Boston City Council approves shift to elected school committee despite Wu’s opposition

A day after Boston Mayor Michelle Wu reiterated her reluctance to reinstate an elected school committee, the City Council voted 7 to 5 Wednesday to put the measure on her desk.

The move puts Wu at odds with a majority of the council as she enters the second year of her four-year term.

A spokesman for Wu said the mayor will review the council's action. In an appearance on GBH News’ Boston Public Radio earlier this week, Wu said the school system’s many challenges and looming state oversight of multiple aspects of its inner workings are discouraging her from taking up the change.

The council’s plan would eventually strip the mayor’s power to appoint school committee members. The current committee would be replaced by a fully elected, 13-member body over two local election cycles. The first year would allow the mayor to make four appointments, then withdraw the power totally in the following municipal election.

The council also approved a separate home-rule petition that would empower student school committee members to vote.

The proposal’s narrow approval margin also underscored tension on the fractured City Council, despite the fact that changing the Boston Public Schools governance structure received nearly 80% support from Boston voters in 2021 — a point that the measure’s chief shepherd, Ricardo Arroyo, noted in floor remarks.

By contrast, Wu won the mayoralty with 64% of the voters.

“Frankly, and this is not an indictment on our mayor — who has been vocal about her opposition to this,” Arroyo said. “But I simply think that the idea that in a city where we have a strong mayoral system ... that [the mayor] can essentially replace a school committee, or not have a school committee as a check from the people ... has proven to not work.”

“I see this as in line with the will of our constituents, the will of our voters to have control of our school committee returned to them,” Arroyo added.

Other councilors who voted in favor of an elected committee framed the issue as one of voting rights and racial justice.

“When Black and brown people in the City of Boston were being shut out from being a part of their municipal government, the elected school committee was really a place where they could go to have their needs and their voices and their concerns heard,” said Councilor Kendra Lara, espousing a popularly held view that the appointed system was a move to disenfranchise voters of color.

“I think that voting for a return to an elected school committee is not only a racial justice issue, specifically for Latino communities who make up the majority of the Boston Public Schools’ students, but it’s also an issue of equity," Lara said.

The council’s vote fell largely along racial lines, though Councilor Brian Worrell, a swing vote and the body’s only Black male member, sided with the council’s typically centrist bloc — Councilors Frank Baker, Michael Flaherty, Ed Flynn and Erin Murphy — against its passage.

Worrell made no comments on the council floor, but said in a statement later that a hybrid model “is critical to ensure that the school committee includes the diversity and expertise” necessary to serve the school district.

Councilor Kenzie Bok, another swing vote, expressed reluctance to approve a fully elected committee and to pursue the issue via home-rule petition, which must have the mayor’s support to move beyond city lawmakers up to Beacon Hill. She ultimately voted “present.”

“Whereas regular ordinances can be passed over the mayor’s objection with a two-thirds majority, home-rule petitions cannot. Which means that a home-rule petition that doesn’t have the consent of the mayor, no matter how many votes it gets in this council, will not proceed to the Legislature,” Bok said.

At-Large Councilor Julia Mejia suggested Bok’s move was a missed opportunity to signal political pressure, both to the mayor and the state Legislature.

“I really do appreciate the notion that things usually go to die in the State House, but this is one of those opportunities that we have to show what is possible,” Mejia said. “At the end of the day, we were all elected, including the mayor, to represent the people. ... This is not a moment to cop out. This is a moment to rise up and say, ‘Let’s deliver.’”

Council President Flynn, a “no” vote, echoed the Wu administration’s rationale that Boston Public Schools is currently facing multiple challenges and does not need the added stress of transitioning its governance structure.

“Now is not the time to make a major change in the governance of our public school system. Mayor Wu and [BPS Superintendent Mary] Skipper deserve a chance to show us what they can do,” Flynn said. “I think there needs to be a strong and powerful role for the mayor and that’s about accountability in our school committee structure.”

Others, like Baker, said political power is best limited to a select few.

“Everybody shouldn’t have a seat at the table — that’s why we pay people, that’s why we have committees [and] commissions,” he said, explaining his preference for a smaller, hybrid school committee.

The council debated the issue, including an ultimately failed amendment from At-Large Councilor Michael Flaherty to shrink the proposed body from 13 members down to 7, for about an hour.