Brighton Students, Parents Lament BPS Proposal To Close Mary Lyon High School

Boston Public Schools proposed closing the Mary Lyon Pilot High School at a virtual press conference last week, dealing a blow to parents and students who described the Brighton school as an anchor to the neighborhood and the many high-needs students — students who are English learners or former English learners, low-income, or who have disabilities — who attend.

The final decision to close the school now falls to the Boston School Committee, which is set to discuss the Lyon’s fate at a regular meeting Jan. 22. In interviews, students and parents described the possible closure as a loss to the wider district: the Lyon was Boston’s first full-inclusion high school when it opened in 2008, and is still known for its low student-teacher ratio today.

The school’s closure, which would go into effect after the 2025-2026 academic year, would leave Brighton without a small public high school option. Students that want to continue attending school in their neighborhood would go to Brighton High School, which is six times larger than Lyon.

The proposal represents the latest step in Boston Public Schools’ long-term plan to consolidate many small and under-enrolled schools throughout the city in order to manage the district’s budget. Mary Lyon’s enrollment has been gradually declining since the pandemic, from a high of 137 students in 2020, to 95 in 2024. The school also lacks its own gymnasium, cafeteria, and sports teams, leaving them dependent on those of other nearby schools.

In addition to closing the high school, BPS recommended reconfiguring Mary Lyon’s K-8 lower school to cut its seventh and eighth grades. The district’s Jan. 7 recommendation would also downsize two other K-8 schools, and shutter two more schools outright — affecting over a thousand students in the city.

The wave of sweeping building changes are likely not the last to come from BPS’s Long Term Facilities Plan. Superintendent Mary B. Skipper warned in a Jan. 7 press conference that up to 14 more closures may be announced by 2030.

Skipper cited under-enrollment, under-utilized space, and the inability to offer necessary services to students with disabilities at that press conference as factors that determined which schools the district would close — though in a letter to Mary Lyon families, Skipper did not explain how the school had met those criteria.

“These steps are necessary to ensure that every student has a high quality seat in each of our schools – with high-quality options close to home,” Skipper wrote.

While the downsizing moves are meant to economize the city’s school budget and create a district with larger and better-resourced schools, parents and students described the closure as a “heartbreaking” decision for the neighborhood.

“Hearing that they were that willing to just shut down without some other way of restructuring or to do anything about it — we were heartbroken,” said Cristin M. Stegemann, the current president of the Lyon’s School Council, an advisory board of school affiliates, and Friends of Mary Lyon.

Audrey F. Desmond, who graduated from Lyon last year after landing there for its learning accommodations, called it a “shock.”

Small class sizes are a hallmark of the school, whose full-inclusion model integrates students with special learning and behavioral needs with their general education peers in classrooms split between one-third high needs — students with learning disabilities or designated as low-income — and two-thirds general education students.

The Lyon School opened as an elementary school in 1992 before eventually expanding into a middle and then high school. The high school’s full-inclusion program was the first of its kind in the BPS System.

Though the high school’s test scores are lower than both district and state averages, Lyon’s high-needs students experience better graduation rates than the state average. In 2023, the four-year graduation rate for Lyon’s students with disabilities was 90.5 percent, compared to 81.8 percent statewide, with similar statistics for its low-income students.

The school’s tight-knit culture received recognition during the pandemic for coming out of the difficult remote period with higher attendance rates than before the pandemic, virtually unseen in schools nationwide who saw chronic absenteeism rates during the pandemic.

BPS spokesperson Sujata Wycoff wrote in a statement that “we fully recognize that the news of the closure has been difficult and we are deeply committed to supporting the Mary Lyon community through the transition.”

“We remain grateful for the continued feedback throughout this process,” she added.

But some parents worry that students will struggle to transition to a larger school environment, offered by Brighton High.

“The teachers take the extra care so they feel wanted there, they feel safe there, they feel like they can talk to anybody there,” Stegemann said. “To go from a small school to this big, huge school — it’s intimidating.”

Miner, Stegemann, and Elaine McCauley Meehan, former president of both the School Council and of the Friends of Mary Lyon, proposed that the Lyon move into the Brighton High building so teachers could continue offering full-inclusion services.

“We live in Brighton, our kids should be able to go to school in Brighton, and they’re making that harder and harder to do,” Stegemann said. “They’re taking options away from families that live here. It’s not right.”

Current junior Amber Q. Norwich said that the mood among current students was more resigned. “A lot of kids are just accepting it,” she said. “They’re like, ‘We can’t really do much about it.’”

Lyon graduates expressed disappointment over its closure.

“I hope they come together and save the school,” 2021 graduate Andrew P. Flaherty said.

“These children that need Mary Lyon because they need the accessibility to their education needs and they need the extra support,” Desmond said. “They’re not going to be able to get it at those other schools because they’re so overly-populated.”

—Staff writer Angelina J. Parker can be reached at angelina.parker@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @angelinajparker.

—Staff writer Emily T. Schwartz can be reached at emily.schwartz@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @EmilySchwartz37.