Boston’s most elite high schools fail to represent the diversity of our city. Across our neighborhoods, public schools are becoming more and more segregated, reflecting levels of racial isolation and racial imbalance not seen since before court-ordered desegregation.
Earlier this month, Boston City Councilor Kim Janey and Council President Andrea Campbell convened a hearing on the disproportionately low numbers of black and Latino students in Boston’s prestigious exam schools, particularly Boston Latin School (BLS), the oldest public school in the United States. In the 2018-2019 school year, only 7.5 percent of BLS students are black and 12.5 percent are Latino, even though black students represent 30.9 percent of Boston Public Schools (BPS) students, while Latino students are 42.1 percent of the district. By contrast, white students, who make up only 14.6 percent of the BPS student body, represent 46.8 percent of the students who attend BLS.