School officials consider adding entrance requirements for Madison Park High School

The School Committee could vote to require students to meet certain standards to get into the city's only vocational high school.

At a meeting tonight, the school's executive director, Kevin McCaskill, submitted a proposal that students be required to submit a recommendation from a guidance counselor or teacher and be ranked on their middle-school academic and disciplinary records. The committee could vote on a revised version of the proposal at its next meeting, on Sept. 30.

The goal is to limit the school to students who really want to go there. In the past, BPS has assigned students there who didn't apply for other city high schools - even as some students who did want to go where denied admission - which officials say is one of the reasons the school is perpetually in danger of a state takeover.

McCaskill said that the requirements would convince students who are thinking of a vocational education to start getting ready as early as sixth grade - rather than just thinking about it a few weeks before applications were due in eighth grade.

School Committee member Meg Campbell, however, said she worries the restrictions could force out the very kids who might be most helped by a vocational education.

"Children who are 12 years old are not thinking about their future, they are not wired to think about the future," she said.

Campbell said Boston already has nine schools that have some sort of entrance requirements and that a fairer system would be a lottery similar to the one used by charter schools - in part because that would mean a second chance for kids who maybe had problems in middle school that might otherwise bar them from admission. Campbell is executive director of a charter school - Codman Academy.

"I think if you want to go to Madison Park, you put your name in the hat and it's just luck if you get in or not," she said.

McCaskill said that, in practical terms, the restrictions would not mean kids being rejected from Madison Park, at least initially, because so few students now apply for seats.

He said the school only has some 350-400 freshman this year - up from 150 in the two previous years - and well below the 600-student goal set for the school for the end of a five-year period.

School Committee member Michael LoConto asked McCaskill to try to develop an admissions policy that worked towards improving the school without necessarily having such detailed requirements. School Committee Chairman Michael O'Neill said he has some concern about adding yet another set of admission requirements to a school system that already has a baffling array of requirements for admission to various exam and pilot schools.

Still, he added, "I want to make this work," in part to give kids who want a vocational education the best one they can get. "We don't want to lose to Worcester anymore," he said, referring to that city's nationally recognized vocational school.

He added part of the improvement plan has to be a better job selling the school to students - and middle-school administrators and teachers. "Many of our middle school leaders don't see this as an option for their students to consider," he said.

Committee member Regina Robinson said she favored the proposal because even before admission, they would be learning about expectations and accountability.

City Councilor Tito Jackson (Roxbury), who chairs the council's education committee, said every other vocational school in the station has admissions requirements and that they could help bolster the school before the state finally loses patience and takes over the school.