While I’ve remarked on many things about the high school in my articles over the past four years, one thing has become ever more apparent: the sheer incompetence of the high school administration. Over the last four years we’ve endured a steady stream of emails regarding incidents ranging from school fights to students using racial and anti-Semitic slurs, two conflicts over DoRRS, a mugging, graffiti and vandalism, a vaping epidemic, an assault and, the final nail in the coffin, the realization that we’re 56 hours short of state education standards. This is not to mention that, according to Boston Magazine, the high school has slid in from 7th in 2010 to 19th in 2024.
In the face of all of these incidents, the school administration has deemed it appropriate to send emails to the student body and put up signs in front of the bathrooms instead of taking effective action. The vaping epidemic could be solved by having school security and deans stationed in or around bathrooms. Instead, our bathrooms continue to be a playground for vape addicts.
Furthermore, the high school administration demonstrated that they had trouble upholding education standards by failing to check if the school schedule was compliant with state guidelines, causing the school to fall 56 hours short of state required teaching time. Similarly, during a walkout in 2022, multiple deans had the option to punish a mob of loud, obnoxious and truant students who were breaking rules prohibiting the disruption of learning and absence from class. Although some students received absences, the deans did not break up the mob and were cajoled into apologizing for their actions, demonstrating that our administration struggles to uphold and enforce rules.
If the past four years have shown anything, it’s that our school administration struggles to keep us safe and enforce rules. Yet time and time again, the BHS community continues to put its trust in the school administrators. As a school community, we’ve turned a blind toward incompetency. Despite the never ending blunders of our administration, there has been remarkably little turnover, let alone simple oversight. This is unacceptable. If the leadership of a company were not functioning properly and producing subpar results, there would be outrage amongst the board and stockholders.
Parents, students and the school committee, as the board members and stockholders of the high school, should demand either turnover or wholesale changes to the administration to ensure that the administration is only getting the best results for the high school. Sending the occasional email or small petition to Head of School Anthony Meyer does little to foster change. If the high school community wants to see an end to the administration’s incompetence, it must hold the administration accountable by having greater influence on school committee meetings and town elections. The community could take greater control over the Brookline High School Innovation Fund, a non-profit which gives grants to the school for programming, to cut off funds from the school when substantive corrective action is not taken, and raise awareness in the media to bring the incompetence of the BHS administration to a wider audience.
With almost zero effective change to the personnel, operations and actions of the high school administration, there is no reason to believe that the incidents described above won’t happen again. The high school is a storied institution, and it is a shame that the current administration has tarnished its reputation by demonstrating a clear lack of competence. The high school community deserves better, and excellence should be demanded from our administrators. There should be a re-emphasis on enforcing rules and upholding a rigorous educational environment. Going forward, the high school community has to demand competency from the administration.
