Tevez Schale will graduate before construction is expected to begin on the relocation of the John D. O'Bryant School to the vacant West Roxbury High School campus, but he can't help but think of the impact it could have for his younger classmates.
"Most of our kids are like, people of color, and West Roxbury, that's really far from neighborhoods like Roxbury and Dorchester and East Boston," said Schale. "It's going to be a long way to get there."
Ethel Ferguson has a son who is a Junior at the O'Bryant school. Her older son went to West Roxbury High School before it closed.
"Moving them to another building -- I'm sorry, but I think they are making the biggest mistake they can make. I think they are going to lose a lot of students," said Ferguson. "Right now, it's a 20-minute drive, and when you are going to move all these kids to West Roxbury, especially where the MBTA doesn't run well, the school buses don't run well, some of these kids are going to take an hour, hour and a half to get to school."
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As part of the proposal announcement, Boston Public Schools said the district has begun mapping out a transportation plan that will provide dedicated shuttles from transit hubs across Boston, including the West Roxbury MBTA Commuter Rail station, to connect students with the campus for classes and before and after-school programming.
Rahul Dhanda is an O'Bryant parent who is concerned about the reliability of BPS buses.
"Our experience with the Boston Public School busing system has been very problematic, so a proposal to increase busing, I don't think is going to solve this," Dhanda. "I think that the expectation that we'd be able to find all the bus drivers we don't have now, and add more, isn't going to close the gap around making transportation accessible."
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The proposed relocation aims to provide a state-of-the-art STEM campus for O'Bryant students. It would also enable the O'Bryant school to grow from around 1,600 students to 2,000 students, adding 400 seats at the STEM-focused exam school.
Schale worries the distance could be a barrier for extracurricular activities.
"I feel like some parents are going to be like, 'It's going to take you too long to get home, so go home right after school,' so it's going to be, like, a drastic change."
"It's going to limit the opportunities of kids around this area, which, like, usually don't have too many opportunities to begin with," said O'Bryant junior Yandel Lopez.
If the proposal is approved by the school committee, renovation of the West Roxbury campus could being in 2025 with the move the following year.
