By all accounts, teachers, staff and administrators at the school acted quickly and effectively in each of the three fires to put out the blaze and get students out of the school. In conversations with students present at the time of the fires, the Parent Imperfect has yet to find anyone who felt that they were in any real danger.

Since students at the school must have a pass any time they are in the halls during class, each fire likely focused attention on a smaller number of people. If the administration could be sure that all visitors to the school also had passes, they were in a good position to identify a single person who was in the halls during each incident…assuming that one person was setting the fires.

Rumors swept the school yesterday that, if a third fire were to occur, state law would require that the school be shut down for up to three weeks. Students expecting that sort of break returned to school today, disappointed.

Unfortunately, the “crowd-sourcing” capacity present at the school will likely produce a wealth of rumors regarding the identity of the alleged perpetrator. This is normal, and all part of the natural tendency to want to attribute acts like this a single disturbed or angry person. Once that person is removed, students can return to the grind that is BLS and parents can feel comfortable sending their children to school each day.

The PI joined in that collective sigh of relief when the police arrested someone, although there is no guarantee that the person in custody acted alone, or is even the one who set the fires. Vince would never admit that he was at all on edge about the fires, but he definitely seemed a bit more relaxed today (If he were any more relaxed, he’d have to be carried to the bus). If the police have the right person, he is lucky that the authorities put an end to this before he seriously hurt someone or was physically injured, himself. We hope that he will get some help for whatever problems led him to this series of acts that he knew would eventually get him in lots of trouble.

The PI won’t fan the rumors by speculating about why a 16-year-old might have done this, but it is obvious that students at BLS must be able to deal with a lot of pressure and competition at a very early age. In recent years, the school has taken important steps to strengthen systems to provide support to students having trouble at the school, or outside the school, but the stress on students and their families continues to be considerable. As resources get tighter, addressing the effects of such stress, always a challenge in a large school, becomes even more difficult. The events of the past few days affirm the importance of efforts to shift the culture at BLS to one where every student feels supported to be a successful and productive member of the community. The identification, arrest and arraignment of one young man should not be the end of the affair.

This begins to feel like the car fires in LA…except there are hundreds of young people around the cars. Monday this was serious. On Tuesday it became a story. If these reports are true, what is it after a third fire today?

But on today’s call from the nation’s oldest public school, the Headmaster’s voice had a special edge to it. She was calling to let parents know that, for the second consecutive day, someone had set a small fire in the school. The edge seemed like an exhausted and angry one, and who could blame the Head? There had been no injuries and minimal damage to the property, but “learning was interrupted.” Liz and the PI were happy to receive the call. They had not heard a thing about the first fire. This sort of thing is not supposed to happen at a place like BLS. Other schools in other countries, maybe, but not the school that takes only Boston’s “best and brightest.” What is the cause of fires at Boston Latin School?

According to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), as of 2001 there were about 5500 school fires annually in the United States. Of these, 62% were arson fires. In high schools, 70% of fires were set. The fires set at BLS were, therefore, typical. School fires cause relatively few fatalities, but, on average, cause more injuries than other fires and the result in about $50 million in property damage each year.

According to Vince, tutoring and all other after school activities were cancelled, EXCEPT for sports activities. BLS swept the freshman, junior varsity and varsity basketball teams from Weston High School with the slightest scent of burnt plastic wafting through the gym.

After the game, the Parent Imperfect had the pleasure of driving four ninth graders, including Vince, to their homes. The fires definitely outdistanced the basketball games as the primary topic of conversation. Everyone had a theory, based on their own idea of why someone would do such a thing. All were hoping that the problem might somehow result in a school cancellation, even though they realized that they’d be making up the time in June.

The fact that the school distributed report cards today seemed like just too much of a coincidence, but they wanted desperately to believe that someone not currently associated with the school could have gotten in through a side door and set the fires. The PI cautioned all of them about saying goofy things about this, even as jokes. People have gotten in very serious trouble for much less.

The bravado and adolescent jokes barely concealed a layer of concern about how someone (or some people) could have done this TWICE in an environment as locked down as BLS. One of the fires apparently happened very near an electrical closet, which could have caused massive damage had it ignited.

