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The board also unanimously approved changing the name of the Jeremiah Burke High School in Dorchester to the Dr. Albert D. Holland High School of Technology, in honor of a former principal who guided the school through an academic renaissance in the 1980s.
The closures are part of a significantly scaled back proposal, unveiled in May, that originally was expected to include a large number of consolidations to compensate for the loss of more than 8,000 students over the last decade. Boston Public Schools now educates a little more than 48,000 students.
The issue of school closures has been highly charged since at least January, when BPS released a long-term facilities plan that said up to half of the district’s 119 schools could close in the coming years. Superintendent Mary Skipper later refuted the most extreme estimates, emphasizing that half the schools would not close.
The resulting proposal, although short on school consolidations, includes a number of program expansions, such as formalizing programs that serve migrants at three secondary schools in 2024-2025 school year and planning for the implementation of nine new bilingual education programs in both elementary and secondary schools and two additional newcomer programs in the 2025-2026 school year.
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In introducing the facility changes Monday night, Skipper warned the district’s long-term facilities planning would lead to more school closures in the coming years, as the district aims to increase high-quality instruction and modernize school buildings.
“We recognize the closures are not easy, but the work we’re doing is important for the entire district’s ecosystem and future generations of students,” she said.
The vote on the Frederick was a formality because the School Committee had already endorsed a policy in 2019 to eliminate all middle schools. The Frederick will be the last one next school year, following this summer’s merger of UP Academy Boston, a middle school, with UP Academy Dorchester, a K-8 school. BPS is doing away with its middle schools as part of an effort to have most elementary schools end at grade 6 and most high schools begin at grade 7.
About 325 students attend the Frederick, which is about half the number enrolled in the school two decades ago. More than 100 students attend the West Zone Early Learning Center.
Many of the early learning center’s programs will merge with the Hennigan school, which currently does not have preschool or prekindergarten. Under the restructuring, the Hennigan will drop its seventh and eighth grades.
City Councilor Ben Weber implored BPS during a public comment period to do a better job of working with the community on tough facility decisions, noting he has received more than 100 emails about the West Zone proposal.
“I think it just speaks to the confusion and concern about the plan and the process that was followed,” said Weber, who has two children in BPS. “If we are going to be transparent and have a process for closures, we need to think about a predictable timeline where people in the community can actually understand what’s going on.”
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Melissa Jones, a first grade teacher at the Hennigan, urged the board to approve consolidating the West Zone with the Hennigan, saying it would strengthen early childhood education programs for both communities.
“We are excited to enhance the connection between our staff and the ELC,” she said.
The proposal to change the name of the Burke was pushed by a group of alumni and community members, who gathered 775 signatures in support and was presented to the School Committee earlier this month. The school’s namesake, Jeremiah E. Burke, was superintendent of Boston schools in the 1920s and ‘30s.
Holland served as the Burke’s head of school from 1982 to 1993 and helped to improve the academic performance of the school by adding staff and new programs and providing students with a safe learning environment.
Throughout Holland’s more than 30-year career in BPS and into his retirement, various superintendents have turned to him to calm schools in crisis. In the mid-1970s, he worked as an administrator at South Boston High School, where he helped to ensure students had a smooth transition as racial tensions flared in the community over court-ordered desegregation.
After Holland retired, former superintendent Tommy Chang called him into duty to temporarily run Madison Park Technical Vocational High School and then to help ease racial tensions at Boston Latin School.
The Rev. Miniard Culpepper urged the committee to approve the proposal.
“I’m not sure how we would have fared without the mentoring of Al Holland during busing,” said Culpepper, who as a BPS high school student in the 1970s met Holland when he was a mentor at the Boys and Girls Club.
James Vaznis can be reached at james.vaznis@globe.com. Follow him @globevaznis.
