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By Isabelle Zhang, Special to the Reporter
Photos by Irene Yimmongkol
Mayor Michelle Wu highlighted advances in Boston Public Schools’ performance and announced initiatives Monday night in her second annual State of the Schools address at UMass Boston’s campus in Dorchester.
“Last year, at our first-ever State of the Schools, we set an ambitious goal: to make the oldest public school system in the country the best,” Wu noted. “We said it would take a village — our whole city working together — to get there. Tonight we’re here to show what the village has been accomplishing.”
BPS has made progress in several areas, cutting its chronic absenteeism rates from 42 percent in 2022 to 33 percent in 2026, expanding early college programs to serve more thana quarter of BPS students, and the number of students passing three or more AP exams rising from around 200 in 2022 to nearly 500 in 2025.
Mayor Michelle Wu taking photos with BPS members.
Wu said the district would “continue to raise that bar” and announced five-year performance targets to measure student success, including “attendance and assessment scores, early literacy and MassCore completion, school safety and culture, early college and career preparation.”
“These new measures will help us direct resources where they’re needed most, hold ourselves accountable, and accelerate progress to excellence for every student,” Wu said.
Among the initiatives Wu announced was the expansion of the Assist Zone program, which supports student athletes by offering academic tutoring at the same place they play their sport.
She said the program will come to the Dorchester Fieldhouse — a Boys and Girls Clubs of Dorchester facility now under construction on Mount Vernon Street and expected to open next spring— with similar academic support coming for all BPS high schools and K-8 schools over the next three years.
“When students are engaged in our Assist Zones, we see better math scores, we see better attendance,” BPS Superintendent Mary Skipper said in an interview with The Reporter after the address. “We’re seeing an overwhelming response to that, and so now we want to expand that to all elementary students.”
Wu also announced plans to add five Community Hub Schools — public schools that support students holistically by providing resources like health clinics, clothing pantries and mental health counseling on-site — by the start of the next school year, building on the district’s existing 20 designated hub facilities.
“Once students join BPS, it’s on us to take care of the fundamentals so they can focus on learning,” she said.
Career readiness was another focus of the address, with Wu announcing the launch of Vocation by Madison, a new program that will keep Madison Park Technical Vocational High School open after school to provide hands-on vocational training to students from any BPS high school.
The district will also expand its school-year youth employment program to connect 2,000 high school students with paid jobs at local businesses and organizations, an increase of 300 positions from last year.
The mayor also highlighted improvements in school transportation, including record-high bus on-time performance during the 2025-26 school year, and reiterated plans to open the renovated White Stadium as a student athletics facility in 2027.
Despite the improvements, Wu acknowledged that the district still has work to do to close academic achievement gaps.
BPS’s 2026 scores for the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System — the statewide standardized test taken by all public school students — showed little to no improvement from the previous year, with the majority of students “not meeting” or “partially meeting” expectations. Massachusetts scores for the past years have remained around 10 percent below pre-pandemic results.
As the mother of a BPS student, Wu said she is “impatient” to see improvements in MCAS testing. However, she said these scores are not “reflective of a failed strategy or lack of effort” from the district.
“For many decades, we were within the bottom 10 percent of the state’s rankings … we’ve now leapfrogged some 28 other school districts,” Wu said. “We all need more resources, but Boston Public Schools is really holding our own. We’re seeing momentum and progress in the right direction, and we want to accelerate.”
Mary Skipper, Superintendent of Boston Public Schools.
In her interview, Skipper addressed the district’s approach to artificial intelligence in classrooms, including an AI integration program at the Eliot School that allows students to use AI chatbots to support research and other coursework.
With students constantly exposed to AI, schools have a responsibility to establish healthy and ethical guidelines around its use, Skipper said. The integration program seeks to gather feedback from students and educators about how AI can be used in schools.
“Our goal as educators is to protect our students and to make sure our students learn AI literacy in a way that’s going to benefit them in high school, in college, and beyond,” Skipper said. “We don’t see it as something that we are intending to roll out in any way, shape, or form broadly.”
Wu concluded her address with a call for greater community involvement, encouraging attendees and businesses to support BPS students through tutoring, mentoring, employment opportunities and other partnerships.
Boston School Committee Chair Jeri Robinson similarly called on community members to help support students outside the classroom.
“We must have the commitment to hold ourselves and every single adult supporting the Boston Public Schools accountable to create the conditions for our students to excel,” Robinson said. “We must be resolute in our belief that each and every one of our students can achieve excellence.”
This story is the product of a partnership between the Dorchester Reporter and the Boston University Department of Journalism’s Newsroom Initiative.
Copyright © 2026 Boston Neighborhood News, Inc. This content may not be re-published or re-used without written permission.