The Headmaster assured all parents that the Boston Police will be at the school tomorrow, helping the school administration with their investigation. Would that this announcement make the PI feel better about the whole thing. He might feel better if this was just another student prank, but whoever took the risk to start these fires was probably feeling pretty angry at the school and pretty hopeless about doing anything about that anger. Their choice didn’t just interrupt education; It endangered the 2500 people who were somewhere in the school at the time.

The reasons for the block are not mysterious. After pontificating about “Unplugging” the holidays, the PI and Liz presented Connie with her first cellphone and Vince with his first iPod Touch this holiday. Connie was one of two in her class without a cellphone, and the Touch is virtually obsolete, but, make no mistake, these were big changes in PI-land. Together with the PI’s “business” iPad, they made this the most “Plugged-In” holiday ever.

And so the PI and Liz limp into the New Year groping for equilibrium on new terrain. This will become, now more then ever, the land of contested Prohibition. Bootleggers, speakeasys and moonshiners will be everywhere. Liz and the PI obviously need to take to heart the hit commercial of the holiday season. You must have seen that dear child gawking into the iPhone with the voice over instructing, “Who would ever think of limiting an iPhone?”

Of course the new terrain has its high points, real and imagined. Being in closer touch with Connie when her bus is 30 minutes late and night is falling will be a very good thing. It will also be good to know without being there when one of her many upcoming rehearsals and performances of The Wizard of Oz is coming to a close. And, yes, Vince is approaching the day when he must learn to self-regulate his romance with the Internet…or not. Maybe having the iTouch will help with that, in some counter-intuitive way.

On Sunday, Pico Iyer brought to the New York Times a New Years tribute to “The Joy of Quiet.” While not generally the PI’s cup of tea, Pico’s unearthing of Pascal’s reminder that “Distraction is the only thing that consoles us for our miseries, and yet it is itself the greatest of our miseries” seems important here. History, at least where the PI lives, is not be on the side of the unpluggers, but there may still be space to pass on the wonder of stillness.

Yes, they have resisted. They went five years without a television and still don’t have cable. They engage on a daily basis in the losing battle of trying to limit Vince’s time as an appendage of these gadgets. And, of course, they are ruining their son’s life because absolutely everyone else he knows has access to much more electronics than he does. Resistance is righteous, but a growing Vince understands Trotsky’s notion of “permanent revolution” and melds it well with Mao’s idea of the “long war” and Lao Tzu’s “Rules of Victory.” He understands what it means to “engulf the enemy as they celebrate.” As we write this, the next stop on the slippery slope sits quietly, wrapped in swaddling paper awaiting his anxious, but not particularly grateful, fingers. And there is even something lying there for dear Connie that will likely extend the discussion to her, as well.

It is in this context that the PI came across, “5 Ways to Unplug Your Holidays.” When he first started looking a Common Sense Media a few years ago, it seemed like a harmless liberal (as opposed to radical) experiment. Now he looks at regularly for help in defending against permanent revolution.

Take a look at “5 Ways…” to see what you think. The big lesson for the PI is the hundredth reminder that kids pick up most of their bad habits at home. Hoping to finish this post before the day officially began, the PI is writing instead of walking this AM. Vince came downstairs, saw him, and immediately turned on some terrible video on the Mac, without giving the “no media before breakfast” rule a second thought.

Merry Christmas!

By coincidence, sort of, the two boys attend Boston Latin School. George is a junior and Johnny is a sophomore. Their story gives depth and meaning to the idea of “struggling” at BLS. It knits the school together with Fields Corner, Geneva Ave., the Dorchester Youth Collaborative, MBTA Bus #19, the Fairmont-Copley Hotel and the Tobin Bridge in a unique holiday gift to anyone who takes the time to read it.

In many ways, it is a 2011 telling of the traditional story of Boston Latin (and public education, in general) as a path taking talented young immigrants “up and out” of difficult situations. But one needn’t read beyond the first few paragraphs to know that the story goes well beyond the stock “by their own bootstraps” format.

The boys work after school because they have to. Johnny tries out for the BLS basketball team, but didn’t make it because he is too short. In the cafeteria, he points out a ninth grader who just harassed him because “he probably thinks I’m a seventh-grader.” The sacrifices they make to go to BLS are almost too extreme to believe, but, somehow, they make it. They lean heavily on each other and get more than a little help from their friends.

