Council presses BPS on English learner services

City Council · Meeting of October 13, 2026

Boston's Education Committee pressed BPS on gaps serving its roughly 17,000 English learners. Chair Julia Mejia and Councilors Edward Flynn, Erin Murphy, Benjamin Weber, Miniard Culpepper and Ruthzee Louijeune questioned Deputy Superintendent Dr. Simone Wright and advocates from the Multilingual Learners Alliance for more than four hours on docket 0276.

Advocate John Mudd cited MCAS data showing just 1 percent of English learner tenth graders meeting English standards and a 6.5 percent dropout rate, calling the system's results "tragically low." Murphy said BPS's own data shows reading proficiency for ESL students ranges from under 20 percent in third grade to 8 percent by tenth grade. Flynn said mothers told him IEP evaluations are taking years, not the legally required two months; Wright maintained timelines are consistent for all students. BPS reported $126,741,800 budgeted for multilingual learner services in fiscal 2027 and said roughly 80 educators are moving through bilingual-licensure pipelines.

No votes were taken; Mejia said the committee will hold recurring quarterly hearings on the docket.

In the full story:

• Who Was There
• Organizations And Documents Referenced
• The complete report — 2,212 words

Source: the City Council meeting of October 13, 2026, reported from the official video recording and transcript.

Checked against the record: before publication this article was automatically compared with the meeting transcript.