Boston expands free-museum program for schoolkids and families to include students at private and parochial schools

Mayor Wu today announced the city's program for letting BPS students and their family members into local museums for free next month will be expanded to include all private, parochial and Metco students - and that additional museums have signed up.

The expanded and renamed Boston Family Days will give all elementary and secondary students in Boston, regardless of which school they go to, and two guests free access to nine local museums on the first two Sundays of every month for at least the next two years.

New to the program are the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the JFK Library and Museum and the Museum of African American History. They join the institutions that were already participating: Boston Children’s Museum, the Franklin Park Zoo, the Institute of Contemporary Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, the Museum of Science and the New England Aquarium.

BPS students will be enrolled in the program automatically. Other students and their families will have to file an online application, to be available next month.

Money to support the expanded program comes from some of the same philanthropies that helped the city start its pilot program for BPS students.

Wu announced the expansion at the Museum of Science, where she said she's seen the "joy and wonder and excitement" on the faces of students she's seen at local institutions. She said some 44,000 BPS students and family members have already taken advantage of the program. She added that at the Children's Museum, nearly half the students were making their first ever visit to the museum.

City Councilor Erin Murphy (at large), who, along with Councilor Ed Flynn (South Boston, South End, Chinatown, Downtown) had pushed for the program to be open to all students from the start, said the expansion "reflects the hard work and dedication of those who believe in equity and inclusivity for every child in Boston."

In a statement, she expressed annoyance at what she said was the administration's continued effort to keep her out of any efforts to expand the program, including today's announcement, which she said she only learned about by looking at the mayor's daily public-appearance e-mail - and which she could not attend because it was scheduled just 15 minutes before the City Council's weekly meeting.

This lack of communication is especially concerning given that the administration declined to participate in the Council Hearing we scheduled in October, where we had hoped to receive an update on her plans to expand the pilot program. To date, I have not been briefed or officially notified by the administration about the specifics of this plan.