The Parent Imperfect won’t stop making generalizations about Boston Latin, but he will hope to make them more carefully. He hopes that Billy Baker receives an award for this story, and that he checks back in with George and Johnny five, ten and twenty years from now.

A series of studies by academics from schools like MIT and Duke suggest that, at least for some families, maybe the anxiety is displaced. A recent article in the Boston Globe discusses the studies.

In general, these studies look at the kids who just make it in to the exam schools and those who just miss the cutoff. If the exam schools are really the cat’s meow of education, then there should be big differences in the educational achievement of these two groups of students (the “just got ins” and the “just missed its”). The studies find that the differences aren’t really that great. That is, the kids who don’t get into the exam schools do almost as well as the ones who go to the exam schools.

What do they mean by “do as well?” The biggest study uses scores on standardized tests (SAT, PSAT, Advanced Placement) to measure doing well. Other tests look at statistics on college admissions and graduation. All tell pretty much the same story. Going to an exam school is no big advantage for students who score high enough on the exam to get in, but aren’t among the higher scoring group.

These studies have many shortcomings. They only address the accomplishment of a slice of the students and don’t speak to the impact of the schools on the highest achievers. While there is less data around on this issue, everyone assumes that the schools do improve outcomes among those students. Also, they don’t measure all of the other benefits of going to an exam school like the social network of alumni and the extracurricular activities. This is definitely true, and the extracurricular offerings at BLS are particularly impressive. However, the Parent Imperfect can attest to the fact that students facing academic challenges at Boston Latin often find it very difficult to take advantage of extracurriculars.

Test scores may measure something other than academic achievement. As one BLS parent writes in the school’s parent list-serv, “as we all know, the way to get high scores on the SAT is to pay for one of the expensive test preparation courses.”

Perhaps most importantly, it is hard to know exactly what students the studies examine. Most of the students who just miss getting into Boston Latin go to another of the exam schools (Latin Academy or the O’Bryant). In that case, measuring the differences between students who just get into BLS and those who just miss the cutoff is measuring the differences among exam schools and not the value of the exam school experience. If the test is measuring the “achievement differences” between those students who just get into the O’Bryant and those who just miss the cutoff and don’t get into any exam school, then the conclusions apply to the O’Bryant, but not to all exam schools.

No doubt about it, measuring the test scores of the “just ins” vs. the “just misseds” is a weird way to judge the value of a school. These studies do, nonetheless, resonate strongly with one piece of the PI’s very unscientific perceptions of the situation at Boston Latin. The school is a positive experience for many of those students who respond to the high demands and special teaching styles that predominate at the school. For students who don’t meet that learning profile, the experience can be a decidedly mixed bag. The Globe article quotes a professional from the BPS making a striking statement about all of these studies:

Kamal Chavda, the Boston Public Schools’ assistant superintendent for research and evaluation, said that by narrowly focusing on students who just made the cut or just didn’t, a researcher misses the point: By and large, exam schools are built to serve the top students, those who score phenomenally well. The marginal students, in fact, can often feel challenged to keep up. “I’m encouraged to see that more of them aren’t getting frustrated and falling dramatically behind,” Chavda said of the results.

If it is real, it is quite a striking citation. We thought that public schools were “built” for the public. Whether students get in via an exam, a lottery or some other process, the school ought to strive for the success of all of its students. Mr. Chavda is not surprised that the exam schools don’t work that well for the “marginal” student. He is encouraged that more students at the lower end of achievement are not falling more dramatically behind at the exam schools. That seems like faint praise to us. This is just one person’s opinion, probably taken out of context, but it tells a truth about the exam schools that seems much more important than scores on the PSAT.

What does the truth of how the exam schools are built matter to all those families whose children have just taken the ISEE in hopes of getting into one? If your child turns out to be in that unknown percentage (1/3?) of the students at a school like BLS who struggle to keep up, then the school won’t likely be a great experience for him/her. More importantly, the school may not be “built” for your child. The current headmaster has seen to the establishment of many more support programs for those students than existed even 10 years ago. Those important programs–After School Tutoring, Saturday Success School, etc.–can throw students a lifeline, but can’t change the core culture that makes the compensatory programs so necessary.

