The Boston Latin School is a magnet Latin grammar state school in Boston, Massachusetts. It has been in continuous operation since it was established on April 23, 1635, and is one of the oldest existing schools in the United States, the other being Collegiate School in New York City.
History
17th and 18th centuries
Boston Latin School was founded on April 23, 1635, by the Town of Boston. Under the auspices of Reverend John Cotton, the school was modeled after the Free Grammar School of Boston founded 80 years earlier in Boston, England. The first classes were held in the home of the Master, Philemon Pormort. John Hull was the first student to graduate (1637).John Hull is, therefore, the earliest scholar who can now be named of Phi¬ lemon Pormort, whose school, the only one in Boston, was established April 23d of the same year, — the first school of public instruction in Massachusetts https://archive.org/details/diariesofjohnhul00hull/page/n21/mode/2up footnote 1, page 22 It was intended to educate young men of all social classes in the classics. The school was initially funded by donations and land rentals rather than by taxes. A school established in nearby Dedham was the first tax-supported public school.
Latin is the mother of modern Romance languages and was an educational priority in the 17th century. The ability to read at least Cicero and Virgil was a requirement of all colonial colleges, and to write and speak Latin in verse and prose was the first of the “Harvard College Laws” of 1642. Boston Latin prepared many students for admission to Harvard, with a total of seven years devoted to the classics. However, most graduates of Boston Latin did not go on to college, since business and professions did not require college training.
Until the 19th century, the Latin School admitted only male students and hired only male teachers. Helen Magill White was the school's first female graduate and the first American woman to earn a doctorate. Magill White was the only female pupil at the school when she attended.
19th century
Until the middle of the 19th century, BLS was popular among the Boston upper class. Under the headmastership of Epes Sargent Dixwell (1836–1851), the school moved into a new facility on Bedford Street. In 1844, Dixwell organized the Boston Latin School Association to support the school.
At mid-century, the City of Boston banned BLS from employing or teaching individuals who lived outside city limits. In response, Dixwell (who lived in Cambridge) broke away and started the Dixwell School, an exclusive private school that drew away affluent families from BLS.
In 1877, the Girls' Latin School was founded. A cadet corps was founded during the American Civil War but was later disbanded in the early 1960s.
20th century In 1967, the school appointed Marie Frisardi Cleary Letter to the editor. and Juanita Ponte as the first two women in its academic faculty. Cornelia Kelley was the school's first female headmaster, serving from 1998 until her retirement in 2007, after which Lynne Mooney Teta became headmaster. Boston Latin admitted its first co-educational class in 1972.
21st century In 2016, Mooney Teta resigned amid a federal probe into racially charged incidents at the school. In 2017, Rachel Skerritt became the first person of color to serve as headmaster. Skerritt resigned at the conclusion of the 2021–22 school year and was succeeded in the retitled position of Head of School by elementary principal and fellow Latin School alumnus Jason Gallagher.
Location history
Photo Point Coordinates(links to map & photo sources) Notes First Boston Latin School House was a series of homes of each head master beginning with Philemon Pormort 1635 to 1638 and his successor Daniel Maude's home from 1638 to 1643. Ezekiel Cheever was an early head master of the Boston Latin School. He taught for seventy years, the last thirty-eight as master of the Boston Latin School. A formal single storey was the school's first permanent home from 1745 to 1812 to replace last temporary building which was demolished in 1745 to make way for King's Chapel expansion. Site was later used for Suffolk County Courthouse from 1810 to 1841, converted as City Hall until it was demolished and replaced by Old City Hall in 1865. (Estimated from: Plan of Boston showing existing ways and owners on December 25, 1635. Author: Lamb, George. 1635 Location: Boston (Mass.)) Second BLS school house on south side of School Street. Built in 1812 and demolished in 1844. Now site at 44 School Street is The Berluti and McLaughlin Building circa 1924. Boston 1842 "Boston" from Tanner, H.S. The American Traveller; or Guide Through the United States. Eighth Edition. New York, 1842 (Estimated from Tanner map) Third BLS school house on Bedford Street was built 1844 and shared the site with English High School until 1881. Part of the site became home to R. H. White department store in 1876. It was torn down for a parking lot before becoming LaFayette Place Mall in 1984 (now Lafayette City Center complex). Catalogue of the Boston Public Latin School, Established in 1635: With an Historical Sketch, Henry Fitch Jenks. Boston Latin School Association. 1886. Pages 94–95.Map title: Map of Boston, 1865 Photographically Reduced From City Engineer Plans With All The Latest Improvements. A Complete Guide To Strangers. Publisher: L. Prang & Co. Date: 1865 (Estimated from Prang & Co. map) Fourth location of BLS school house on Warren Avenue, (shared with the English High School of Boston), 1881–1922. Now site of the Melvin H. King South End Academy. Catalogue of the Boston Public Latin School, Established in 1635: With an Historical Sketch, Henry Fitch Jenks. Boston Latin School Association. 1886. Page 303. (Estimated from description in Jenks, page 75) Fifth site of BLS school house on Avenue Louis Pasteur. 1922–present. SCHOLA LATINA BOSTONIENSIS CCCL ANNOS NATA. (BOSTON LATIN AT 350). April 21, 1985. Boston Globe. By John Powers
Academics Boston Latin's motto is Sumus Primi, Latin for we are first. This has a double meaning, referring both to the school's date of founding and to its academic stature. Boston Latin has a history of pursuing the same standards as elite New England prep schools while adopting the egalitarian attitude of a public school. Academically, the school regularly outperforms public schools in affluent Boston suburbs, particularly as measured by the yearly MCAS assessment required of all Massachusetts public schools. In 2006, Brooklyn Latin School was founded in New York City, explicitly modeled on Boston Latin, borrowing much from its traditions and curriculum. In 2006, Washington Latin School was founded in Washington, D.C., also modeled on Boston Latin.
