Withholding Boston School Committee texts backfires

THE COVER-UP is always worse than the crime. 

And so it is that Boston school officials find themselves dealing with the explosive fallout of a contentious school committee meeting almost eight months after the fact, just as the city prepares to re-engage with the same issue that prompted the heated debate. 

The October 21 meeting, where the school committee approved a major change to the admissions criteria for the city’s three selective-entry exam schools, quickly led to the resignation of the panel’s then-chairman, Michael Loconto, who was heard on a hot mic making fun of Asian-sounding names. This week, two other committee members, Lorna Rivera and Alexandra Oliver-Davila, both Latinas, resigned after texts emerged that they exchanged during the meeting disparaging West Roxbury and white residents of the southwest Boston neighborhood.

“Sick of Westie whites,” Rivera texted Oliver-Davila, according to the Boston Globe. “Wait until the white racists start yelling at us.” 

The changes to exam school entry rules were aimed largely at boosting the enrollment of black and Latino students at Boston Latin School. The city waived administration of a standardized test used for admission, ostensibly because of the pandemic, and moved to reserve a chunk of seats at the exam schools for each city ZIP code. The changes drew opposition from some families in predominantly white West Roxbury, which has long seen lots of students test into Boston Latin, and from Asian families who also have had lot of children admitted to Latin and who were concerned that the new system would make it harder for students in Chinatown and the surrounding area to gain admission. 

In a statement accompanying her resignation, Oliver-Davila said, “I apologize for my comments and the hurt they have caused.” Oliver-Davila, who took over as chairperson following Loconto’s resignation, grew up in West Roxbury and says she was subjected to racial taunts there. “I regrettably allowed myself to do what others have done to me,” she said in her statement. She said she owned her mistake, but added, “I am not ashamed of the feelings from history that made me write those words.” 

Rivera made no mention of the texts in her resignation letter, saying she needs to “recuperate” from the stress on her “mental and physical health” from being targeted in “racist threatening emails and social media personal attacks” related to the school district’s policy changes aimed at advancing the system’s “racial equity agenda, especially the change in admissions policies to the exam high schools.” 

Rivera, in a text to the Globe, called the emergence of the texts a “right-wing coordinated effort to derail [the] BPS exam school vote.” The school committee was scheduled to consider this week whether to make permanent the exam school changes, which were only adopted last fall as a one-year policy. (This week’s meeting was cancelled after the texting controversy emerged.) 

Lots of questions remain over the handling of the texts. The Globe says it filed a public records request the day after the October school committee meeting asking for all emails and texts among committee members during the meeting that pertained to Boston Public Schools issues. 

The paper received a slew of correspondence, but not the explosive texts that emerged this week. On Monday afternoon this week, Globe columnist Marcela Garcia was the first to report on the texts, which she was apparently provided after Oliver-Davila learned the texts had been leaked to someone. Garcia also wrote that “a local reporter” had recently filed a records request for the texts. (That appears to be a reporter from the Boston Herald, which reports today that it had filed a request for the texts more than 10 days ago, “but the district has failed to provide them within the time allotted by law, breaking the rules as it often does with records requests.”

The Globe wrote yesterday that omitting the texts from the records the paper was given in the fall “appears to break public records law,” adding it was unclear whether the texts were held back by the school department or then-Mayor Marty Walsh’s office. 

Still murky even is the question of what the Globe was told last fall about any records being held back. The state public records law requires that government agencies tell the person requesting documents whether any information has been held back or redacted. Such disclosure is the only way a requester would have a basis to file an appeal seeking any redacted information. 

In Monday’s paper, the Globe reported that when it obtained the requested records last November, “The document didn’t indicate that messages had been redacted.” But today’s Globe says a letter at a time from the city’s legal department said, “BPS did omit portions deemed ‘not related to BPS issues.’” 

If the decision to hold back the text exchange between Rivera and Oliver-Davila came from the mayor’s office, that becomes another controversy not handled well during his final months in office by Walsh, who has been pilloried for his botched appointment of Dennis White as police commissioner. And if the timing of the texts’ release now complicates things for city leaders as they move to make the exam school changes permanent, it would appear they only have themselves to blame. 

MICHAEL JONAS

FROM COMMONWEALTH

Alleged patient dumping: A Disability Law Center report finds that in 2018 High Point Hospital in Middleborough discharged a patient receiving mental health treatment and dropped her off near the Pine Street Inn in Boston against her will and without the consent of her mother. At the time, 44-year-old CaSonya King was disoriented, delusional, and talking to herself. King, according to the center’s report, never made it to the homeless shelter. Forty hours later, she was dead after overdosing on over-the-counter pain and cold medication at a CVS.

— The Disability Law Center is a private, nonprofit agency given a mandate under state and federal law to investigate abuse and neglect of people with mental illness. Its report faults not only High Point but the state Department of Mental Health for failing to investigate the incident thoroughly and push for meaningful changes at the facility.

