The Mission Hill School was a small preK–8 public pilot school located in the Mission Hill and Jamaica Plain neighborhoods of Boston, Massachusetts. It was founded in 1997 by Deborah Meier, Elizabeth Knox Taylor, and colleagues, and was administered by the Boston Public Schools. The school operated for 25 years before closing in June 2022.
Overview
The Mission Hill School was a member of the Coalition of Essential Schools. It served a diverse student body of approximately 220 students and was known for its progressive and democratic educational model. Key features included democratic decision-making at both the school and classroom levels, a curricular focus on five democratic "Habits of Mind," school-wide thematic units, a strong emphasis on the arts, and a graduation requirement in which students created and defended portfolios of their work before a panel of evaluators. Students were admitted via a lottery within the Boston Public Schools choice system, with consideration given to walk-zone proximity and sibling enrollment.
Graduates of the school were found to achieve academic success in high school and college at high rates, and the school's methodology was studied internationally.
Founding and Educational Philosophy
Founded in 1997, the school was closely associated with Deborah Meier, a prominent advocate of progressive and democratic education. Meier wrote extensively about the school in several of her books, including In Schools We Trust (2002), Will Standards Save Public Education? (2000), Keeping School: Letters to Families from Principals of Two Small Schools (with Ted and Nancy Sizer, 2005), Playing for Keeps: Life and Learning on a Public School Playground (with Beth Taylor and Brenda Engel, 2010), and Teaching in Themes (co-edited with Matthew Knoester and Katherine Clunis D'Andrea, 2010). The school was also the subject of Matthew Knoester's book Democratic Education in Practice: Inside the Mission Hill School (2012) and the 2014 documentary Good Morning Mission Hill, directed by Tom and Amy Valens.
2012 Relocation
The school was controversially moved to a different location within Boston in 2012, despite resistance from the school community.
2021 Lawsuit and 2022 Closure
In 2021, the City of Boston settled a lawsuit for over $650,000 with several families regarding unaddressed sexual misconduct against their children by other students. Later that year, Boston Public Schools removed several administrators and teachers from the school and took over operations following additional allegations.
In 2022, an investigation by the law firm Hinckley Allen found that the school had systematically failed to protect students from threats of sexual misconduct and abuse from other students for nearly a decade, and that the school had neglected students with disabilities. Boston Public Schools superintendent Brenda Cassellius subsequently recommended permanently closing the school at the conclusion of the 2021–2022 academic year. Mayor Michelle Wu and many city officials voiced support for the closure.
On May 5, 2022, the Boston School Committee voted 5-0 (with one member abstaining and one absent) to close the school at the end of the 2021–2022 school year in June 2022. Some family members, staff, students, and community members organized to oppose the closure, criticizing Boston Public Schools' lack of transparency throughout the investigation and what they described as falsehoods in the dominant narratives promoted by the district and local media. Other families supported the closure.
Legacy
The Mission Hill School was widely studied as a model of progressive and democratic education. Its closure marked the end of a notable experiment in small, democratically governed public schooling within a large urban school district.
