Roxbury parcel was eyed for new O’Bryant School

Relocation plans still in flux for institution

Yawu Miller

Yawu Miller is the former senior editor of the Bay State Banner. He has written for the Banner since 1988.... VIEW BIO

Mayor Michelle Wu’s now-scuttled plan to move the John D. O’Bryant School of Math and Science from its Roxbury location to the West Roxbury Education Complex was never popular, drawing opposition from students, teachers and parents at the exam school.

But her call for the relocation from the heart of the Black community to a predominantly white neighborhood got some in the school community thinking about a new space for the school, which currently shares a building complex with Madison Park Technical Vocational High School.

In June last year, Aparna Lakshmi, a teacher at the O’Bryant School, suggested in a Banner op-ed that the city consider a new building for the school on Parcel P3, a publicly-owned seven-and-a-half acre site that abuts the Madison Park campus.

As it turns out, the developers of the site, HYM Investment Group and My City at Peace, proposed the same move.

City officials acknowledged that discussions with the developer happened, but said they ended the talks after determining the site would not be sufficient for the school.

“It wouldn’t meet our needs,” said Dion Irish, chief of operations for the City of Boston. “It made more sense to go back to the drawing board.”

But some say the city missed an opportunity to relocate the O’Bryant, named for the first Black member of the elected Boston School Committee in the modern era, to a site that would have drawn broader support from the school community, keeping the academy closer to accessible public transportation, nearby medical facilities and labs linked to the school, and population centers.

Members of the development team would not discuss their negotiations to site the school on Parcel P3. Irish said the plan called for the school to occupy the portion of the site currently occupied by the old Whittier Street Health Center building, across from the Boston Police Headquarters at the intersection of Ruggles Street and Tremont Street.

The developers would have swapped that 100,000-square-foot portion of the site for 100,000 square feet of land adjacent to Madison Park High School, Irish said.

But Irish said keeping the O’Bryant in that area would mean the school would have to continue sharing athletic fields with Madison Park, that a school building there would have to be accessed via Whittier Street — which the city said would be too narrow — and that the school building could displace the Good Shepherd Church of God in Christ, which currently abuts the old Whittier Street Health Center building.

The proposal to move the O’Bryant to West Roxbury, which Wu announced in June of last year, met with opposition early on, with the Boston City Council ultimately taking a stand against the move. Students, parents and teachers opposed the move, with many arguing the city’s current Roxbury location positions its students to take advantage of internships and other learning opportunities in the Longwood Medical Area and in downtown Boston.

The long commute times to the West Roxbury campus, which sits less than a mile from the Dedham line, also concerned members of the O’Bryant community. Wu backed off from the plan in February.

O’Bryant parents, who also pushed for the P3 site, said the city should have taken the developers’ plans more seriously.

“If this is not being considered, it seems like this is more of a punitive approach than a constructive one,” said parent Rahul Dhanda.

Dhanda’s charge echoes a claim made by some opposed to Wu’s plan to lease White Stadium to a professional women’s soccer team. Last week, Boston Globe columnist Joan Vennochi criticized the mayor’s assertion that the city would withdraw its proposed investment of $50 million into the renovation of the stadium if the professional soccer team was barred by court order from leasing the facility. A judge last Friday denied opponents of the leasing agreement a preliminary injunction that would have blocked the deal from moving forward.

As for the O’Bryant, Irish said there are now no immediate plans to relocate or renovate the school, which currently occupies two buildings in the same five-building complex as Madison Park. Two other buildings in the complex remain vacant. Plans for the O’Bryant will be considered as part of a broader planning process for Boston’s high schools.

“At this point, it makes sense to go back to the drawing board,” Irish said. “We’re committed to a long-term plan.”

The city is moving forward with plans to renovate Madison Park, the city’s only vocational education high school, Irish said.