Major moves eyed for two Boston high schools – The Boston Globe

Our building is 101 years old. Where is our new state-of-the-art educational complex? Our science wing? Our swimming pool? Short of that, how about an elevator? Even just some toilet seats would be a good start.

Aaron Johnson

Dorchester Center

The writer teaches law, history, and English as a second language.

West Roxbury is not the best location for O’Bryant School

Re “Big changes proposed for 2 high schools” (Page A1, June 7): While I heartily applaud the proposed investment in Madison Park Technical Vocational High School — it is decades overdue — the plan to move the John D. O’Bryant School of Math and Science to West Roxbury from the Roxbury campus it shares with Madison Park seems poorly thought-out.

West Roxbury was never a place for a districtwide school, and it still isn’t. The location is awful to get to for just about anyone, and the proposed shuttles between the school and the nearby commuter rail station won’t cut it.

Instead, can’t the city use the West Roxbury site for housing development and find a space closer to the center of the city for a new O’Bryant?

Chris Giuliani

West Roxbury

The O’Bryant has a long history of moving — and thriving

I wonder whether any other Boston public school has faced as many building-related crises as the John D. O’Bryant School of Math and Science and its predecessors, Mechanics Arts High School and Boston Technical High School. Despite the challenges, however, the school has not only survived. It has thrived.

In 1893 Mechanic Arts opened in an unfinished building in the Back Bay filled with more than 100 workmen. Its headmaster reported that some days students and teachers had to climb to the third floor, the only floor in use, on ladders. In 1957, after years of battles over the best way to accommodate its urgent need for additional space, it was decided to relocate what by then was Boston Tech from the Back Bay to the recently vacated Roxbury Memorial High School building. This involved moving a massive amount of equipment and machine tools. In 1960 the headmaster proudly reported, “Despite the hardships and inconveniences we had to suffer during the first half of the school year because of alterations going on in the building, the instruction, discipline, and student morale were exceedingly high.”

Now the school is facing another move, from its longtime home on Malcolm X Boulevard to a renovated facility in West Roxbury. This will undoubtedly create more unknowns, more pros and cons, more change, and more anxiety. Its long history shows that the O’Bryant will overcome any upcoming difficulties and continue to be a high-achieving STEM school that succeeds in preparing all its students for college, advanced learning, and highly skilled careers.

Go Tigers!

Tom Hayden

Chelmsford

The writer, a member of the Boston Tech class of 1957, researched and wrote an unofficial history of Boston Technical High School from its origins in 1893.

Madison Park’s students deserve the best, most up-to-date vocational education

When I began teaching at Madison Park in 1979, the entire complex was dedicated to vocational education. Students were bused in from all over Boston to take part in various vocational programs. Were we ever indignant when the O’Bryant took over half of the complex!

Now it appears as if Madison Park will be Madison Park again. I taught there for decades, during many of the “overhaul initiatives.” All failed. While there is merit in retaining traditional trades — automotive, carpentry, plumbing, etc. — this latest overhaul will be successful only if the vocational areas are added to, reconsidered, and retooled to reflect more current career areas, such as bioscience, information technology, systems analysis, and communications (aviation technology is a good start) and if serious recruiting and promotion are done in the middle schools.

Superintendent Mary Skipper knows a thing or two about school-to-career business partnerships and high tech. So I am optimistic. Madison Park is a great place, and its students deserve no less.

Patricia Crowley

Lexington