Mayor Walsh said on Monday that a forthcoming report from the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) evaluating efforts to improve and support the BPS district won’t ‘be pretty.’

The audit, which DESE is required to conduct periodically for all school districts, will be the first for the Boston school system since 2009 when state officials found some of the biggest challenges facing the district had to do with English learners and students with disabilities.

Speaking on the issue with WBUR’s Radio Boston co-hosts Tiziana Dearing and Zoe Mitchell on the ‘Mondays with the Mayor’ segment, Walsh said, “We’re working with [DESE] right now.”… “It’s not going to be a real pretty report. We’re reviewing it now. The School Department is reviewing it, but it’s important for us, at the end of the day, regardless of what the study is ... that we need to be one great district for every single student. We’ve seen a decrease of 1.9 percent in our graduation rates in 2019. They’re still higher than 2017. And over the last 10 years, [the rats are] up significantly.”

Asked if he thinks the state will recommend more involvement or other actions, Walsh said “We’ll see. I mean, I might welcome [the state] in. I might bring them in. Let’s be quite honest here. I think a lot’s been written in the [newspapers]... one-sided stories, not giving enough credit to the district and what’s been done there.

“We’re talking about an area... a school district of 56,000 kids. A third of those kids that go to those schools are kids that English is not their first language at home. About 4,500 of those kids are homeless kids,” the mayor said. “Two-thirds of those kids live in poverty. We have buildings that were built before WWII that we depend on to have our kids educated in. There was no plan before I became the mayor to fix those buildings.

He added: “There’s a lot of work that needs to be done here [and] it’s not simply just instruction in the classroom, it’s also wraparound services... So, it’s not just simply the educational piece in there. It’s a lot of other things that we have to do.”

Does he think there might recommendations for a state takeover of some Boston schools, or a receivership given that the state already has receivership of two Boston schools?  

“I’m not even gonna go there right now,” answered Walsh. “I think we’re in the process of dissecting the report and seeing exactly what the report says. We’re not even at that conversation point yet... Over the last six years since I’ve been mayor, we’ve done plenty. We’ve done a lot, we’ve made investments... I mean, we have performing schools.

“The state gave a report the other day that we’re making significant improvement in a lot of our districts,” he added. “We have more Level 1 and Level 2 schools right now than any other period in the history of our schools. We’re building more new schools right now, quite honestly, than any other period, maybe since the beginning of our district. “There are a lot of good advancements [being] made... This has been about four decades of turmoil... and you’re not going to turn that around in three or four years.”

This report was first published by WBUR 90.9FM on Feb. 24. The Reporter and WBUR share content through a media partnership.