Boston Council Panel Scrutinizes School Committee Nominating Process, Stipend Frozen Since 1991

BOSTON — August 25, 2025 — Boston City Council's Education Committee probed the opacity of the school committee nominating process in a virtual hearing that surfaced calls for recording panel meetings, publishing finalist lists, and a potential state audit. Councilor Julia M. Mejia, the hearing's sponsor, pressed Deputy Chief of Policy Tally Robbins on whether parent groups truly have a meaningful voice in the 13-member nominating panel, which is established by a 1991 state law and whose meetings are not recorded or streamed. School Committee Chair Jerry Robinson disclosed that member stipends remain frozen at $7,500 per year — set in 1991, equivalent to roughly $245 every two weeks — despite members routinely putting in 15 to 30 hours weekly; Council President Ruthzee Louijeune noted the figure might be closer to $18,000 in today's dollars. Lisa Green, who chaired the committee behind the 2021 ballot question that won 79 percent of the vote for an elected school committee, testified from Italy and recommended the city seek a state auditor review under G.L. c. 11, s. 12. Boston Policy Institute Executive Director Gregory Maynard called the panel's lack of recorded meetings, public applications, and published finalist lists "choices" that feed public distrust of the process.