In the small sample of BLS parents who have shared their stories with the PI, there are many who had big questions about sending their child there, but ultimately decided to do so based on the idea that being in a “high expectations” environment would lead their son or daughter to “rise to the occasion.” More soon about rising to the occasion…

In the spaces among the texts, Vince was also quite focused on playing soccer for BLS at the end of last summer. We have already shared here the dismal results of that effort. He was not asked onto that team, which in theory, offered him much more time to focus on school work. For whatever reason, that focus did not materialize.

Vince insists that, over the course of the fall, a person who has been a real support to him at the school told him that many BLS students (males, in particular) actually see their grades improve when they begin to invest time in a sports team or other demanding extra-curricular activity. We’d like to see that data, but the idea that the team identification gives the student something more to lose makes some sense. In the PI’s own sample, the two people he knows best who did make the soccer team certainly did not see their grades improve during that season.

Around this same time, Vince got in into his head that he should play basketball. While he had ten years of soccer experience behind him before arriving at that tryout, he has played very little basketball, and none over the past four years. He has often asked that the PI put up some sort of hoop in their yard, but there is no room for such a thing….”if only they had stayed at the old house!!!”

Vince did, however, become quite focused on basketball in the weeks proceeding the post-Thanksgiving tryout. He went to the gym at the Y several times and even spent hours shooting in the dark on outside courts, even after the beginning of Daylight Savings Time. Who says that global warming has no positive effects? Who was doing his homework when he was out shooting in the dark??

Hoping to prepare his son for the likely result of this tryout, the PI sat him down for a “reality” talk just before the big day. Vince listened more politely than usual, but showed no signs of being particularly interested. He had his own sense of the reality, and was not about to be swayed by parental interference.

The tension rose as Day One and, then, Day Two of the tryouts passed. Vince was thinking about very little else. To the PI’s mild surprise, Vince was still in the mix as of the end of Day Two, and would find out his ultimate fate via a list to be posted in the locker room the next morning.

At 6:20 AM, Vince was dressed and ready to go to school, timing that had no precedent. He was so nervous that he could not eat breakfast (this from a boy who generally eats the breakfast of two defensive tackles).

Aware of Vince’s anxiety to get to school, the PI gave Vince and the carpool neighbors a ride all the way into BLS that day. As Vince got out of the car, the PI put his hand on his son’s knee for a few last words of encouragement/preparation, but the look on Vince’s face said, “Please, Dad, no more reality checks right now!” For once, the PI desisted.

As Vince walked toward school, the PI rolled down the window to say, “Text me when you know.” The earbuds provided the perfect excuse for Vince’s failure to acknowledge.

The PI expected he would hear something before he got back to the house. As he left the school area, one of Vince’s friends from  b-ball was waiting on the curb to cross the street. Once more, the window descended.

“Today’s the big day, huh?”

No words came back, but the PI did get an early-morning smile (limited) and a “thumb up” sign, which, with no particular justification, he took as a sign of B’s confidence that Vince would make the team.

The text message that came in on the way home was the cruelest of spam tricks. “Need $$$? Talk to us at ___-”

Since he had arrived at school 20 minutes before the bell, there had been plenty of time for Vince to see the list and then go outside and text the PI with the results. Apart from the spam, no text came. This had to be because Vince was under a stairwell, choking back tears. The PI could think only about the aftermath of the bad soccer news, which had not been pretty.

The PI was reading with Connie (who doesn’t have to be to school until 9:30AM) when another text came in at what would have been the end of the first period for Vince. He had skulked off somewhere (perhaps that stairwell) to send a surreptitious text…”Made it,” was the extent of it. War in Central Asia continued, the U.S. unemployment rate remained historically high but there was some joy in Mudville, for something affirming had come out of Vince’s relationship with his school.

He had not been accepted to play the sport he had played all his life, but the sports gods had turned around and asked him to join the team of a sport that was very much a mystery for him. Go figure. Vince’s neighbor–a BLS grad–said it best when she heard the story…”That’s Latin for you!” She had heard it (and lived it) all before.

“Progress reports” came at the end of the first week of practice, putting Vince on notice that he had exactly three weeks to turn things around or his good fortune would be extremely short-lived. He and his family now get to test the claim that having something more immediate to lose can get a young man’s attention…maybe even to the exclusion of the next text message.

