Christopher Huffaker

1 week ago | bostonglobe.com | Christopher Huffaker

Possible changes, expected to be presented at Tuesday night’s School Committee meeting, include eliminating the bonus points to applications students receive for attending high-poverty schools, redesigning the socioeconomic “tiers” that students compete within so that each tier has the same admission rate, and adding a set of seats that students compete for city-wide.

1 month ago | bostonglobe.com | Christopher Huffaker

Every day, more than 600 Boston Public Schools buses zigzag across the city to transport more than 22,000 children to and from hundreds of schools. School choice, a legacy of Boston’s integration busing system that allows students to skip campuses closest to them in favor of another school they deem more desirable, means about half of students attend schools outside their neighborhoods. By state law, the district is also required to bus private and charter school students who live in the city.

1 month ago | bostonglobe.com | Christopher Huffaker

The fatal crash is one of about 400 “incidents” the district’s buses are involved in each year, the officials said, or roughly one or two per day. Most of the crashes involve minimal damage, according to the city, such as a bus bumping a parked car.

1 month ago | bostonglobe.com | Christopher Huffaker

METHUEN — The state education board voted Tuesday to require the state’s popular trade schools to distribute their scarce seats by lottery and approved new high school graduation requisites after voters last fall dropped the requirement students pass the MCAS exam. The vocational school decision follows years of criticism from advocates who argue the schools’ selective admissions processes lock many marginalized students out of the schools.

1 month ago | bostonglobe.com | Christopher Huffaker

On April 28, a Boston Public Schools bus struck and killed a 5-year-old student, Lens A. Joseph. The bus had just dropped Joseph off near his home in Hyde Park, after previously hitting two parked cars in Mattapan and fleeing that scene. The bus driver, Jean Charles, has since resigned ahead of a scheduled termination hearing. On the day of the crash, he had an expired state-required certification. Fatal crashes involving school buses are unusual, particularly with so young a victim.