The Boston City Council president joined the Ellis South End Neighborhood Association at its first community meeting in months on Tuesday.

Ruthzee Louijeune has been in office for three years and was elected unanimously in January to serve as the council’s president for a second term. She answered questions about the most pressing issues she believed to be facing Boston’s city government.

For her those issues include affordable housing, rats and improvements to education.

“We have an abundance of resources and institutions,” Louijeune said. “We have Harvard. We have MIT. We have BU. We have BC. We have all of these schools. And yet our students sometimes have never stepped foot on MIT's campus or BU's campus. That connectivity between the population that lives here and the resources that exist needs to happen.”

Louijeune said the city would host a hearing next week on guidance counselors for high school students looking to pursue college or trade schools.

“Our guidance counselors are often the first line of interaction with our students outside of an academic setting,” she said. “Our schools are now doing a better job, not perfect, but a better job, of equipping our schools with psychologists and social workers, to figure out how we help our students with the number of issues they walk through the door with every day.”

For most attendees, education was also top of mind. On Tuesday morning the Massachusetts Department of Education released the results of the 2024 MCAS standardized tests, which showed that students’ proficiency in English and Language Arts has decreased across every grade level. The percentage of 3rd-graders not meeting the state’s expectations rose to 18 percent.

The MCAS is playing a political role this year. While the Massachusetts Teachers Association says the test does not adequately measure how well a student has learned the material, the National Parents Union worries that without it, there will be no Massachusetts standard for a high school diploma.

On Ballot Question 2 in the election on November 8, voters will get to decide whether to keep it as a high school graduation requirement.

“It’s not the right metric overall, but especially for our English language learners, we need to find another way,” Louijeune said. “Because it’s not MCAS. It’s a blunt instrument for people who are learning English. I don't know overall, but for our English language learners, there are definitely problems with having a standardized test.”

One resident also asked whether the city had begun to address its school closings and mergers problem, as more school buildings are left vacant.

“It’s never a popular decision to close a school,” Louijeune said in response. “It’s traumatic, oftentimes, for a lot of the students, even when in the long term it’s for their good. But we do need to [close some], because a lot of the money for Boston Public Schools is honestly getting spent on buildings, and we need it to be spent on our kids.”

Apart from education and city issues, Louijeune spoke about being Haitian, as the first Haitian American elected to the Boston City Council. She wore a Haitian pride pin on her lapel.