BPS Walkout: Hundreds of Students March on Boston City Hall

Boston, MA - In hours of often emotional testimony, students and parents testified before a Boston Common Council committee Tuesday, following a hundreds-strong student walkout from Boston Public Schools.

BPS reported just over 1,000 left class in protest Tuesday. Hundreds rallied, chanted and made speeches on the steps of Boston City Hall before streaming inside to testify before the city's Ways & Means Committee, at times chanting loud enough to disrupt the meeting that preceded their public testimony.

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In what is stretching toward hours of testimony, students and parents weighed in on a range of issues, including school funding, institutionalized racial disparity, college readiness, staff cuts, standardized testing, and calling for curriculum that teaches African-Americans' contribution to history beyond the context of slavery and civil rights.

Speaking to committee members, student organizer Jahi Spaloss called funding cuts "educational injustice," pointing to disparities between public school students in the city, compared with private schools students and largely white suburban schools.

"Maybe I'm speaking hyperbole, maybe I'm exaggerating my words, but I feel as if this is a war against our education," he said. "It is time for us to have affirmative action, it its time for us to have restorative justice in our system. ... It is time for you to listen to the youth."

Spaloss also pushed back against Mayor Marty Walsh's characterization of the walkout as backed by non-student groups or otherwise organized by adults.

"When we try to stick up for ourselves, they're saying we are 'misinformed,' we are 'just kids,' to just 'let the adults handle it and everything will be fine,'" he said.

Like many other speakers, he criticized the committee's mid-afternoon meeting time as excluding student voices. Still other speakers criticized Walsh for not appearing at the meeting Tuesday.

Walsh provided comments on the upcoming walkout in a morning interview Tuesday. Find quotes from the mayor, as well as background on the walkout and students' concerns here.

>> Lead photo credit @JALSA_boston, used with permission