Boston Public Schools welcomed more than 54,000 students back to school on Tuesday as parents, students and school staff said they are both excited and anxious for the new year.
Pharaoh Naervaez, a fourth grader at Holland Elementary School in Dorchester, said he felt tired on the first day. But he was still looking forward to his favorite subject: gym class.
His mother, Pamela Turner, said they are both feeling excited about the school year, and already have an ambitious goal.
“They help him out a lot [at Holland Elementary], and his teachers are amazing here,” she said. “I’m excited about the school year. We are aiming toward perfect attendance this year, so we have a goal set.”
Yet, despite a greater focus on critical use of artificial intelligence in Boston’s schools this year, Turner said she’s hesitant about it being introduced in schools.
“I just feel like teachers, they have more experience than an AI …” she said. “I feel like teachers, they deserve to be here teaching the children. They deserve to be out here one-on-one with these kids.”
Turner’s concerns come nearly six months after Mayor Michelle Wu announced a new AI literacy program that’s expected to launch across all BPS high schools starting this month.
The program, funded by a $1 million seed grant from tech entrepreneur Paul English, is designed to help ensure that all high school graduates are proficient in understanding how to use AI tools.
“We have 25 AI Educator Ambassadors who did training. They’re all teachers, and we started with our teachers because we believe it has to come up through our teachers,” Boston Superintendent Mary Skipper told GBH News on Tuesday. “We want it to be grounded in humanity, grounded in good ethical use of the tools.”
Skipper added that these 25 ambassadors will be in training all school year at the Paul English Applied Artificial Intelligence Institute at UMass Boston.
“We’ll reevaluate in the spring after those 25 educators have been trained,” she said. “We’ll talk with our union partners and we’ll make a good plan for our district that grounds it in proficiency for AI and healthy ethical use of it.”
But many parents are worried about the lack of human contact that comes with implementing AI in the classroom.
“There’s kids in here who want to be teachers. An AI can’t show them how to do that,” said Turner. “These teachers in here are amazing. They come in here and they love our kids and we love them back.”
Skipper said these concerns are exactly why the district is “starting it very slowly” and grounding the program “very much in proficiency.”
“We know that our kids are going to be out using tools outside of us at home, on their phones and so forth,” she said. “We have guardrails for sure, but we believe that giving them the skills up front is going to be an important part of their literacy going forward.”
Concern over late school buses
Another issue that’s on the minds of parents as the new year begins is bus arrival times. Late buses have been a longstanding issue for BPS. At the start of the 2025-2026 school year, BPS reported that 66% of buses arrived on time for the first day of school, marking a steep increase from the previous year, where only one-third of buses arrived on time.
Alan Magny, physical education teacher at Holland Elementary School, said he also coordinates the school buses in the mornings, ensuring that students are safely ushered off.
“It’s the first day of school, so I expect the buses to be getting used to their routes,” he said. “I don’t expect perfection on day one for buses. More like week three, week four are when the buses start to get into their routines.”
Bus arrival times were scattered at Holland Elementary School on the first day, which Magny said isn’t unusual.
“It’s always scattered because the buses [have] got to learn things, the kids have to learn things, the parents have to learn things,” he said. “It’s an adjustment for everyone, but I don’t expect it to stay this way for long.”
Skipper said she feels “very good” about the buses this year.
“We’ve done a lot of good training with our drivers. We’re fully-staffed and we’re ready to go,” she said. “And so, every year, we look to have a better on-time percentage than we had the year before.”
