MassGOP chair slams Boston City Council for canceling hearing on free museum push for all children

MassGOP Chair Amy Carnevale slammed the Boston City Council for canceling a hearing weighing expansion of a free museum pilot to all city schoolchildren, saying that the decision was made by a former Wu staffer loyal to the mayor.

Carnevale, in a strongly worded Monday statement, condemned the council’s decision to abruptly cancel a hearing on the matter with no explanation last Friday, three days after it was scheduled by the body’s education committee chair Henry Santana, a councilor who previously worked for Mayor Michelle Wu.

“One can draw a correlation between City Councilor Henry Santana’s decision to cancel this hearing and his loyalty to his former boss, Mayor Wu,” Carnevale said. “It is apparent that children who do not align with Mayor Wu’s narrative are being excluded, and there seems to be no immediate inclination to extend the program to encompass all Boston children.

“A mayor should not perpetuate divisions among children based on where they go to school,” Carnevale added. “If a proposition such as free museum visits for Boston children is put forth, it should inherently encompass all children without exception.”

Carnevale was among the early critics of the makeup of the pilot program, BPS Sundays, when it was announced by the mayor in her state of the city address in late January, saying at the time that Wu’s decision to exclude charter school students was politically motivated.

The program waives admission fees for Boston Public Schools students and up to three family members attending six cultural institutions on the first and second Sunday of each month through at least August.

The two councilors sponsoring a resolution calling for expansion of the program, Erin Murphy and Ed Flynn, have also been critical of the mayor’s decision.

Their call for immediate favorable vote on the measure was blocked at a council meeting last month by former Wu staffer Councilor Sharon Durkan, whose objection automatically sent it to committee.

Council President Ruthzee Louijeune referred the non-binding resolution to the education committee, chaired by Santana, who said Saturday that he canceled the hearing because he wanted more time to consider data that would be gathered once the pilot had been running for a few more Sundays.

Wu said Sunday that her administration would not be reopening negotiations during the middle of the pilot, and previously stated that the funding was not there to expand the $1 million program during the seven-month pilot period.

The mayor indicated that city staff would be made available to present updated data toward the end of the pilot, perhaps pushing the canceled council hearing to the summer.

Citing the past objection from Durkan, which the MassGOP criticized in a prior statement, Carnevale said, “A discernible pattern is emerging of these former Wu staffers advancing the mayor’s agenda within the City Council.”