Busing in the Boston Public Schools, Personal Insights on the 50th Anniversary

JULY 2024 PODCAST -- This September will mark the 50th anniversary of Judge Arthur Garrity’s decision to implement busing in the Boston Public Schools as a strategy to desegregate the school system. This past year, JFYNetWorks has featured three individuals who have had direct knowledge and experience in the long struggle for equity in education then and now. This podcast highlights our conversations with JFY’s Deputy Director and Director of Development Paula Paris, community activist Lew Finfer, and civic legend Hubie Jones.

PODCAST HIGHLIGHTS

• [Timestamp 12:01 – 12:30] Paula Paris: "It was a live experience and something you just remember that human beings are capable of this behavior. People did not want the schools to be integrated and the purpose of the integration to me, and I think going back and reading the case was inequality and I think it was equality of resources."
• [Timestamp 13:59 – 14:27] Lew Finfer: "Garrity set hiring goals for hiring teachers of color and principals of color and the exam schools, he ordered them to be 1/3 of students of color. So, there were a number of positive things that he ordered, and you know help change the system and some of that would have happened but not as dramatically without those court orders that were made you know between 1974 and 1980."
• [Timestamp 26:52 – 27:15] Hubie Jones: "You have to have things like the arts, music, plays, dance, which are joyous things that are part of the learning process because if there's no joy in the school, then there's no joy in learning. Who's going to invest in [that type of school] in any major way?"

MORE ABOUT JFYNetWorks

Today, JFYNetWorks addresses the college readiness disconnect by providing focused blended, hybrid, and remote learning programs in high school to help students build the academic skills they need to enter college or technical training to earn academic credit. The JFYNetWorks blended program model — infusing specialized online content into the regular curriculum — also facilitates scalability, as the low cost of the online platform can easily be expanded to entire schools.

To learn more visit JFYNet.org

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• JFY Guides Student Achievement. Learn More Through Stories of Success.

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