Editor’s Note: Earlier this month, the Boston Public Schools department announced plans to close three schools in response to declining enrollment and budget pressures. In addition to Charlestown High School and Greater Egleston High School in Roxbury, the city also plans to close the East Boston Early Education Center on Gove Street. Boston Superintendent Mary Skipper told local media that at the “East Boston Early Education Center, which serves kids pre-K through first grade, enrollment decline was so severe that school leaders closed classrooms.” Local parents disagree with the BPS’s data analysis and are organizing to fight the proposal which will go before the Boston School Committee on December 2.
Dear Members of the School Committee and Superintendent Skipper,
I am an East Boston parent writing ahead of the December 2 vote on the recommendation to close the East Boston Early Education Center. Every figure below comes from BPS’s own published data — the School Demand Reports for 2024-25, 2025-26 and 2026-27, and the district’s Decision-Making Metrics for Long-Term Facilities Planning, updated November 2, 2026.
The building is not underused by BPS’s own measure. The recommendation cites 63% utilization. That is a single-year snapshot — this year’s 114 students against a building capacity of 180. BPS’s own Decision-Making Metrics define utilization as enrollment divided by capacity averaged over five years, and by that measure the EEC is at 90.3% — inside the district’s target range of 84–114%. On that same five-year measure, no East Boston elementary school falls below the target range, and half are above 114%.
The enrollment decline follows BPS’s own seat cuts. Total seats at the EEC (K0 through grade 1) fell from 188 in 2024-25 to 142 in 2025-26 and 2026-27 — a cut of 46 seats. Students assigned fell from 166 to 122 — a drop of 44. The decline tracks the removed seats almost one for one. K0 seats were cut from 29 to 24 while the K0 waitlist stood at 107, then 128 families. And with only 142 seats offered in a building rated for 180, utilization could reach at most 79% even if every seat were filled — below the district’s own target. BPS should not use the results of its own cuts as evidence that families do not want this school.
Demand for the EEC is strong where it matters. The EEC has waitlisted families at K0 in all three years (107, 128, 38) and at K1 in all three years (19, 9, 15). It draws the most first-round top-three rankings for K0 of any program in East Boston every year, and in 2026-27 it drew 5.6 first-round top-three rankings for every open K1 seat — third-highest of any K1 program in the neighborhood.
The 12.5% “top three” figure does not single out the EEC. Adams Elementary has the identical 12.5% K2 rate and is not proposed for closure. The 22% comparison average is a simple mean pulled up by one school (Otis, 42.9%); the median of the other East Boston schools is 18.6%. The metric also leaves out the EEC’s strongest grade entirely — it does not measure K0 — and it counts only families who submit a choice form, which excludes the continuing students who hold 70% of the EEC’s K1 seats and 68% of its K2 seats. On the same spreadsheet, the EEC’s K1 top-three rate (15.1%) is higher than Adams, Guild, O’Donnell and Umana, and its three-year average K1 waitlist of 18 students is the third-highest in East Boston.
The receiving school’s numbers are weaker, not stronger. In 2026-27, the McKay’s general-education K2 program drew exactly one first-round top-three ranking, and the McKay filled 35% of its K2 seats against the EEC’s 80%. The McKay’s new K0 program drew the fewest first-round top-three rankings of all 25 K0 programs in the city. The McKay building already runs at 101.5% utilization on BPS’s five-year measure. On the Building Experience Score, the EEC rates 3 of 4 — the same as the McKay — and meets BPS’s standard for a continuum of services.
The buildings themselves argue for keeping the youngest children at the EEC. The EEC is the newer building, and it was designed for children ages 3 to 7: it has a gym, a cafeteria, a safe playground with two new play structures scaled for young children — and a bathroom inside every classroom, which anyone who has taught a room of 3- and 4-year-olds knows is not a small thing. Under the current plan, new K0 students in 2027-28 would start in the McKay building, which was not designed for preschoolers, and then move to the EEC building for K1. If the two schools combine, the sensible configuration is the reverse: retain the EEC as the McKay’s lower school, and keep all K0 classrooms in the building built for the children who will use them.
I ask the Committee to:
- Delay the December 2 vote until BPS publishes the full data and cost analysis behind this recommendation, including the EEC’s per-pupil cost, the projected savings from closure, and where those savings come from.
- Commit to seat counts in writing before any vote: at least 36 K0 seats in East Boston in 2027-28 (the EEC and McKay offer 36 together today) and at least 50 K1 seats in 2028-29.
- Explain why a guaranteed EEC-to-McKay pathway requires a closure. A pathway is an assignment-policy decision. The recommendation itself identifies the missing pathway — not the school’s performance — as the problem.
- If the buildings combine, make it a true merger: retain the EEC’s educators and its early-childhood model; keep the EEC building as the combined school’s lower school, with all K0 classrooms located there; and keep the EEC in 2027-28 registration, with seats offered to new families, until a final decision is made — so that the announcement itself does not manufacture the decline later cited to justify it.
If cost is the real driver of this recommendation, BPS should say so plainly and publish the numbers. Families can engage with an honest rationale. What the data published so far does not support is the claim that East Boston families do not choose this school.
Thank you for your consideration.
Yuliya Ali
East Boston parent
EEC K0-K1 past parent
EEC K0 hopeful for 2027
More detail offered below.
