Boston School Committee unanimously approves exam school admissions point system change

BOSTON -- January 10, 2024, Boston School Committee votes 5-0 to overhaul exam school bonus points, drawing fierce parent backlash. The committee unanimously approved Superintendent Mary Skipper's recommendation to replace a flat 10-point award for students at high-poverty schools with a sliding scale tied to a student's residential socioeconomic tier, effective for the 2024-25 admissions cycle at Boston Latin School, Boston Latin Academy, and the O'Brien School of Math and Science. BPS said roughly 6 percent of seventh-grade applicants would see a change in whether they receive an invitation, but parents and students from Charlestown's Tier 7 community testified that the modification effectively strips up to six points from their children's scores. Member Cardet-Hernandez, the committee's most persistent critic of the process, voted yes while warning that "I have lost a lot of trust in our process as a result of this." The committee also received a presentation on a plan to consolidate the 130-student UP Academy Boston campus into UP Academy Dorchester, with a formal vote expected January 24, and heard Skipper announce a $20 million EPA grant to add 50 electric school buses to the BPS fleet.