By Judith Baker.
Last month, on May 13, Mayor Wu and Boston Public School Superintendent Mary Skipper announced a new agreement between the Boston Building Trades Union, the Carpenters’ Union, and the City to provide access into the construction unions’ apprenticeship process for 50 Madison Park Technical Vocational High School graduates every year.
The pact’s promise is that it will bring welcome opportunities for Boston’s young people as the City has finally decided to make Madison Park the engine of economic opportunity for our young people that it should have been for decades.
For many years, the staff, alumni, and supporters of Madison Park have watched with frustration as vocational high schools in other communities across the state reaped investments while our own Boston school was neglected. That’s changing under the leadership of Paul Neal, the head of School, and with the support of the mayor, the Friends of Madison Park, and many others.
Chaton Green, the current business agent for the Greater Boston Building Trades, graduated from Madison Park in 2005. He has spoken about how little access he had at the time to better paying jobs in construction. He spent 10 years patching together a meager living as a laborer with no benefits or job security until he finally found a program that helped him enter apprenticeship and then employment.
“I earned while I learned,” Green said during an event announcing the new agreement. “I got access to retirement benefits, healthcare for my entire family, and a security plan for the future. I was able to stay in my community, support my family, and give back in a meaningful way.”
Madison Park is also expanding high-demand programs such as Electricity and HVAC and adding Aviation, which includes pilot licensing, and robotics. Veterinary tech, biotech, childcare and early education are also being considered for the future.
Other key improvements underway are an expansion of the Co-op work programs for juniors and seniors and “dual enrollment,” which allows seniors interested in college the ability to graduate with both an associate degree from junior college and a high school diploma.
These improvements, so long sought by people like the late City Councillor Chuck Turner and state Rep. Mel King, who helped found the Friends of Madison Park, will now be part of the ongoing work to improve of instruction and facilities at Madison Park.
Judith Baker is a long-time BPS teacher first at the Jeremiah Burke (now Holland) High School and then 25 years at Madison Park, from which she retired in 2005. Since then, she has stayed active with the Friends of Madison Park and the Madison Park Retired Educators Awards Fund, which she started nine years ago.