— King’s mother has filed suit against High Point Hospital, which was stripped of its accreditation in 2019 and closed. High Point still operates substance abuse facilities.

— The center is calling the case an example of “patient dumping,” a phenomenon where a hospital discharges someone to the streets because there is nowhere else for them to go. “To leave someone on the street, dumping them in a strange city without supports in a delusional state, I think dumping is an appropriate word for that,” said Rick Glassman, director of advocacy for the Disability Law Center. Read more.

OPINION

Millionaires tax: The Legislature today takes up a constitutional amendment creating a tax surcharge on income over $1 million. If the amendment passes, it will go to voters next year. The debate over whether the tax is a wise move is intensifying.

— David Tuerck of the Beacon Hill Institute and Laurie Belsito of the Fiscal Alliance Foundation argue the new tax will prompt millionaires to leave the state, reduce economic growth, and raise significantly less money than forecast. “Let’s leave the state constitution as it is, and avoid burdening the state economy, still in recovery from the pandemic, with another tax.”  Read more.

— Sen. Jason Lewis and Rep. James O’Day, the lead sponsors of the constitutional amendment, characterize the initiative as a measure to reduce income inequality, with the revenues gained yielding funding for transportation and education projects that will strengthen the state. “Yes, some wealthy people may retire to Florida or Arizona, where it doesn’t snow; but that happens already. One of the advantages of making more than a million dollars a year is that you can afford to live where you want, and there are many other good reasons to stay in Massachusetts.” Read more.

A post-COVID vision: Jim Aloisi, the former state transportation secretary, is back with the second of his two-part series on reimagining our transportation future post-COVID. In this installment, he hails density over distancing and warns of the dangers of over-reliance on technology at the expense of personal interactions. “Long-term social distancing, and long-term telecommuting policies, are the enemy of social cohesion, a recipe for dysfunction and decline,” he says. Read more. 

FROM AROUND THE WEB

BEACON HILL

The Senate on Thursday plans to take up a measure to extend a number of pandemic-driven rules, ranging from mail-in voting to cocktails-to-go. (Boston Globe)

Scot Lehigh says Massachusetts GOP chairman Jim Lyons has become a pariah — among elected officials in his own party. (Boston Globe)

MUNICIPAL MATTERS  

A proposed South Boston pot shop that was already shot down by a vote of the Zoning Board of Appeal is being granted a new hearing which opponents call an unfair do over. (Boston Herald)

In an op-ed, Jalil Johnson of Northampton condemns the municipality’s begging culture. “It is seemingly welcomed by the social justice warriors and bleeding hearts, who encourage this endless stream of people who claim to need their pocket change in order to get by. The people begging for spare change may need help, but they certainly do not need anyone’s pocket change.” (Daily Hampshire Gazette)

HEALTH/HEALTH CARE

Lawmakers are considering whether they need to do more to study the possible harmful effects of PFAS chemicals in food. (Salem News)

ELECTIONS

GBH examines the circumstances of Kim Janey’s election as Boston City Council president, a decision that paved the way for her to become acting mayor — and get a leg up in the mayor’s race — after Marty Walsh stepped down. 

Sen. Adam Hinds’ purchase of a home in Amherst wouldn’t necessarily disqualify him from running for reelection even though Amherst is outside his senatorial district. (Daily Hampshire Gazette)

BUSINESS/ECONOMY

Roche Bros. supermarkets is outsourcing its grocery delivery services to another company, angering company employees who kept the service going through the heightened demand during the pandemic. (Boston Globe) 

Cannabis-infused ice cream is now being sold at a handful of dispensaries in Massachusetts. (MassLive)

The president of Encore Boston Harbor casino, Brian Gullbrants, is leaving for a job at the Las Vegas headquarters of the casino owner, Wynn Resorts. His deputy, Jenny Holaday, will take over at the Everett gambling site, becoming the first woman to run a casino in the state. (Boston Globe)

EDUCATION

Fitchburg High School graduating senior Verda Tetteh, who is bound for Harvard in the fall, asked the school to direct a $40,000 scholarship she was awarded to community college students who may need it more. (Boston Globe) 

Worcester shelves plans to open an online virtual school next year, citing a lack of interest. (Telegram & Gazette)

TRANSPORTATION

MassDOT is again exploring the idea of adding year-round commuter rail service to the Cape. (Cape Cod Times)

CRIMINAL JUSTICE/COURTS

Berkshire County District Attorney Andrea Harrington tried unsuccessfully to remove Judge Jennifer Tyne from the bench, calling her a “significant threat to public safety.” Paul Dawley, the chief justice of the district court system, rejected Harrington’s assertions, saying he could find “no factual basis” for them. (Berkshire Eagle)

Five more officers have been linked to a growing Boston police overtime fraud scandal, including the former president of the patrol officers’ union, Thomas Nee, and Sybil Mason, the ex-wife of former commissioner Dennis White who was fired on Monday over allegations of domestic abuse involving Mason dating back two decades. (Boston Globe) 

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