Any of these could well have been the case, but on this past Monday night that many people sat in groups at 20 round cafeteria tables to provide visionary input to the school’s strategic planning process. Why strategic planning? Isn’t that a navel-gazing exercise that only a consultant could love (and get paid for)? Doesn’t the strategy of a 376-year-old institution plan itself?

Maybe, but the Boston Latin School Association (which is picking up the tab), the school’s administration and at least the 150 people who gave up an evening to sit on extraordinarily uncomfortable seats and talk to each other about the school’s future apparently feel otherwise. The Parent Imperfect was there, overcoming his justified hesitation to join any group that would have him as a member.

The night began with a little schmooze, accompanied by a half hour of perfect mood making from the school’s impressive Jazz Combo. After calming his hunger with pizza and bottled water, the PI found his way to his pre-assigned table. To his surprise, luck had placed him at a table with three teachers (Calculus, Statistics and French), another parent and the school’s Headmaster. The Lord works in strange ways at BLS.

Ms. Moody-Teta brought the evening to order, welcomed people and introduced Jay Vogt, a well-known local planning consultant contracted by BLSA and the Headmaster to lead the process. Vogt explained that this evening was one step in year-long process to create a strategic vision for the school. Each attendee was present tonight as a representative of one of the schools primary “stakeholder” groups.  (One expects that even the limited randomness of the “Sorting Hat” was set aside for the creation of this list). The PI knew of the process because he had participated in a session for parents a few weeks earlier.

This crowd, which included most of the parents who had been involved in that earlier session, would be offering its answers to two questions: (1) What competencies will be most important to the graduating student of the future at BLS? and (2) What are your hopes and dreams for the BLS as it welcomes a new set of students in ten years?

Each table held a discussion of about 1/2 hour on each of those questions, and then reported back to the entire group the main points of their discussion. The PI’s table had a lively discussion of the skills necessary to graduating BLS student of the future. The PI quickly realized that his was among the few tables that did not include a student, which was unfortunate. His group somehow chose him to report back to the large group, and he couldn’t think quickly of a good excuse not to do it. At the appointed time, he rose and rattled off one long, run-on sentence saying that his group felt that the student of the future would need to incorporate graphical and visual logic into their critical thinking toolbox, would need to be able to apply their education to concrete problem-solving challenges, would need to be a master of technology and possess skills in cross-cultural communication that included, but were not limited to, command of a language besides English.

The PI couldn’t imagine sitting through twenty mini-presentations like his, but he actually enjoyed this part of the meeting. Many of the presenters were students and, thankfully, they did not disappoint.

Voigt had asked the participants to listen for the sounds of “common ground,” and there was a good deal of it in this carefully chosen group. Most of the points highlighted by the PI echoed the sentiments of other groups around the room. If the idea was to create the feeling that people in and around BLS had a lot in common, the meeting probably achieved that.

The second session on “hopes and dreams” proceeded, very much like the first one. For the most part, presenters stayed away from the kinds of controversial topics that generate so much heat in “The Village,” the mail list that attracts some of the more vociferous (at least online) parents in the community.

It was left to some of the student presenters to risk becoming “skunks at the lawn party.” In outlining her table’s hopes and dreams, one young woman took a deep breath and said that her group hoped for a culture at the school that was “diverse, welcoming and compassionate.” Before anyone could feel too uncomfortable about the comment, she followed it with, “which isn’t to say that it isn’t that way now…’ Several people laughed nervously, but the point had been made.

Later on, a young man followed his colleague deeper into testy territory. “We feel that since our school has some of the best students in the city, that it should also have some of the best teachers.” To say this in a room populated by as many as 40 teachers took uncommon gumption, and at least 100 people immediately inhaled at once. His follow-up released only part of the air… “which we already have now.”

The unforgiving, less-than-compassionate nature of the school’s culture and the perceived unevenness in the quality of the  teaching corps are among several big divisive issues at the school. That issues like these caused so much holding of breath when students courageously introduced them suggests that they challenged the boundaries of “polite” debate about the school.

All of us who respected those boundaries (more or less) owe the young people who stretched them a great debt of gratitude. Common ground reached without addressing these and other touchy issues will provide a flimsy basis upon which to rest any vision for the future. It is clear from the wilds of The Village that discussion of these issues can easily disintegrate into dismissive and disparaging dissing, but risking such a turn is a risk the school must take if it seeks a vision to unite and inspire.