On October 6, the unelected Boston School Committee sent home a message in the backpacks of students from seven schools to their parents. The message wasn’t a report card or a progress report or a permission slip for a field trip or an award. The message was stark: “Your child’s school is closing.”

Since then, folks have been organizing to fight back. Six hundred parents, students, teachers, staff and community members packed an October 27 School Committee meeting that was supposed to discuss the school closures for a vote the following week. The School Committee assured us that they would listen “as long as it takes.” They didn’t.

Angry speaker after angry speaker railed against the accusation of “under-performing” and “undeserving” schools. The crowd defied the Committee by shouting them down and chanting between speakers. One energetic student leading the “They say cutback? We say fight back!” chant lost his voice. The Committee turned off the lights and told us all to go home.

The next week, they didn’t vote to shut down seven schools as planned: just one. The fight isn’t over as this agenda of privatization and union busting, backed by the Mayor, Wal-Mart, Microsoft and even the president, will not be stopped without a determined, ongoing fight. The unelected Boston School Committee presents us with their new plan on December 8 and a vote on December 15. See socialistalternative.org for reports about the struggle.