A small group of Roxbury and Dorchester activists sounded off Friday morning against Mayor Michelle Wu’s plan to move the John D. O’Bryant High School from Roxbury Crossing to the former West Roxbury Educational Complex (WREC) site at a press conference in front of O’Bryant School.

Sadiki Kambon, director of the Black Community Information Center, Inc., and chairman of the Nubian Square Coalition, said while their numbers were few in front of the microphone Friday, he and Dorchester activist Priscilla Flint represented the “viewpoint of a lot of folks out there” that are unhappy and suspicious of the plan.

“This facility is vast and it’s capable of housing the numbers of students for expansion,” said Kambon, noting they want a new Madison Park Vocational Technical School side-by-side with a new O’Bryant on the existing site. “They know that. We know it. But they’re trying to make it appear like this is a better opportunity for our youngsters. It’s not a better opportunity because clearly what they want to do is move it to West Roxbury and the dominant numbers of students will be white students benefiting from the STEM training out there.

“There’s a lot more going on socially that’s not being talked about, and we recognize what the objective is in moving it to West Roxbury,” he added.

Mayor Wu and Supt. Mary Skipper unveiled a plan earlier this month that featured a new and renovated Madison Park school on its existing site and in the current O’Bryant buildings. Both campuses have shared a large site at Roxbury Crossing since the 1990s. In turn, the shuttered and vacant WREC on VFW Parkway would be fully renovated – but not demolished – using as much as $50 million to construct a new O’Bryant High School focusing on high-quality STEM training.

Construction on the new O’Bryant could start in 2025. The move would include expanding the middle school at O’Bryant by about 400 students, creating a total enrollment of 2,000 for the school and leaving Madison Park to occupy the entire Roxbury Crossing campus.

“The high schools’ vision that the Mayor laid out last week begins with investing in Madison Park and the John D. O'Bryant, two schools that serve disproportionate numbers of Black and Latinx students when compared to the District overall,” a Wu spokesperson said in a statement. “Before sharing the proposal publicly, the City and BPS teams spoke with a multigenerational group of students, staff, and alumni and heard a clear desire for both schools to have their own state-of-the-art facilities.”

The statement said they have proposed massive investments into both schools, including what they believe will be a nation-leading vocational technical high school in the heart of Roxbury, and a STEM facility at the new O’Bryant in West Roxbury.

“We will continue to deliver on these major facilities commitments and improve learning environments for our students,” the statement added.

The Mayor’s Office noted especially that they have heard some skepticism of the move, but they have also heard a lot of support in the community and amongst school leaders and alums – to include the O’Bryant family members, who live in Dorchester and Mattapan.

Of note as well, the Mayor’s Office said that since the O’Bryant is an exam school, the seats in the admissions process are distributed equally across socioeconomic tiers. That, they said, would ensure that the O’Bryant student body would remain as diverse in West Roxbury as it is today in Roxbury, and would not eventually benefit more white students than Black students.

There is a parent/community meeting about the O’Bryant move on June 20, which was supposed to be in person at the school but has now been moved to a Zoom meeting online. A parent meeting for Madison Park school community is scheduled for June 21.

Kambon and Flint said they don’t believe the discussion with the community about such a large move was enough. They said Roxbury Community College, Madison Park, O’Bryant, and the forthcoming Benjamin Franklin Institute (under construction in Nubian Square right now) have a synergy building and were working together already. This takes that energy out of the heart of the Black community and places it in a predominately white neighborhood that is difficult to get to, both said.

“The bottom line is Michelle Wu needs to come to the table and talk to us,” said Flint. “This has got to stop…We’re tired of getting pushed off the table. I’m sick of Michelle Wu and the City Council disrespecting us and we’re going to do something.”

Kambon said they have architects in the community who believe the existing campus has plenty of room to transform both schools side-by-side without having to move either one – referencing noted architect David Lee of Stull & Lee Architects.

“They could take that $50 million and apply it to this situation here and have a state-of-the-art facility,” Kambon said. “If you go to Madison Park, it’s a huge facility that’s underutilized…At the same time, we have architects out here we know that could transform this into what it needs to be for both schools.”