Let the Students Be Heard: Put Us on the Feb. 13 Agenda

Roxbury Prep High School students stood outside in the cold in front of Boston City Hall on Jan. 16, when they should have been on the Boston Planning & Development Agency’s meeting agenda.

Tabreia Vann-Crump, a Roxbury Prep junior, was at City Hall this week asking for help to get the project placed on the February 13 agenda. Tabreia’s very compelling request to Boston Mayor Marty Walsh for help is published below.

Malcolm X said “education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today.” For my peers and me, this means education is our license to drive and open up doors of opportunities and that if we prepare ourselves now and learn as much as we can, in the future we’ll meet our goals in life.

Sadly, the students at my school, Roxbury Prep High School, have been denied the opportunity to learn in a single unified high school building that can put all of us together in one facility that we deserve. Month after month, we wait for the City to put our high school project on the agenda of the Boston Planning and Development Committee--the agency that can deny or approve our future home.

As a Roslindale resident, as well as a Roxbury Prep student, I have attended or spoken at various community meetings. In those meetings, our school took in a lot of feedback and even changed the size of the building to accommodate the community’s response. The traffic studies have been done. We have done everything we were supposed to do. The current empty auto repair shop and used car lot is actually zoned for a school.

Why not our school?

I have been attending Roxbury Prep for six years now, and I imagined myself and many others too have imagined themselves in a high school building after middle school.

When people ask me why I love Roxbury Prep so much, their questions make me think they are confused or misunderstand what my school is all about.

For me and hundreds of my peers, our school means we are going to college. It means that we take college prep courses that are not available to all kids of color in this city or most other cities in America. In my high school career, by the time I graduate next year, I will have taken 10 AP classes. Why? Because we know that taking AP classes in high school sets students up for success in college.

Last year, 94% of our seniors matriculated into four-year colleges, and 100 percent of seniors took at least one Advanced Placement (AP) class, with 62 percent passing at least one AP exam. By comparison, across the country, only 39% of public school students take an AP exam during high school and 24% actually pass an exam prior to graduating. (College Board, 2018)

When you consider that data, anyone can see that Roxbury Prep holds the foundation and gives children of color the opportunity to be able to get the chance to learn and to advocate for themselves. Because we are succeeding academically, we are literally changing history. And yet, when you look at what might be behind the delay in getting our building--you have to consider that maybe history hasn’t changed so much after all.

Maybe the ugly history of segregation is repeating itself.

Roxbury Prep is a place where we as students challenge ourselves to go beyond and to take on challenges we have never taken before. I am for Roxbury Prep, but that doesn’t mean we are against Boston public schools or any school district. We’re all public school children deserving of the best facilities for our education.

The Boston Planning & Development Agency continues to let month after month pass without putting our high school project on the agenda. We are children of the future but if that’s the case why are our voices not being heard?

Today I am speaking on behalf of myself and 1,500 other children who deserve to be heard at this public agency that is supposed to serve us. We will continue to fight for Roxbury Prep to have an official high school building.