Administrators said they have modeled the proposals, and determined the changes would result in marginally more seats going to white and non-low-income students.
The School Committee’s meeting starts at 6 p.m. at BPS headquarters in Roxbury.
The proposed changes come about five years after the district overhauled the admissions in Boston Latin School, Boston Latin Academy, and the John D. O’Bryant School of Math and Science.
Mayor Michelle Wu has said the current policy has been largely successful in making the city’s exam schools more representative of Boston, including its racial and ethnic diversity and socioeconomic backgrounds of residents.
The current policy has created large disparities in admission rates, depending on where applying students live. That resulted in 100 percent admission rates in some neighborhoods, and less than 50 percent in others in some years, officials have said.
The changes would retain the socioeconomic tier, but give students a chance at attending an exam school no matter where they live or what elementary school they’re from.
In July, a group of parents sued the district after their children were denied entry into the exam schools, and alleged that the current admissions system is discriminatory toward white students.
They are asking a federal judge to allow their children to be admitted to the schools, and to block Boston from using its current exam schools admissions policy.
The current policy splits Boston into four socioeconomic tiers, with students in each group vying for a quarter of available exam school seats. Students need a B average to be eligible, and can apply in grades 7 and 9.
Students also get bonus points if they live in public housing, they’re homeless, or live in foster care, or if they attend schools where at least 40 percent of students are low income.
Those bonus points didn’t have a significant impact on exam school invitations, since most BPS schools fulfill the income criteria for bonus points. It makes admissions unattainable, however, for some students who don’t receive the bonus points, officials have said.
During Wednesday’s meeting, Superintendent Mary Skipper is also expected to provide an update on the return to school, which coincided with President Trump’s promised immigration crackdown in Democratic-led cities.
Wu, speaking to WBUR last week, said she expected the more aggressive enforcement to cause Boston’s student enrollment to dip. A little more than half of Boston’s public students’ first language isn’t English, and about a third are English language learners, according to state data.
“Immigrant families are either scared and worried about bringing their kids to school, or are retreating into the shadows, or have been removed from our communities,” Wu said in the WBUR interview. “We anticipate that that will show up in the enrollment numbers.”
Christopher Huffaker of the Globe staff contributed to this report.
John Hilliard can be reached at john.hilliard@globe.com or on Signal at john_hilliard.70. Follow him on Bluesky at iamjohnhilliard.bsky.social.
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