Admissions Admission to Boston Latin School is limited to residents of the city of Boston. Until 2020, admission was determined by a combination of a student's score on the Independent School Entrance Examination (ISEE) and recent grades. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, however, the entrance exam was suspended, and admission was based on grades and Boston residency. In 2021, a new exam, the MAP Growth test, was designated for students applying for entrance to the 2023–24 school year and beyond. Students must have a grade point average from their current and previous school years of at least a B to be eligible to apply. In addition to GPA and test scores, students may be eligible to receive additional points if they meet specific criteria, such as living in housing owned by the Boston Housing Authority, in the care of the Department of Children and Families, or experiencing homelessness. They also receive additional points if they attended a school in the year prior to application that has, on average over the past five years, an enrollment of 40% or more economically disadvantaged students.
Although Boston Latin runs from the 7th through the 12th grade, it admits students only into the 7th and 9th grades.
The school has been the subject of controversy concerning its admissions process. Before the 1997 school year, Boston Latin set aside a 35% quota of places in the incoming class for under-represented minorities. The school was forced to drop this policy after a series of lawsuits were brought by white females who were not admitted despite ranking higher (based on test scores and GPA) than admitted minorities.See: Wessmann v. Gittens, 160 F. 3d 790 – Court of Appeals, 1st Circuit 1998 s:SARAH P. WESSMANN, p.p.a. HENRY ROBERT WESSMANN, v. ROBERT P. GITTENS, CHAIRPERSON OF THE BOSTON SCHOOL COMMITTEE, ET AL., and McLAUGHLIN BY McLAUGHLIN v. Boston School Committee, 938 F. Supp. 938 F.Supp. 1001 (1996) Civil Action No. 95-11803-WAG. United States District Court, D. Massachusetts. s:938 F.Supp. 1001 (1996) Julia A. McLAUGHLIN, by Catherine McLAUGHLIN, Plaintiff, v. BOSTON SCHOOL COMMITTEE, et al., Defendants.
After the lawsuits, the percentage of under-represented minorities at Boston Latin fell from 35% in 1997 to under 19% in 2005, despite efforts by Boston Latin, the Boston Public Schools, and the Boston Latin School Association to recruit more minority applicants and retain more minority students.
Boston Latin later defeated a legal effort to end its admissions process entirely in favor of admissions by blind lottery.
In recent years, the admissions exam has continued to cause controversy due to the lack of diversity among admitted students. In 2017, Lawyers for Civil Rights published the demographics of the incoming class, highlighting that Black students are invited to attend Boston Latin at a rate that is more than two and a half times lower than their enrollment rates in Boston Public Schools overall.
The following year in 2018, Harvard Kennedy School released a brief explaining possible reasons for the racial gap in Boston Latin School's admissions. Among the reasons are the lower rates of participation in the ISEE by Black and Hispanic students, lower ISEE scores due to inequitable curriculum and resources in the schools from which these students come, reported GPA differences, and less likelihood of Black and Hispanic students to list Boston Latin School as their top choice in school placement forms.
In 2019, Lawyers for Civil Rights, alongside the Boston chapter of the NAACP, sent a letter to Mayor Walsh, the Boston School Committee, and the superintendent, seeking to redo the admissions policies for Boston Latin School. The organizations cited the disproportionate admission rates of Black and Hispanic students versus white students as a failure of the exam system, and asked for a process that would diversify the school and take into account a student's personal achievements.
The Educational Records Bureau (ERB), the organization responsible for creating and updating the ISEE, reportedly decided to end its yearly contract with the Boston Public Schools (BPS) in April 2019. In an email sent to the school district and other clients, ERB claimed that the test's scoring metric had been incorrectly applied by BPS, resulting in underrepresented race groups failing to be admitted. BPS, however, denied that ERB cut business ties with the school district. BPS claimed instead that it had ended the contract in search of a test enabling “more equitable access” to the exam schools.
In October 2020, the Boston School Committee voted to cancel entrance exams for the city's three exam schools in 2021, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The School Committee opted for an admissions procedure under which 20% of the incoming class would be accepted based on top grades, and the other 80% based on grades and zip codes. Students coming from zip codes with lower-income communities would receive preferential treatment.