E-Mail This Article to a Friend Succeeding Kerry (continued)

IN NOVEMBER 1996, after Boston residents voted by a huge margin to retain an appointed rather than an elected School Committee, Mayor Tom Menino — who had invested a massive amount of political capital lobbying for an appointed structure — didn’t mince words. "This is a benchmark," Menino assured his supporters at a victory party. "No more politics in the Boston public-school system." Eight years on, it’s clear that Menino — whose powers greatly increased as a result of the 1996 referendum — celebrated way too soon. Consider the recent friction between the Boston School Department and American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Local 230, which represents 380 cafeteria workers in the city. Earlier this year, the School Department investigated privatizing most operations at its troubled Central Kitchen Facility (CKF), which is located on Columbia Road, in Dorchester, and handles meal assembly for more than 80 schools around the city. According to the Boston Municipal Research Bureau, disrepair and inefficiency at the CKF cost the School Department $700,000 in fiscal year (FY) 2003 and $1.3 million in FY ’04; next year, losses could exceed $2 million. The solution advocated by Boston Public Schools superintendent Thomas Payzant: shift responsibility for food preparation to private contractors and reinvent the CKF as a distribution center.

Payzant’s vision isn’t going to be realized in the near future. When word of the School Department’s plan got out, Local 230, which represents the CKF’s 47-person staff, began an aggressive lobbying campaign aimed at convincing the Boston City Council not to approve the proposed change. The union was unconvinced by assurances that jobs wouldn’t be lost as a result of the shift — and its concerns weren’t altogether unreasonable, given that there would be less work for current employees under the new arrangement. Last week, during its final deliberations on the city budget, the Boston City Council signed an agreement with the union and the Boston Public Schools, which states that no long-term action altering the CKF’s operations will be taken during the new fiscal year. Instead, a new seven-person committee will review the situation and present its findings by next January.

Afterward, at-large city councilor Felix Arroyo hailed the arrangement as a triumph of principle. "I believe strongly that public service is not private enterprise," Arroyo said. "It’s the responsibility of government to provide that service, and to contract it out to private services is a passing-the-buck kind of attitude toward the responsibilities of government under the guise of saving money." Arroyo’s colleague John Tobin, who heads the council’s Education Committee, was more pessimistic. "This department is hemorrhaging money, and it’s only continuing to go up," Tobin said. "Quite honestly, I’d rather have the ability to put that money toward teachers and toward resources in the classroom."

Unlike the ongoing standoff with the Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association, which seems largely driven by union president Tom Nee’s bizarre personal animosity toward Menino (see "FleetCenter Blues," News and Features, June 4), the back-and-forth over the Central Kitchen Facility lacks any obvious villains. Menino, Payzant, and the School Department’s chief operating officer, Michael Contompasis, were simply doing their jobs. So were the leaders of Local 230, whose members earn roughly $10 or $11 an hour. If there’s a lesson here, it’s that politics and education are inextricable. Workers faced with looming obsolescence — like the CKF staff, or the hundreds of school-bus drivers who would lose work if the city shifts toward a neighborhood-schools-type assignment plan — will fight like hell to keep their jobs. And the longstanding, deeply entrenched divisions among the city’s neighborhoods ensure that modifications welcomed by one group of parents will be greeted with apprehension or even anger by another (see "Bus Stop," News and Features, February 13).

Back when it was an elected body, the Boston School Committee served as a political springboard and, at its worst moments, a theater of the absurd. That’s no longer the case, but the Boston Public Schools will never be apolitical — and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

AT LEAST AS far back as February, when City Council president Michael Flaherty half-joked at the St. Patrick’s Day Breakfast, in South Boston, about his desire to see Menino appointed to an ambassadorship, the vague notion that Kerry might tap the Boston mayor for a federal post has been flitting around the edges of the city’s political consciousness. But as Menino’s recent jibes at the Kerry campaign indicate, the chances of the mayor leaving his post for such an appointment are almost nonexistent. After all, from a strategic point of view, there’s just no reason for the Kerry camp even to consider him for a high-level appointment. "Tom Menino’s not somebody who’s a giant in any specific field, and usually presidential cabinets have two types of people in them — giants, and people who can bring something to the party," one political observer argues. "Tom Menino could be a great secretary of Housing and Urban Development. So could Ed Rendell, the governor of Pennsylvania and former mayor of Philadelphia. But Rendell could probably cement the presidential vote in Pennsylvania four years out. For local politicians, that’s the great disadvantage of having a home-state nominee." Menino could, conceivably, be offered a high-level regional appointment that caters to his interests and strengths. But in terms of prestige, such a move would be lateral at best — and Menino would have to swap his chief executive’s autonomy for the more cautious mindset of a high-level manager.

Then there’s Menino’s historically cool relationship with Kerry, who’s still working to shake his reputation for relative inattentiveness to Boston’s needs. "He was always much closer, even prior to the convention, to [Senator Ted] Kennedy," says one City Hall insider of Menino. Even more important, if Menino sticks around and wins re-election in 2005 — and almost everyone expects him to win in a landslide if he runs again — he’ll be in a position to supplant Kevin White as Boston’s longest-serving mayor. Take all these factors into consideration, and it’s apparent that, barring some truly surprising developments, Menino isn’t going anywhere.

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