Questions Compact transparency

In her letter “No ‘fast track’ for unified enrollment,” Rachel Weinstein of the Boston Compact makes a number of assertions that contradict available evidence.

Weinstein says that Mayor Walsh’s proposed state bill (2876) has “nothing to do with unified enrollment,” a plan to put charters into Boston’s schools lottery. The Compact and Mayor have said since the early stages of UE, however, that state law would need to change charters’ geographic boundaries for unified enrollment to work.

Bill H2876 makes exactly that change. In fact, the legislation references the “common lottery” that Weinstein claims isn’t relevant to the bill.

Secondly, Weinstein writes that Walsh doesn’t support the bill that he co-sponsored. How is it that a seasoned legislator doesn’t support what’s in his own bill? Either he made a big mistake, or someone’s revising history.

Finally, Weinstein claims that the Compact and mayor are committed to an open public process. But the Compact has fought transparency at every stage, fighting an Open Meeting Law complaint, failing to regularly post meeting minutes, and keeping under wraps details of how UE would actually work.

None of this inspires confidence in the transparency of the UE process or the group that promotes it.

— Megan Wolf, BPS parent Member of QUEST (Quality Education for Every Student)