Almost three years ago to the day, former New York City Chancellor of Education Joel Klein said of his tenure, “We should have been bolder.” This past weekend, in anticipation of today’s election for a new mayor of Boston (the first new mayor in two decades), former Boston Public Schools Superintendent Michael Contompasis, currently a senior field consultant with Mass Insight Education, penned an Op-Ed to the Boston Globe. The op-ed, echoing Mr. Klein’s words, challenges the incoming mayor to reimagine, rather than patch, Boston’s public schools system.
In light of the upcoming turnover for both city mayor and schools superintendent, Mike explains that we are faced with a “window of opportunity to find a leader who understands that the way to fix what’s broken is not to apply a Band-Aid to a system that’s not working for all students. It is to reimagine the system itself.”
So to Boston, New York, New Jersey, and all the other states and cities facing major elections today: let’s take Mike up on his challenge, and reimagine the system.