Free Republic

A former Boston Public Schools (BPS) academic dean who shot a student in the head was convicted Thursday of recruiting teens into joining a gang, according to MassLive. A member of the Latin King and Queen Nation, and an ex-academic dean at BPS, 63-year-old Shaun Harrison, also known as “King Rev,” was sentenced to 218 months in prison after pleading guilty to “conspiracy to conduct enterprise affairs through a pattern of racketeering activity” in August 2022, the District of Massachusetts U.S. Attorney’s Office announced, according to MassLive. As an employee at English High School, his job was to counsel troubled...

A new state law that bolsters a superintendent’s ability to fire teachers at underperforming schools could be undermined in Boston because administrators routinely neglect a basic task: evaluating teachers. About half the city’s approximately 5,000 teachers have not received an evaluation in the past two years, and a quarter of the city’s 135 schools have not conducted evaluations during that period, according to a report commissioned by the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education that was provided to the Globe yesterday. Under the law, superintendents can terminate teachers at a failing school only for “good cause,’’ elevating the importance of job...