‘We have no voice or vote’: Amid BPS’s struggles, a renewed call for an elected Boston School Committee - The Boston Globe
Overcome with emotion, Edna Vazquez paused for a moment to apologize to the few dozen parents and children demonstrating outside Dorchester’s Dever Elementary School, before continuing to urge them to fight the school’s proposed closure.
Boston Public Schools has eyed Dever as part of a slate of closures and mergers as a cost-savings measure. Families at the pre-K to Grade 6 school, where two-thirds of the students are Latino, said they don’t want the district to abandon Dever. Some question whether they’re being heard by the Boston School Committee and wonder whether their school would be on the chopping block if they had elected school board members to represent their interests.
“Unfortunately, we have no voice or vote,” Vazquez said in Spanish through an interpreter. “They make decisions without asking us, and this is one of the consequences of that.”
Boston Public Schools has eyed Dever as part of a slate of closures and mergers as a cost-savings measure. Families at the pre-K to Grade 6 school, where two-thirds of the students are Latino, said they don’t want the district to abandon Dever. Some question whether they’re being heard by the Boston School Committee and wonder whether their school would be on the chopping block if they had elected school board members to represent their interests.
“Unfortunately, we have no voice or vote,” Vazquez said in Spanish through an interpreter. “They make decisions without asking us, and this is one of the consequences of that.”