Passions are running high these days at Fenway High, and with reason. The school is among seven that Superintendent Carol Johnson has proposed to move next year. If her proposal is approved next week, Fenway would move to a building in Mission Hill now occupied by New Mission High and Mission Hill K-8.

Student after student, and eventually the faculty as well, vowed to fight to save Fenway High, a jewel of a school just across the street from Fenway Park. There were calls for social action, vows to stand together, and a lot of anxiety.

The assembly at Fenway High last Thursday was supposed to celebrate Latino identity. But with the sighting of the first “Save Fenway High’’ sign, it didn’t take long to see that the school was grappling with broader issues than celebrating diversity.


The school’s concerns are many. The school would move to a building with no auditorium, an undersized cafeteria, and an elementary school-size library. (The schools that are now there are scheduled to move as well.) There are science labs at the Mission building, but they don‘t have running water, a pretty basic requirement. School officials say they are willing to invest $1.6 million to improve the facility, but that doesn’t sound like nearly enough to fix what’s wrong with it.

“I don’t want to make this an issue of which schools get more, but I am willing to make this an issue of which schools get less,’’ said Peggy Kemp, longtime headmaster of Fenway High.

The decision to move seven schools was announced just a week ago and is scheduled to be voted on next week. So the “public comment’’ period now underway is clearly an insulting formality. Barring public outcry, this is a done deal.

It would be nice to tell you that these decisions have been made for educational reasons, but that would be a stretch. As charter schools continue to battle traditional public schools for students and public dollars, school officials have decided that schools like Fenway - a pilot school of 321 students with a long waiting list - have to accommodate more students. Thus the move to a bigger space that can hold what will eventually be 440 students.


But while school bureaucrats assume bigger is better, Fenway said it would threaten the intimate environment that makes the school successful. They were especially wary of moving to a building where the entire school could never congregate.

In an interview Friday, Johnson said “change is hard’’ but stressed that the Fenway community is missing the larger issue.

“This isn’t about Fenway,’’ she said. “This is about expanding opportunities for families to get into our high-performing schools. We’re in a competitive environment.’’

When I asked why seven schools needed to move at once - and why the decision needed to be made so abruptly - school officials said the decisions were all related, and that “no one wants to do this piecemeal.’’ More than one Fenway High administrator said such a move would never be shoved down the throats of an affluent suburban community, and you don’t have to be sleeping in a tent in Dewey Square to think that they have a point.

In fairness to Johnson, certainly as many families as possible should have access to schools that are performing well. But that means - first and foremost - that there should be more of them. Playing musical chairs with schools that are working doesn’t improve them. Dismissing public opinion only adds to the toxic distrust parents have of the Boston public school system, an issue to which Johnson has always seemed stubbornly tone deaf.


Fenway has vowed to try to stay where it is. I asked Keith Hammitte, one of the school’s longest-tenured teachers, what would be the worst part of having to move.

“I would hate for our students to get the message that government doesn’t care what they think,’’ Hammitte said.

Adrian Walker is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at walker@globe.com.