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	Related links Boston School Committee The official Web site, including information on the committee’s history, the text of the home-rule bill that created the appointed committee, and a synopsis of how committee members are nominated and selected. Video archive for WGBH’s The Ten O’Clock News Extensive QuickTime clips from the height of Boston’s busing crisis. Maura Hennigan for Mayor The official campaign site of at-large city councilor Maura Hennigan. Thomas M. Menino, mayor of Boston Boston mayor Tom Menino’s official city Web site. Recommended reading on the Boston Public Schools J. Anthony Lukas, Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families (Vintage, 1986). A masterful narrative history of the busing crisis of the 1970s, but also a fine account of the making of modern Boston. Highly recommended. AT LAST MONTH’S St. Patrick’s Day breakfast in South Boston, State Representative Brian Wallace played the political demise of Boston’s Irish for laughs in his semi-comic poem, "Where Have All the Irish Politicians Gone?" Wallace was exaggerating, of course. Five Boston city councilors are of Irish ancestry, an Irish-American woman is running for mayor, and two potential Democratic gubernatorial candidates have the green in them. Still, perception quickly becomes reality — and the notion that the Irish are political dinosaurs in this city is making things difficult for Boston’s next generation of candidates. Being Irish-American may not be a liability just yet. But it’s become something to be managed — to be downplayed or recast or neutralized, but certainly not embraced. Take the case of Matt O’Malley, the Roslindale twentysomething who ran a respectable campaign for Boston City Council in 2003. O’Malley finished sixth in his bid for one of the council’s four at-large slots — not a bad result, but no guarantee of future greatness. His rebound job — managing Andrea Cabral’s campaign for Suffolk County sheriff — proved to be a brilliant choice. By crushing her opponent (none other than Councilor Steve Murphy), Cabral, whose parents are Cape Verdean and African-American, became the latest poster child for the "New Boston." Last month, O’Malley reaped the benefits in a big way; in a weirdly effusive Boston Globe Magazine story, reporter Charlie Pierce argued that, by transcending his roots and working for Cabral, O’Malley had become a politician worth watching. Good for O’Malley: formerly just another Irish kid from Roslindale, he’s now an honorary person of color. But what about Patricia White and John Connolly — who, in addition to being Irish-American, bear the added taint of having come from Boston’s Irish political elite? A few days after Cabral’s win, White awkwardly tried to jump on the New Boston bandwagon, telling the Globe, "I represent the future of Boston." Since then, White — who repeatedly referenced her father, former Mayor Kevin White, during the ’03 campaign — has promised she’ll do things differently this time around. Rather than invoking her dad on the campaign trail, she’ll play up her gender. And you can bet that her current job — at Boston Partners in Education, where she runs a program that brings (mostly white) corporate bigwigs into Boston’s (mostly nonwhite) public schools — will be frequently mentioned as well. Expect John Connolly to take a similar tack. Prior to his current incarnation as a corporate lawyer, Connolly — the son of former secretary of state Michael Connolly and state district-court chief justice Lynda Connolly — taught at predominantly minority charter schools in Harlem and Boston. When Connolly touts this experience to Boston voters, as he surely will, he’ll be sending a not-so-subtle message: Never mind my name and my family background — I may be Irish, but I’m not just another parochial Irish politician. Ten years ago, this kind of excuse would have been unnecessary, but now it’s essential. Proof, perhaps, that there really is a New Boston after all. — AR

MAYBE, MAYBE NOT. Hennigan’s ability to get mileage out of the school-committee issue depends on the voters’ answer to another question: would the return of the elected committee help or hurt Boston students?

Appointed-committee supporters treat this as a no-brainer. Take Menino, who seems mildly annoyed when the issue comes up. "The test scores, how many kids go on to college, the accreditation issues — all these are part of the fact that the appointed school board takes the politics out of the decision-making process," the mayor says. "The Boston school system today is looked at as one of the better urban school systems in America. We can’t go backward."

The return of an elected committee would entail obvious risks. High-profile educators like Boston Schools superintendent Thomas Payzant, a former assistant secretary of education in the Clinton administration, might balk at working in Boston. "What’s very challenging, in urban school districts in America, is the continuous churn that takes place, with a very short tenure for school superintendents and continuous turnover in school-board members," says Payzant, who worked for elected boards in San Diego and Oklahoma City. "That often results in split boards that can’t agree on what the direction of the school district ought to be. We’ve learned that you’ve got to have an agenda that’s long-term, that doesn’t change from year to year."

Furthermore, with an elected committee, there’s always a chance that members will put personal considerations first, or succumb to constituent pressure and do the wrong thing. John Craven’s integration flip-flop — which came on a muggy summer night, in front of a hostile crowd jammed into Dorchester’s O’Hearn School — remains a cautionary example.

But the other side can make its own compelling case, starting with the very principle of an appointed committee. If voters in other cities and towns around Massachusetts — from affluent white enclaves like Marblehead to gritty polyglot cities like Brockton — can be trusted to choose the people who run their schools, why can’t Bostonians?

During the run-up to the 1996 referendum, Menino promised voters that retaining the appointed committee would keep politics out of Boston’s schools. And it’s true that, for the past nine years, the worst excesses of the past have been avoided. But anyone who watched last year’s student-assignment debate knows education and politics are still intertwined. Equally dubious is Menino’s long-standing suggestion that, with the appointed committee firmly established, voters can hold him directly responsible for the state of Boston’s schools. The vast majority of voters may think he’s doing his job well (as indicated by his high favorable ratings), but it’s doubtful that all of them think the schools — after more than a decade of Menino’s guidance — are in good shape. "People are very reluctant, as they should be, to base their support of a candidate on one issue," notes State Senator Dianne Wilkerson. (Wilkerson, who backs reviving the elected committee, cites direct accountability and an elected committee’s potential to cultivate politicians of color as reasons to leave the appointed committee behind.)

EVEN IF Hennigan’s idea gains momentum, it would likely be years before an elected school committee could be reborn. There would be public hearings on the issue, lengthy debates in the city council and state legislature, and — judging from the way things unfolded in the 1990s — a massive lobbying effort by appointed-committee proponents. In 1996, Menino created the Campaign for Educational Reform to help make his case; by the time the referendum was held, the group had raised approximately $600,000. (Elected-committee backers raised a scant $3000.)

For the time being, however, Hennigan needs to focus on building support for her idea. It won’t be easy. Since most people assume Menino is headed for an easy win this fall, community leaders who sympathize with her may think twice before voicing support for an idea the mayor dismisses as ridiculous. The same goes for Hennigan’s colleagues on the city council. Beyond that, imagine Hennigan plugging the elected committee on a local TV magazine show like Greater Boston or NewsNight with Jim Braude. Even if she spoke eloquently about the merits of her proposal, she’d be undercut by the busing-war images sure to flash on screen: Ted Landsmark attacked with an American flag on City Hall Plaza; police escorts leading yellow buses up a hill to Charlestown High; NO NIGS IN S.B. graffiti scrawled on a door in South Boston. To win over the public, Hennigan will have to neutralize the visceral power that era still exerts. But if she proceeds clumsily, she risks looking like a demagogue who’s willing to mess with the schools for political gain.

Still, this doesn’t mean Hennigan’s call to rethink the school-committee issue should be dismissed out of hand. In 1996, when he was struggling to sell the appointed committee to skeptical Boston voters, Menino said he’d be open to revisiting the committee’s structure every six years. Nothing came of the idea then. But maybe — given everything that’s changed in Boston in the past 25 years — it deserves another look.

Adam Reilly can be reached at areilly[a]phx.com