Ahead of the next BPS semester, Mayor Michelle Wu chimed in on the roiling debate over moving the O’Bryant School to West Roxbury in one of her first addresses on the exam school’s future since she rolled out the proposal last summer — arguing despite the ongoing contention, the district must “move urgently.”

“If we want to see new schools built anytime in the next decade, we need to get going on it now,” Wu said on a WBUR segment last week, when asked if there is still room for compromise on the issue. “There’s a reason why our school buildings are falling apart. These are hard conversations that are complex and involve a lot of communities.”

The proposed move would separate the exam school and Madison Park Technical Vocational High School from their single location in Roxbury, expand both and move the O’Bryant to the large vacant West Roxbury Education Complex after years of construction. The O’Bryant debate and opposition to the proposed move has only gained steam since Wu and BPS Superintendent Mary Skipper’s summer announcement.

In early December, the City Council conducted a public hearing on the subject and voted to formally oppose the proposal, a move which follows months of impassioned opposition at school committee meetings and public outreach.

Parents, students and teachers within the O’Bryant community have argued emphatically that moving the city’s most diverse exam school from its central, accessible Roxbury location would create massive transportation barriers for students, remove many of the school’s internship and job connections, and implant the community in a much less diverse neighborhood.

Opponents have also stated the district has not reached out to the school community nearly enough about the proposal and left many confused about whether the West Roxbury move is a done deal.

Wu stated directly during the interview that the plan has “not been a done deal from the start.” But in terms of talking to the school community, she said, it doesn’t make sense to only focus on conversations with families who won’t be around for the actual move.

“We are going to continue making sure we hear loudly and most directly from school communities that are affected,” Wu said. “But I think it’s hard sometimes to really understand the scale of how far into the future we are needing to make decisions now to even be able to deliver in six, seven years, etc.”

Advocates have argued that West Roxbury is the best available place for the school, allowing for a sizable expansion and state-of-the-art academic and extracurricular amenities. District and city officials have also proposed a system of shuttle buses to transport students and floated the idea of a new commuter rail stop by the school.

“My thinking was, if we put a proposal on the table, that will be the most urgent way to get us going in the conversation, at least give people something to react to,” Wu said of her decision to do a surprise announcement over the summer. “And we’ve heard a lot about all the options now and how people feel.”

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Wu acknowledged some pros of the West Roxbury campus — the option to give Madison Park its “fullest chance to expand” and the academic and athletic space that exists “nowhere else in the city” — and well-established cons.

The mayor said the team has been “looking and looking and looking” for a site closer to the current location, but any such site would limit Madison Park’s expansion, need to be built vertical rather than horizontal and likely share athletic fields.

“It all comes with a trade off, and I hear loud and clear that the community wants to be part of talking through those trade offs,” said Wu.