Nearly a year after the Winter Hill Community Innovation School shuttered its doors indefinitely – a decision made after a chunk of concrete fell in an inside stairwell – Somerville Public Schools is moving toward a new building to house its prekindergarten-to-eighth-grade community, now split between the Edgerly Education Center and Capuano Early Childhood Center.
But for parents of Winter Hill students, the news doesn’t offer much immediate relief. Any project will take years to design, and years more to construct.
Klaus Schultz, parent of a Winter Hill first-grader, wonders if his son will ever see the inside of the new building after being forced out of the old one last year. Aili Contini-Field, parent of first- and fourth-graders, knows her older child never will.
“My fourth-grader … he’s going to go directly to the high school from Edgerly,” Contini-Field said.
An extended timeline is typical of projects requesting funding from the Massachusetts School Building Authority, but Somerville needs to make a decision most municipalities do not. Since the city also requested funding to replace the aging Benjamin G. Brown School, it may elect to build a school that accommodates both student populations in one building.
If the city chooses a combined school, it could build it at either the original Winter Hill location on Sycamore Street or an entirely separate site – Trum Field in Magoun Square.
Two groups advising
With a series of difficult decisions to make, the city established two groups recently to analyze the options. A School Building Committee that the MSBA requires will help decide on the project’s design and contract, as well as make a recommendation to Mayor Katjana Ballantyne about the location. A separate advisory group of community members will make a recommendation to the mayor in the next 18 months on a location and whether to accommodate Brown School students.
“The mayor really does want community input to help make this decision,” said Rich Raiche, director of infrastructure and asset management for the city.
Schultz said he appreciates the desire for community input from the mayor, but “it’s not a two-year process.”
“Because they’re afraid of committing to a decision, our kids are likely going to end up in a swing space for longer,” Schultz said.
According to Raiche, the community advisory group isn’t holding anything up. Rather, the decision won’t be needed in the MSBA process until about 18 months from now.
Still, Schultz said it’s hard to believe that considering multiple proposals and gathering data for both wouldn’t take longer than aiming for one clear project.
“I don’t see a way it’s not holding up the process,” Schultz said.
Likewise, Contini-Field said she’s frustrated that the mayor hasn’t already made a decision on combining the schools. “It’s clear that they want to combine the schools, but they’re not saying it and so no one can move forward on this,” Contini-Field said.
Avoiding delay for second school
Unlike Winter Hill, the Brown School does not require immediate renovations, Raiche said. But the MSBA never funds more than one building simultaneously for a community other than Boston, meaning the Brown School would need to wait until a Winter Hill School was fully opened before it could even begin the design process.
“We’re talking seven-plus years to go from planning to design to construction to opening the doors,” Raiche said. “You’re looking at a decade and a half until you get a new [Brown School] building.”
Even if it makes sense from a financial and logistical standpoint, Raiche said, it may not be the direction parents of Brown School students want to go. “That’s why we want to do the community process,” he said.
Ward 4 city councilor Jesse Clingan said the timeline is unfortunate, but the city needs the MSBA funding for the project to be feasible. Even with the state likely providing close to half of the funding for the project, Somerville will still need to ask voters for a Proposition 2½ override for the rest of the funding.
Raiche estimates the project will cost about $250 million overall, though construction costs continue to rise.
Few options
Besides the existing Winter Hill location on Sycamore Street, Trum Field is the only other real option available to the city, Raiche said. A school would take up about a third of Trum Field, which was filled Monday with people of all ages practicing sports or relaxing in the stands as temperatures reached 70 after months of cold; the city would try to replicate and replace the open space elsewhere.
Schultz and Contini-Field said they would prefer to see the new Winter Hill school back in the same location on Sycamore Street, as would Clingan. But if presented with a convincing argument for why Trum Field is the right location, they would be open to the idea.
Over the next year, Somerville will focus on completing the documentation that MSBA requires, then hire a design team, architect and project manager to conduct a feasibility study and move forward with the design and eventual construction.
Mending a makeshift space
In the meantime, Somerville Public Schools hopes to finally bring all of its Winter Hill students back together.
After the Winter Hill school closed, grades 1 through 8 were relocated to the Edgerly Education Center in East Somerville, while prekindergarten and kindergarten students spent the academic year in Capuano Early Childhood Center.
For the past year, Inês Santos, parent of prekindergarten and first-grade students, has lived this divide firsthand, making duel drop-offs and pickups at Capuano and Edgerly five times a week. While only a half-mile separates the two schools, it adds up, she said.
Renovations at the Edgerly building over the coming summer should bring the two communities back into the same building. Administrators had previously hoped to move early education classes to the former Somerville Youth Development and Boxing Club in the Edgerly building, but the city notified parents in March that renovating the boxing club would be too disruptive, as it would trigger Americans with Disabilities Act requirements that would require extensive construction and take away existing classroom space.
The city still plans to bring the early childhood classes to Edgerly, but without the additional space of the boxing club.
Credit to staff and faculty
Santos said she’s relieved that the students will be at the same school again, but she’s frustrated with the district’s communication and lack of transparency.
“Our school is making it work, like it’s been making it work all along,” Santos said.
Even with all the disruptions, Santos said the staff and faculty have been “wonderful,” and principal Courtney Gosselin has been “a rock” to hang onto.
“We’ll stick around,” Santos said. “We understand we have options, but we’re committed to the community.”
She sees the potential for Edgerly to be a great learning environment, and wishes elected officials would focus on that goal.
“I would like it to be a badge of honor for our officials to say that we have the best temporary school in the state,” Santos said.
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