We need a comprehensive budget presented to the mayor, to say this is what we actually need to get us to have a quality education for every single child, regardless of which school they go to, regardless of whether their parents can fundraise or not,” Reyes said.

The Baker administration proposed nearly $200 million to fund the Student Opportunity Act this year, which is supposed to help struggling districts. Last year, the state delayed funds promised through the act, which is supposed to offer low-income school districts or those with greater numbers of English-language learners and special education students a larger proportion of state education dollars.