Davis-Mullen stakes her turf

The Boston Herald

Beverly Beckham

It's not news that Boston City Councilor Peggy Davis-Mullen is a thorn in the side of Mayor Tom Menino. Their relationship is adversarial. But this isn't a bad thing. In government as in a garden there need to be thorns - prickly someones who don't play a role as in "The Emperor's New Clothes," who aren't always telling the mayor what he wants to hear, who remind him that outside the royal buildings, things are not quite as rich or as rosy as they are inside.

Mayor Menino has earned well-deserved high marks for his forward thinking in the building of the new Boston. No question that he has championed the rebirth of a world-class city. Just this year alone, Boston has already played host to the first and second rounds of the NCAA's Eastern Regional basketball tournament, Major League Baseball's All Star game and the Ryder Cup. With luck, maybe the World Series will be next.

The mayor's farsightedness is also largely responsible for the building of the new convention center, for helping get the Seaport development off the ground and just yesterday his Main Street redevelpment program won him an award from the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Clearly under Menino's leadership this city is thriving.

But not everyone in Boston is thriving. The average Jo only presses her nose up against the window at these stellar, world-class, high-priced events, which bring in a lot of revenue but don't change her life a bit. Her street still has potholes. Her kids still go to run-down old schools. And her children still have to wait to go to school because despite the city's unprecedented growth and affluence, there is still not space or funds for nearly enough early childhood education. Children don't vote so they don't have political influence in this town. But they have Peggy Davis-Mullen on their side.

"Sometimes people say, 'You talk too much about kids and education.' But education is the foundation and this is where my priorities are," she says. When the school administration cut classroom art and music from this year's curriculum, Davis-Mullen, who chairs the Council's Education Committee, told them she wouldn't pass the budget until they were reinstated. When parents complained that their 13-year-olds were going to high school with young adults over the age of 20 (there are more than 1,000 Boston Public School students over 20), it took years, but she finally got one alternative high school open for these adults. When told about the increasing number of assaults on school buses, she worked to have a monitor on every bus. "But this still hasn't happened," she concedes.

What also hasn't happened, says Davis-Mullen, is the city school plan. "The mayor said that on Sept. 1 we'd be given a city school plan. He wants to build five schools in six years. But that's another generation, a whole other group of kids we lose. I want those schools now while the economy is good. We need as many new classrooms as we are building hotel rooms. The key to this economic development is education. You cannot be a world-class city unless you invest in your kids."

Davis-Mullen fights for education for everyone. She fought to get five high schools open at night to train adults so that the poor could be part of this economic boom, and work in the new offices and not just end up cleaning them at the end of the day. She fought for a truancy center and truancy officers. She fought to bring Shakespeare in the Park to Boston Common and to make it accessible to all of Boston's youth.

These days she is also fighting hard for re-election on Nov. 2. "It's been bad. People don't think much about municipal races," Davis-Mullen said. "Only 19 percent got out to vote in the preliminary. But this race is important. It's not your congressman who fixes your schools and advocates for 4- and 5-year-olds." "Kids are like sponges," she says. "There isn't a child born who doesn't have the potential to be good. And education is the foundation. How come we have space for football and baseball teams but no space for schools?”

"I'm not fighting the mayor. I'm fighting for things like this."