Flying solo

Part 3

Education by Yvonne Abraham

In part, the city's inability to throw itself behind the pilots' search for permanent facilities comes down to money. But at its core, the pilots' dilemma is a matter of political priorities (the needs of the Lyndon school versus the mayor's need for West Roxbury votes, for example). And no pilot school saga better demonstrates the importance of political priorities -- and the city's capacity to solve pilots' problems -- than the story of the Boston Arts Academy.

Menino promised the city an arts high school several years ago, in a State of the City address. But for three years, the Arts Academy couldn't find a building. The city pledged to make it happen, however, promising the school a building in time for the 1997-'98 school year. The academy, led by project manager John DiPaulo and partners from local arts institutions, began putting 240 students through a grueling admissions process.

Then this past May, they learned that there would be no building after all, and the school would have to wait another year to open. "That was a very low day," says DiPaulo. Parents were livid.

"I remember calling [pilot schools chief] Al Holland's office to complain," says Donna Tapia, mother of one of the would-be students. "I got a call back from someone in that place saying they were doing everything they could, and if I knew of any buildings, they'd be happy to hear from me. I said, `Excuse me? You're the City of Boston. You know where the buildings are.' I was disgusted."

The parents organized, called city councilors, and met with Menino, making it clear that they were going to hold him publicly to his promise. That did the trick. Rather than leaving the search to DiPaulo and Holland, who had little real-estate expertise -- and even less idea of how much they'd be allowed to spend, or even whether they'd be leasing or buying -- Menino put Bob Baldwin, of the BRA, on the job. Baldwin settled on the old Boston Latin Academy, on Ipswich street, in the Fenway. The Arts Academy will open next September, at last.

What made the difference with the Arts Academy was that it became a potentially embarrassing political issue for the mayor. "It's not the worst thing in the world that he's responsive to constituent pressure," says an Arts Academy advocate. "But you'd have liked the guy to have got on this six months earlier. Instead, he waits for the crisis. He waits till there are people beating down the door. Then he does something." (Menino did not respond to a request for comment.)

Now the Arts Academy is in the best position of all the pilot schools: it will have a permanent, city-owned home, which it is unlikely to outgrow. None of the others have been so lucky.

The best solution to pilot schools' facilities problems would be to provide them with buildings like the one the Arts Academy now has: several directors have suggested that one building could house several pilots, since they're so much smaller than mainstream schools (eventually, the Arts Academy will probably share its space with at least one other school). Only the city can provide such a solution.

But just as the pilots are at the mercy of the mayor's political priorities, they're also affected by the school system's internal politics. Giving pilots extra help may alienate other educators in the district, many of whom already believe pilots get more money and better treatment than regular schools do. They don't: on average, Al Holland says, pilots get about $100 less per student than other schools do, and some get as much as $400 less.

But the department is nevertheless sensitive to accusations of favoritism. Payzant uses the issue as a bargaining chip in negotiations, some directors say, arguing that he can't do X or Y for a pilot because he doesn't want to appear to be favoring them. "Payzant's mantra is, `I'm the superintendent of 123 schools,' " says Linda Nathan. "Maybe it should be, `I'm the superintendent for radical reform.' "

The irony is that pilot schools, set up to represent the vanguard of the change so vital to resurrecting Boston's school system, should get something extra. If the mayor and the school department were as determined to help all pilots as they ultimately were to help the Arts Academy, they would foster hope and provide an incentive for the rest of the schools in the system to become innovative themselves.

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Yvonne Abraham can be reached at yabraham[a]phx.com.