Dear Neighbors,
As you may know, last week a petition was delivered to the Mayor’s Office, the Superintendent’s Office, as well as a host of other elected officials in an effort to raise awareness regarding the Eliot School’s need for additional capacity.
The next step in this rally to raise awareness about the state of public education in our neighborhood is coming up this THURSDAY, APRIL 14th. SUPPORT THE ELIOT SCHOOL PHONE CAMPAIGN. It’s up to us to let our city leaders know how important the Eliot School is to our neighborhood community.
**WHAT IS THE PHONE CAMPAIGN?
On THURSDAY, APRIL 14th, we’re asking everyone to take 5 minutes to call one (or more!) of the city offices below. The purpose of the phone campaign is to put a voice and strong numbers behind our support of the Eliot School.
**WHAT SHOULD I DO?
Make one phone call. That’s it!
**WHAT SHOULD I SAY?
You should speak from the heart about the Eliot School and what it means to your family, your neighbors and friends, and the fabric of the neighborhood.
Tell your story of how you and your child love the Eliot, or how you hope your toddler will have the chance to attend, or what your family’s plans are since your child was not admitted.
You can also speak to the fact that the Eliot is over capacity and that there is a critical and time-sensitive need to find additional space. Additionally, you can use the talking points below.
**TALKING POINTS
Why the Eliot expansion is good for the school, the students, and the community
- Neighborhood schools work. Parents are able to support neighborhood schools and become part of the school community – and help the school reach its potential.
- We want to go to a school where we can walk our children. We do not want to send our young children on long bus rides across the city when there’s a fantastic school right here in our backyard.
- We need to expand to create seats for the growing downtown families who want to stay in the city. Families don’t want to move – but will if they cannot go to their neighborhood school and cannot afford private schools.
Why does the Eliot need to expand?
- In the past few years, the Eliot School added a middle school, a Kindergarten 1 grade, and an additional strand (an additional class per grade). The result is 320 students (and growing every year) in a school without the capacity.
- The Eliot has been forced to cut its library, computer lab, music classes and other key enhancement programs to accommodate the additional students.
- The Mayor and Superintendent have committed to expanding schools and programs that have demonstrated success. The Eliot School has the most improved MCAS scores in the entire district in 2009 and has been highlighted by national and local media and the Superintendent and Mayor as a success story. The Mayor and the Superintendent need to fulfill their promise by expand the hugely successful Eliot.
- The North End is the ONLY Boston neighborhood (outside of Fenway) to have only ONE K-8 public school. The average number of public schools per Boston neighborhood is 6, with some neighborhoods hosting upwards of 12 to 21 K-8 schools.
- 120 middle schoolers share 1 toilet! That 1 toilet is used by both boys and girls.
Where could the Eliot expand?
- The North Bennett Street School is interested in purchasing the vacant and adjoining City of Boston Print Building and former District A Police Station (on North Street) and proposed a straight trade with the City, giving the existing 4 NBSS buildings to the City of Boston for the Eliot School use. According to NBSS, the current NBSS buildings are assessed at a value of $1 million more than the Print and Police buildings.
**WHO SHOULD I CALL?
Martha Pierce, Education Advisor to the Mayor: 617-635-4476
Tim Nicolette, Chief of Staff to BPS Superintendent: 617-635-9055
Please email me if you plan to make a call on Thursday. We’d like to have a count of how many phone calls will be made on this important issue.
THANK YOU!!
Best,
Jen Bowen Flynn
(Mum of Sawyer, age 4)
jbowenflynn@yahoo.com
There is no RFP for the printing building. There is no guarantee that the NBSS will get the buildings when there is an RFP. There are real estate developers who want to build condos or boutique hotels and restaurant owners who want the space for a garage for their businesses. Having the NBSS get the printing building and consolidating its programs back in the North End would be great. Having the ES purchase the NBSS properties would be great. Having the city swap with the NBSS would be great. Expanding the ES would be great. But it sure seems like the cart is being put before the proverbial horse here and it could push the financial types in the city to look for someone with cash to buy property and develop it to generate additional tax revenues for the city.