Families, alumni and staff at the O’Bryant School of Math & Science came out in force at the first community meeting regarding the district’s proposal to move to West Roxbury.
“This currently is the only option in terms of size that can actually, not only hold the amount of students and the amount of programming for a school the size of O’Bryant,” BPS Chief of Capital Planning Delavern Stanislaus said at the meeting, which took place virtually from 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday. “But also support by expanding seventh and eighth grades and expand the school to an additional 400 students.”
The community meeting is the first since BPS Superintendent Mary Skipper and Mayor Michelle Wu announced a proposal to move the O’Bryant school, which shares a campus with Madison Park Vocational Technical High School in Roxbury, about 7 miles to a vacant West Roxbury Education Complex.
The officials argued the proposal, which they estimate would open in 2027 at the earliest, would remove the school’s space constraints and offer students new athletic, lab and other facilities.
Since the announcement families and staff have raised major concerns about the district’s transparency around the move, as well as transportation, student diversity and other logistics of the plan.
“I think that there are alternatives to this proposal that the district is not presenting,” said O’Bryant teacher Aparna Lakshmi, calling on people to attend a Boston Planning and Development Agency meeting discussing use of a lot in Roxbury on Wednesday.
Stanislaus contended that the other site was half the size of the current O’Bryant space, maintaining that other options were vetted and the West Roxbury location best fit the school’s needs.
District officials previously said the move to West Roxbury would come with extra shuttle buses for students and discussed use of the commuter rail to minimize the transportation burden. Stanislaus also mentioned that some students’ commutes would be shorter on the shuttles.
“Why move the most diverse of the exam schools to a location that’s not diverse and does not have access to public transportation?” said an O’Bryant mother logged in under the name Chanel. “Every year there’s issues regarding transportation with BPS, and yet we’re supposed to be dependent on you all for shuttles, which don’t include stops in Roxbury, Dorchester and Mattapan?”
Speakers emphasized the greatly valued diversity of the school and how central the current Roxbury location is, broadly calling on BPS officials to keep exploring options.
In a WGBH interview earlier in the day, Mayor Wu addressed the transparency concerns around the process and noted that the “bottom line” is that the city is committed to getting the schools more space.
“We had not fully opened up the formal community process and conversation until bringing it to the public all at once through the press conference to be able to get it out to people all at the same time,” Wu said.
The West Roxbury proposal must come before a school committee vote before moving forward, district officials said Tuesday.
The district will continue to host and reach out about O’Bryant community meetings ahead of the vote, officials said, and host alumni meetings to discuss the new facility starting next month, which alumni can sign up for by emailing ebrown5@bostonpublicschools.org.