After months of parents and School Committee members calling for information on the exam school admissions policy change, BPS has released a memo answering a number of questions — but leaving some still open.

“Today you received a detailed memo explaining how the policy was developed, including the distribution of additional points,” Superintendent Mary Skipper announced at this week’s School Committee meeting. “We want to ensure that all members in the public have the historical context and rationale for the policy decisions and recommendations that were made by the exam school admissions Task Force and subsequently approved by this body.”

The memo breaks down the timeline of how the Exam School Admissions Task Force developed the policy changes in 2021 and answers some specific questions and concerns raised by committee members and the public, including data on how the policy may have blocked poorer students at schools with more well off populations or benefitted richer students at less well off schools.

The policy change aimed to promote diversity and representation in the schools in a complicated system incorporating socioeconomic tiers and bonus points for certain students in addition to GPA and testing measures — perhaps most controversially awarding 10 points to students at schools with 40% or higher percentage of economically disadvantaged students.

Opponents, most vocally parents with children who were denied entrance to exam schools, have argued the policy leaves out certain diverse or economically disadvantaged kids it is meant to serve and unfairly benefits others.

According to data in the memo, of seven 2023-24 applicants in the tier 8 — the top socioeconomic tier — who were identified as economically disadvantaged and did not receive bonus points, five were rejected. Of six applicants in this category in tier 7, five were rejected.

There were 262 and 272 total 2023-24 applicants respectively in tiers 7 and 8.

In terms of students who were not economically disadvantaged and received bonus points, zero of these applicants were rejected in tiers 1, 2, 3 and 5. One such applicant was rejected in tier 4. There were between 22 and 45 such applicants in these tiers, out of between 125 and 141 total applicants.

In tiers 6, 7 and 8 there were more non-economically disadvantaged applicants with bonus point advantages — between 65 and 104 — and more were rejected — between 12 and 28.

In public comment, parents continued to push for changes and probe for more information.

“My first point is the memo is incomplete,” BPS parent Kathleen Chardavoyne started, calling the lack of presented data on minimum scores by tier and lack of action “very disappointing.”

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Though BPS officials previously expressed hesitance to consider revising the policy after only a single year and noted the policy is scheduled to be reviewed after five years, the memo opens the door possible recommendations to be considered

These considerations include adding a provision to ensure students with a perfect score get access to their first choice of school, looking at changes to the number of bonus points given based on schools, considering ensuring all economically disadvantaged students receive bonus points, and looking at ways to increase representation of students with disabilities and multilingual learners.

The memo also addresses why admissions didn’t use the individual students’ socioeconomic backgrounds, noting the path was debated but not pursued out of concern regarding the administration and barriers for families. The district is now reaching out to DESE regarding the possibility, the memo said.

“Since this is the first full year of implementation our recommendation continues to be that we should wait for at least one more year of invitation data to understand if there are trends of concern,” the memo states, noting the need for a “deeper understanding” of the impact of changing one part of the policy.