May 26: Building Your Moral Imperative

Ethan d’Ablemont Burnes is the Assistant Superintendent for Special Education in the Boston Public Schools. In his first year, he has worked to accelerate Boston’s move towards inclusion and to address disproportionality in identification and placement. He has also worked to support students and families and implement the myriad of special education regulations due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Before joining the Office of Special Education, Ethan was principal of the Manning School in Jamaica Plain for eleven years. During his time, he focused on building an inclusion model for students with emotional impairments and increasing the academic challenge in the classroom. While at the Manning, the school went from the 20th percentile to the 64th percentile of performance. Before the Manning, Ethan was a Boston Principal Fellow at the Ohrenberger School. Before that, Ethan worked at the Boston Plan for Excellence working on policy issues including weighted student funding, student assignment and central office reform. Ethan started his career in education teaching at the Renaissance School when it first opened in 1995 as one of the first charter schools in the state.