By Sam Drysdale, State House News Service
Ads depicting children with the slogan “BPS IS FAILING THEM” began going up across the MBTA system on Wednesday. A day later, the T objected and began removing them.
MassPotential, a K-12 education advocacy nonprofit led by former Boston Public Schools school committee member Mary Tamer, raised $1.5 million for the ad campaign “aimed at calling to attention the disturbing trends of a lack of student achievement in the Boston Public Schools.”
It was run through a new coalition in the nonprofit, Next Chapter Boston.
But on Thursday, the ads were “flagged” and had “already begun being removed per MBTA orders – based on the copy itself,” according to an email shared with the News Service, sent from OUTFRONT, the T’s exclusive contracted advertising agency, to the ad agency MassPotential had contracted.
The ads targeted for rider eyes on the MBTA were part of a larger campaign that will include signs on billboards in Boston and a video run on streaming services. The nonprofit sought to put up ads on the Orange Line, Red Line, Needham and Fairmount Commuter Rail lines, and buses around the city.
They say, “BPS IS FAILING HER” or “BPS IS FAILING THEM” with images of children, and “In Boston Public Schools, 70% of third graders can’t read or do math at grade level.”
“The messaging coming out of Boston, including the press release that was shared when the state released the latest MCAS data, you would have thought they just hit a triple during the World Series,” Tamer said. “The messaging that is coming from BPS is not giving families and frankly the broader community the information they need to be informed on what is really happening in our schools.”
In Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) scores released last week, 29% of students in grades 3 through 8 met or exceeded expectations in English and math, and about a third of tenth graders met that standard. The state classifies the majority of BPS students as “high-needs.”
Tamer called the ads a “public service campaign” but said the T’s objections were that they contained “political content” against their advertising guidelines and “could be libelous.”
The MBTA did not respond to requests for comment or verification of those claims, however in an email exchange between their contracted advertising agency and MassPotential’s, an OUTFRONT sales director shared “the feedback which the transit authority shared with us.”
They include that the T was “unable to determine whether the ad meets the criteria” in their guidelines for public service announcements from nonprofits that they directly relate to “the availability of education or training services.”
Also in that email, the “feedback” from the T includes a copy and paste of the advertising guidelines, with certain words in bold, including that the MBTA shall not display anything “Demeaning or Disaparaging,” “Endorsement,” “False, Misleading, or Deceptive,” or “Libel and Intellectual Property Infringement.”
The guidelines say “the MBTA intends to establish uniform, viewpoint-neutral standards for the display of advertising.”
Tamer said they are “supposed to be having some conversations” with the T moving forward, “so we’ll see how that goes.”
“But if they’re not willing to share the truth, then shame on them,” she said.
