Web site helps parents to weigh Hub school options

Brian Mickelson

With over 200 elementary, middle and high schools in the Greater Boston area, the process of selecting the right one for your son or daughter can be confusing, frustrating and overwhelming. Fortunately, a new Web site has emerged as a major resource for parents in making the best possible decision for their child’s education.

BostonSchoolOptions.org is a free online community service to help parents learn more about their children’s school choices. Run by the Boston Black Parents Alliance, a newly formed nonprofit organization, and funded through a grant from The Boston Foundation, the site was created by Justin Sallis, a former employee at Media and Technology Charter High School (MATCH) and Brighton High School.

Sallis, who formed the Web site with the help of MATCH founder Michael Goldstein, has only been in Boston for a handful of years, but it didn’t take him long to realize that parents need more guidance when it comes to sending their kids to the right school.

“In coming across parents and talking to them about schools and their experience with schools in Boston, I learned that not all parents were very familiar with the many options that were available to them,” he said.

In addition to the 122 “traditional” Boston Public Schools, dozens more dot the Hub’s landscape, including charter schools, pilot schools, exam schools, free private schools, low-cost Catholic schools and suburban schools made accessible by the Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity (METCO) program, which busses students from the city to schools in surrounding towns like Newton and Lexington.

The Web site separates schools into categories based on where they are located, and provides basic information like population demographics, enrollment costs and admission qualifications.

One thing the site does not do, however, is list any information that might “rank” one school higher than the other, such as average test scores. The site does contain the link to each school’s Web site, where such information is usually available.

According to Sallis, the site’s function is not to make judgments about which schools are better than others. Instead, its function is to connect parents to appropriate information so that they can decide for themselves the educational setting that best suits their children.

“The Web site is designed not necessarily to rank or put any of the schools in order, so with that in mind we don’t have the test scores up on the site,” Sallis said. “It is designed to simply describe the nature of the various types of schools, each with different philosophies on what education should look like. It takes the mystery out of what the options are, and help parents navigate the admissions process, which can be very tricky and varies from school to school.”

Some schools listed, such as low-cost Catholic schools, have different, religion-based curriculums and charge tuition. Others, like the exam and free private high schools, do not cost anything, but require that students pass tests and interviews in order to gain admittance. Still others, like the charter, pilot and METCO schools, have waiting lists that number in the thousands.

While sometimes discouraging, Sallis says knowing about these factors at least offers a head start for parents hoping to place their children into one of the schools.

“There’s also a mapping function on the Web site so that parents who are new to the district or are ‘first-time shoppers’ at school can simply enter in what it is they’re looking for as well as where they live in Boston, and the Web site will generate schools in the area that fit with their preferences,” Sallis added.

The most important thing, according to one BostonSchoolOptions.org user, is to start shopping for schools early on.

Shantae Tool, a married mother of two living in Dorchester, recently used the Web site when seeking a K-8 school that will accommodate her two children, Alzaria, 7, and Tesean, 4. Both currently attend Lee Academy Pilot School on Talbot Street, which serves children from preschool to fifth grade.

“The fact that Lee doesn’t go to eighth grade is problematic,” Tool said. “That’s why a lot of the schools are going K-8, because they’re trying to retain [students] as long as possible before they go to high school.”

Those middle school years are critical because the danger of students dropping out continues to increase even before they get to high school — a recently released Boston school system report identified eighth-graders with chronic absences as among those most likely to fail to graduate.

“A lot of the kids we’re losing, we’re losing them in grades from six to eight. I work a lot in the community and I don’t want my kids to fall into some black hole in grade six,” Tool said. “It’s hard to get them back on track, and I want my kids to stay on track with that same love of education through high school and hopefully college.”

With Alzaria in second grade, Tool has already started looking into schools for when her daughter reaches sixth grade. Two schools have caught her eye — one a charter school, the other a “traditional” public school.

“I like the Boston Collegiate Charter School,” she said. “My niece goes there. My sister loves it. They have a very good curriculum and a theme that keeps even a child that can go astray in line. The Mary Lyon School I have been looking into, as well.”

Tool understands that many of the best schools have waiting lists, but hopes that being proactive now will help her children reap the benefits in the years to come. BostonSchoolOptions.org has allowed her to search out all available options with relative ease, and she is hopeful that the site will go even further in its mission to help inform Boston parents, especially those without regular access to information on the Internet.

“I just hope that the site can be printed in the paper,” she said. “There’s so many parents that don’t have access to the information online … Everyone should be informed and have a fair shot.”