School Committee & Superintendent

The Superintendent

Mary Skipper

Mary Skipper has been Superintendent of Boston Public Schools since September 2022. She runs a district of 44,416 students, proposes a $1.7 billion school budget, and is answerable to the School Committee, which hires her and can fire her. She took the job at a hard moment: the state had declared the district underperforming only months earlier, and BPS was one bad decision away from losing control of itself entirely.

The Superintendent is the person who runs the schools. The Committee is the body that sets the policy she carries out. When you want a rule changed, you go to the Committee. When you want a rule enforced, you go to her.

Seven appointed adults, and one student

All seven voting members are chosen by the Mayor. Chair Jeri Robinson and Vice Chair Rachel Skerritt were then selected by the Committee itself at its reorganization on January 5, 2026.

Then there is the eighth chair. A Boston high school student sits on this Committee: her name is Mah Noor and she is a junior at Brighton High School. Her seat carries no vote. What it carries is the right to be in the room, on the record, before the decision is made, and to be chosen by students rather than by the Mayor. Read how students won that seat and kept it.

The panel that picks your School Committee has seats open

Here is something worth more than most of what you will read about Boston politics. Every School Committee member reaches the Mayor’s desk through a Citizens Nominating Panel, a body of thirteen people that screens applicants and hands the Mayor a slate to choose from. It is the gate every single member of this Committee has walked through.

As of this writing, the Nominating Panel has open seats, and residents can apply to serve on it through the city’s boards and commissions portal.

Sit with that for a second. The bodies that decide the most contested things in Boston, zoning, licensing, development, the School Committee itself, are almost always full. The panel that chooses the people who run the schools is taking applications right now. That is a door standing open, and it is waiting for somebody to walk through it. See boards and commissions for how to apply.

How to testify. Actually do this.

This is the part the rest of the site has been pointing you at. Public comment is a real, legally protected slot at the front of a real meeting, and the people who sign up and show up get heard.

1. Find the meeting. The School Committee meets at the Bruce C. Bolling Municipal Building, 2300 Washington Street, Roxbury. Dates and agendas are posted in advance at bostonpublicschools.org, and meetings are streamed.
2. Read the agenda first. Testimony that names the item on the agenda lands, while general frustration slides off. Find the thing you want changed, then find its name.
3. Sign up before 4:30 p.m. on the day of the meeting. This is the hard deadline and the one that trips people, because it falls hours before the meeting starts rather than at the door.
4. Or send it in writing. Written testimony goes to lparvex@bostonpublicschools.org. It becomes part of the record. If speaking in front of a room terrifies you, write instead, and it still counts.
5. Say your name, your school, and one thing. You get a short slot. One clear ask, from a student who is actually in the building being discussed, is the most powerful testimony this Committee hears.

• School Committee office: 617-635-9014.
• Written testimony: lparvex@bostonpublicschools.org.
• Age and citizenship are not requirements. Public comment belongs to anybody who signs up in time, whatever their birthday and whatever their status.

Before you take the microphone, here is what it costs

The room really is open to you at any age and whatever your immigration status. Standing up in it also carries consequences, and you deserve to know them before you speak rather than afterwards. Read this, then decide for yourself.

You will be on the record, and on camera. The City Council’s own rules say it plainly: any person who enters a Council meeting or hearing to view or to testify grants permission to the Council to record and televise their presence and their testimony. School Committee meetings are broadcast live and archived too. Speaking in public means speaking in public, permanently, and the video does not come down afterwards.

A home address is not required. The School Committee asks a speaker for a name, an affiliation and a neighborhood, and neither body publishes any rule that demands your street address as the price of being heard.

Writing is a real door, not a lesser one. Written testimony carries the same weight in the record and puts nobody on camera. The School Committee takes it at lparvex@bostonpublicschools.org. The City Council takes it by email at city.council@boston.gov or by mail at 1 City Hall Square, Fifth Floor, and it will accept your testimony in any language you choose. No official source describes an anonymous option, so plan on your name being said out loud.

If your family’s status makes this feel dangerous, call somebody first. The Mayor’s Office for Immigrant Advancement is real, staffed, and answers the phone at 617-635-2980, and it runs free immigration consultations. Boston’s Trust Act, an ordinance the Council reaffirmed on December 6, 2024, limits how far Boston Police will go with federal civil immigration enforcement. Understand its limit: the Trust Act constrains the police, and it leaves the camera in the hearing room running. Those are two different questions, and you deserve a clear answer to both before you decide.

What this seat decides

Your schools

School Committee. Start times, the school calendar, bus routes and stops, the phone policy, athletics and activity fees, and anything in the student handbook. It sets district policy, and the total size of the school budget is voted by Town Meeting, or by your Mayor and Council in a city.

Your principal and your superintendent. The principal for how a school rule works day to day in your building. The superintendent for how the whole district runs. The School Committee hires exactly one employee, the superintendent, so a question about any other staff member goes to the district, not to the board.