On Monday, November 17th, the family, students, and staff of Another Course to College were informed that it is the school district’s intention to shut down our school.  Two days later, the proposal was presented to the school committee, to be ratified by vote merely a month later.  The rapidity of this process is no accident.  Superintendent Mary Skipper wants to present our closure as a forgone conclusion.  To give the people and communities affected by this pronouncement no time to react and protest.  But they have underestimated the strength of our bonds as a community, and our willingness to fight for the wellbeing and education of the students for whom the closure of ACC would be a terrible blow.  

The school committee needs to vote "no" on the proposal to close ACC at the end of the 2026-27 school year, and reevaluate its long term facilities plan to ensure families, educators, and all stakeholders have a say in their school community.

ACC is a special place.  We are a small school, a place where students can receive specialized attention from and form meaningful connections with a dedicated faculty.  Our small size, which even now are being presented as a part of the reasoning for our closure, are in fact an incredible strength.  We are reactive to student needs in a way that larger schools simply cannot be.  Our students cannot disappear in the back of a class, nor slip through the cracks of a teacher’s attention.  This sort of meaningful engagement is precisely what is at stake with the proposed school closures.  Superintendent Skipper’s plan to consolidate BPS into larger classes flies in the face of decades of educational research that demonstrates that smaller classes are more effective in achieving positive educational outcomes.  Our students, all students, deserve better than being crammed into massive classes to be ignored and forgotten.

ACC is a an important place.  Our student body has a significantly higher proportion of students with high need than any other high school in Boston.  According to DESE data from the 24-25 school year over 40 percent of our students have IEPs, higher than any other high school in the district.  Our Therapeutic Learning Community provides programming and supports for students diagnosed with externalizing emotional impairments, one of several in the district .  We have no admission requirements, the only high school who can make such a claim in the Hyde Park neighborhood.  What happens to our high need students should we be shut down?  For many, they will be subsumed into poorly fitted programs in geographically distant schools, adrift without the specialized support ACC is designed to give.  Can anyone be surprised that the proposed school closures disproportionately target schools serving marginalized populations?   

ACC is a beautiful place.  Despite all of our struggle and tribulation, we have created for ourselves a community of which we are proud, a community we will not allow to slip quietly into oblivion.  Two primary reasons were given for the closure, declining student enrollment in the district and improper facilities.  Both, supposedly impediments to providing a “high quality education.”  The facilities argument in particular is grating.  In 2016, ACC was moved into our current building, an old elementary school building that BPS designated $7 million to renovate into a high school space. If our facilities are not up to par, then it is the district’s responsibility to fix it.  Though the district has been facing declining enrollment in part due to current US immigration policy, this is not a reason to cut small communities and the important resources it provides.

ACC is a place worth fighting for.  It is our home, a school through which generations of students have passed, each a story unique and beautiful.  Our classrooms are vibrant, our lessons rigorous, our doors are open to all.  We cannot let this all be lost at the pen stroke of some distant administrator.  If this school has ever meant something to you or someone you love, if you support the right of students to a real high quality and specialized education, if you want to support an incredible community on the brink of dissolution, please consider signing this petition.  Together, we can fight to save a truly special school.  Together we can make a difference.