Also worth applauding: the two city councilors who first raised the issue of those students excluded from the program and continued to press the issue with City Hall, Erin Murphy and Ed Flynn.
"From the very beginning," Wu said at that announcement, "our goal here was to try to maximize access for everyone in the city, but we needed to start very carefully to see what was possible."
And so a year into the program -- actually beginning next month and continuing through December 2026 -- BPS Sundays becomes Boston Family Days, allowing any K-12 or Boston pre-K student residing in the city and two guests to visit any of nine cultural institutions on the first two Sundays of each month.
The institutions include the Boston Children's Museum, Franklin Park Zoo, Institute of Contemporary Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Museum of Science, and New England Aquarium, which were part of the program this year. In addition, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, and Museum of African American History will join the expanded program beginning next year.
"After all of these many months of understanding, measuring, tweaking, and working with our institutions, we are so excited today to be able to finally open the doors for more of our families," Wu said.
The past year, some 44,000 students have accessed the original six institutions, according to city officials -- a huge percentage of the system's nearly 46,000 Boston Public School students. Some 41 percent of those using the program to visit the Boston Children's Museum did so for the first time. That first-timers figure was 55 percent for the Museum of Contemporary Art.
The expansion of the program to those outside the BPS system is expected to add about 20,000 more students to those now eligible, including some 3,000 in the METCO program who live in Boston but attend schools in suburban communities, and nearly 10,000 in public charter schools in the city.
The original program was budgeted at about $1 million, including some $300,000 in federal pandemic relief money designated for the arts, and the rest from foundations and private donors. The expanded program, according to a city spokesperson, anticipates a budget of $3 million. Its donors include Amazon, the Barr Foundation, the James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Foundation, and Bob and Michelle Atchinson, longtime supporters of Boston Catholic Schools.
Wu didn't mention Murphy and Flynn -- but they're part of this story. When the two filed a resolution to expand the program last February it was blocked. Even a hearing on the issue was scheduled and then unscheduled, ostensibly to allow the city to collect data during the yearlong program.
Murphy said in her newsletter that she found out about the mayor's announcement the evening before when Wu's official schedule was released, noting that the event also conflicted with the Council's usual Wednesday 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," Murphy wrote.
Despite all that, Murphy and Flynn were gracious in praising the program expansion, as Flynn put it, "a win for every Boston family."
In announcing the program -- and its new name -- Wu, however inadvertently, touched on the problem with her own go-it-alone method of operating saying, "In this moment in the world, sometimes certain terms can be made to sound more exclusive or sort of narrowly defined. What we want is for Boston to be a home for everyone and for each of our residents to see the entire community as their family."
Shouldn't that spirit of inclusion apply to members of the Council, too -- even those she didn't endorse?
Editorials represent the views of the Boston Globe Editorial Board. Follow us @GlobeOpinion.