Earlier this month, hundreds of parents filed into the Blue Hills Boys & Girls Club on Talbot Avenue to look at the first-ever showcase of suburban schools in the METCO program – a racial balancing organization that sends Boston students by bus to suburban districts for classes.

With changes to the program that allow for more choice, parents and suburban educators were able to meet and talk directly for the first time. While parents and students arrived, and district representatives unloaded placards, violin music played by METCO students filtered out to the street from the club’s foyer.

Not lost on anyone was the fact that 100 yards away a few afternoons earlier, several Boston Public School (BPS) elementary students were witnesses to a scene where more than 25 gunshots were fired near the Lee School – injuring two people and sending kids in after-school programs under desks for cover.

Inside the showcase, there was the promise for parents of a more peaceful environment and a choice that could help young city kids find successes. Yet, with the METCO choice, most – including President/CEO Milly Arbaje-Thomas – said there must be consideration given to the sacrifices.

“In general, parents are being more thoughtful of other school choices because there are many more choices than back in the day,” said Arbaje-Thomas. “Between the pandemic and all the other factors, they are playing a role in the choices parents make in their children’s education…METCO is its own different ballgame because you’re leaving your community. The commute is a sacrifice and you’re going to a space where you might be the only one that looks like you. There are many things to consider.”

METCO, formally the Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity, was established in 1966 by state law and is funded under the state’s Racial Imbalance Act, which allows for 3,100 students to go to 33 different suburban school districts. Some are as close as Brookline, while others, like Concord-Carlisle, can be more than an hour away. Though long-established, the program is going through a re-birth of sorts. In 2020, ten new suburban districts inquired about adding Boston students in their schools, and in 2021, about 85 new students were allowed to be funded for existing programs in Lynnfield, Reading, and Westwood.

“Particularly in Westwood, they only went to the middle school and up, and they opened up to all grades and it was the first time in the history of their participation in METCO that they expanded,” said Arbaje-Thomas. “Reading expanded by 40 students, which was the largest jump in one year. There was a new superintendent there and a new METCO director and they wanted to increase diversity.”

Under Arbaje-Thomas’s leadership, gone are the days when people would put their child on the wait list shortly after birth or stand in long lines outside the Dimock Health Campus for a wait-list spot. Instead, METCO has instituted an online process, a lottery, and discarded the list.

Parents can apply for their children at age 4, and they can also now choose three suburban districts preferences. Before, they simply got what became available, and they could either take it or leave it. Applications increased by almost 400 in the first year online, and the process has been streamlined. The changes will hopefully prevent METCO parents and students from feeling “boxed in,” said Arbaje-Thomas.

“Before, people came out of the hospital with the baby and onto the METCO wait list,” she said. “The list was enormous and not accurate. Now they apply when the time comes for school, and we have eliminated the old wait list. We decided to have parents make decisions about their children’s education when the right time comes – the year before they turn 5.”

To accentuate those changes, the first-ever Showcase of Schools on Dec. 10 allowed suburban schools to talk directly with prospective parents. The event highlighted the great educational opportunities, the high-level sports programs, safe schools, award-winning music ensembles, and better college opportunities. The trade-offs are the long commutes and the fact that students may feel alienated due to their race or ethnicity.

Kary Cabrera of Mattapan had her two young girls with her at the showcase looking at Wayland Schools – one of the longer commutes for the program. “My girls are in a very good school in BPS, but I also know kids in my neighborhood aren’t doing very well,” she said. “I have a teen-age stepdaughter and when she got to middle school, she became another person…I think it’s because of friends at school. I think I want to get my other kids in another school that could be better for them, especially as they get older.”

At the same time, she said, she likes to be a mother that’s involved and helping around the school. “Because these schools are so far from my house, I wouldn’t be able to do that, and I have to think about that. We’ll see what happens,” she said.

Students like Terrence Monroe – a fifth grader who goes to Brookline Public Schools and lives in Allston-Brighton, has thoroughly enjoyed his school, the education, and the family’s integration into the Brookline community. His mother, Alia Benmusa, grew up in Hyde Park and commuted to Concord-Carlisle within the METCO program from grade 2 to graduation and wants her son to access a better education.

“Last year returning from Covid-19 at fourth grade, he had fallen behind and wasn’t reading at grade level,” she said. “He was given extra support and was at grade level by Christmas. They really identified that and helped provide support to get at grade level and beyond.”

Melinda and Dayna Kennedy were representatives for the Swampscott Schools, where Dayna is a junior.
Seth Daniel photo

Melinda Kennedy sent her daughter Dayna to the Swampscott Schools in the sixth grade after she had been at the Mason K-8 School. With an older daughter at the Dearborn School in Roxbury, she said, she saw things that she wasn’t comfortable with.

“I just felt there was no way I wanted my daughter to be in that environment,” she said. “It wasn’t so much the education, but the students. I knew that because of the students her education would suffer and I didn’t want that to happen…It’s a sacrifice, but it’s the sacrifice we felt like we would want to make.”

For Dayna, now a junior in high school, the culture shock has been significant, and she cites incidents of racism as something that students endure. But, she added, the education and opportunities are like nothing she could have had in Boston.

“I didn’t know what my mom had gotten me into, but when I came home, I felt like I learned a lot of things I wouldn’t have learned at a BPS school,” she said.

“There are tough things with racism, especially because of misconceptions. The kids have a misconception that we come on a bus because we can’t afford a car and that all kids from Boston are poor. I don’t know if it’s gotten better. We do have good opportunities to educate people in the school and the community, though.” She suggested that parents look to get their kids into METCO at a very early age to establish deeper connections with the other students and the community.

Arbaje-Thomas said that many of the students find a great home despite the sacrifices, and noted that METCO students must be particularly focused.

“You don’t get up at 4 a.m. and get ready and get to the bus stop at 5 a.m. and not put your best foot forward and not get the best you can out of it,” she said. “It’s taken a few years to get here, but I’m really proud of the move in the METCO program,” she added.