Friends of Vocational Technical & Agricultural Education,
The “Boston Globe” today published this piece concerning Madison Park.
David
OPINION
Boston cannot wait 10 years to rebuild Madison Park
Vocational schools connect students with well-paid blue-collar jobs, while helping employers overcome the state’s labor shortages.
By Marcela García Globe Columnist, February 25, 2025, 4:00 a.m.
Rendering of what Madison Park Technical Vocational High School will look like following renovations.
Here’s why Boston needs to speed up the timeline to rebuild Madison Park Technical Vocational High School: In a decade, “we will have run out of plumbers,” said Barry Bluestone, an emeritus professor at Northeastern and a longtime analyst of the Commonwealth’s housing trends. “We will have run out of tradespeople.”
He’s not the only one ringing alarms about the pipeline of blue-collar workers. Last week Governor Maura Healey’s Unlocking Housing Production Commission released a report saying the state faced a “critical labor shortfall” in construction and related trades that imperiled its ability to build enough housing.
Madison Park can be part of solving that problem — and the other workforce shortages in Massachusetts. But supporters of the chronically troubled school are worried the city’s approach has put it on the slow track.
The school isn’t fulfilling its full potential now for either students or employers because it’s much less desirable than other vocational schools in the state. There are many reasons for that — but at least part of the problem is the condition of the facility itself.
The good news is that after decades of neglect and many starts and stops, city officials have promised a $700 million, 10-year overhaul of Madison Park’s aging facilities. The bad news is that the city doesn’t want to spend $700 million, so instead of paying to rebuild Madison Park itself, which could lead to faster construction, it’s requesting state help from the Massachusetts School Building Authority. But the MSBA application process can be lengthy and bureaucratic, and there’s no guarantee that the state will approve the city’s request.
For many of the school’s supporters, the mayor’s decision to turn to the state is just another huge delay to realize Madison Park’s full potential. “Wu-topia at work again!” a commenter wrote on social media about the plan. A city politics observer told me the costly renovation price tag sounds about right but that “$700 million today is going to be a lot more tomorrow so I would have loved to see this done sooner rather than later.”
Some observers have connected Madison Park’s 10-year overhaul to the district’s larger struggles to make — and then stick to — an overall plan for its facilities, many of which are aging and underused. “I think this is larger than just Madison Park,” Michael Contompasis, a former BPS superintendent, said in an interview. “How many times have we read, written, talked about a blueprint for improving the facilities throughout the district? In order to do this effectively, you’ve got to consolidate the district first because you’ve got too many buildings and a lot of them are underutilized. So, they’re tweaking around the edges again.”
Another mystery is why the city is only focusing on Madison Park and not its next-door neighbor, the John D. O’Bryant School of Mathematics and Science. Both share campus facilities.
Wu specifically said that the request to receive state funds would apply solely to the Madison Park campus. “We know that there are some spaces that are shared, and so as those spaces would be updated, the O’Bryant community would also benefit from [being] fully modernized,” Wu said at a Madison Park event two weeks ago, according to the Dorchester Reporter.
That seems inefficient at best. The O’Bryant facilities are also in bad shape — why not redo the exam school at the same time?
“The O’Bryant and Madison Park are attached, literally. It’s a two-family [home],” Ross Wilson, executive director of the Shah Family Foundation and cohost of the “Last Night at School Committee” podcast, told me. “How could we just ignore this gem of a school?”
The district didn’t respond to a question about any renovation plans for the O’Bryant.
Despite its challenges, there are signs of progress at Madison Park. According to a district spokesperson, the school has seen growing enrollment and demand from students. Enrollment is up 7.5 percent since 2021, and for the first time in many years, Madison Park — where 53 percent of students are Hispanic and 41 percent are Black — ran a wait-list this year, according to the spokesperson.
Daily attendance is up 10 percentage points from last year. And yet the school faces struggles: In the latest MCAS results, only 19 percent of Madison Park students met or exceeded expectations in English — up from 11 percent two years ago; in math, only 7 percent did so, the same percentage of two years ago.
There does seem to be more energy and community support around the school. Bluestone established the Career Champions Network a few years back to advocate for Madison Park. Bluestone said that the organization’s core group of volunteers includes Jay Ash, the former state Secretary of Housing and Economic Development, and that 50 business leaders serve in different capacities, most commonly as members of advisory boards of programs taught at the school, like carpentry and plumbing.
“The business [community’s] input into the school is so critical,” Bluestone said. “We’ve been having guest speakers come to the school to talk about the kinds of jobs that students could get and sponsoring field trips for the students and the faculty.”
Waiting another decade to fully rebuild Madison Park is not feasible, Bluestone said. “There will be tremendous pressure on the governor and the mayor to put that money package together much sooner,” Bluestone said. “We have to speed that up.”
Next time you need a plumber, you might feel the same way.
Marcela García is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at marcela.garcia. Follow her on X @marcela_elisa and on Instagram @marcela_elisa.
David J. Ferreira
MAVA Communications Coordinator
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