The Benjamin Banneker Charter School is under contract to buy the Cambridge Matignon high school building and fields in North Cambridge, providing a path for growth for the nearby school of around 350 students in grades pre-K to 6 from Cambridge, Boston and beyond.
Banneker staff plans a community meeting at 10 a.m. Thursday to discuss its plans. The school is now based at the Reservoir Church, 15 Notre Dame Ave.
The archdiocese will keep control of the former Matignon convent and administration buildings, which are under long-term rental agreements with the International School of Boston, city councillor Paul Toner said in a Tuesday email. That school, a bilingual private school at 45 Matignon Road, has 560 students from more than 43 countries.
The matter of separating the properties is on the agenda of a July 25 meeting of the Board of Zoning Appeal. It’s required for the sale to go through, said attorney James Rafferty, who is bringing it to the board for the archdiocese, “to allow for that building to remain under the ownership of the archdiocese in this current lease with the [International] school. We had to do a subdivision to sell off less than an entire lot.” In addition, “because the lot being subdivided is the small lot, we’ll have some nonconforming setbacks as a result of these new lot lines that are created. That’s why we need to get a variance for the subdivision,” Rafferty said Wednesday.
The 95,532-square-foot property at 1 Matignon Road was assessed this year at a value of $43.2 million, according to city records. It holds three main buildings, including the three-story brick high school.
The 75-year-old Matignon School – in Catholic Church-owned buildings dating back to 1887 – closed in June 2023, with financial challenges cited as the cause of the closing in a letter signed by Marc-Anthony Hourihan, president of the school’s board of trustees and an alum from 1989.
The sale, handled by Colliers, includes the high school building, administration building and the 7 acres of land on which the buildings sit for a reported $32 million. (The actual price won’t be known until after the sale goes through, which relies on the subdivision ruling by the BZA, Rafferty said Wednesday. “It is under contract, but it very much has not closed,” Rafferty said.) Believed to go through in February, the sale drew multiple bids, including from the International School and City of Somerville. The majority of the lot, including the parking lot and field – which, like Cambridge’s Danehy Park, is capped landfill – is over the Somerville line.
“A lot of people had concerns that the field was going to be turned into something,” Toner said. But there’s only around 3 feet of topsoil atop the landfill that would make development difficult, and “the powers that be in Somerville were weighing in to make sure it stays a field too.”
Neighbors that Toner have heard from so far “are very happy it’s staying an educational complex and not going to be a huge housing development of some sort. It’s been a school for 75 years, and a very quiet area. They’re very happy it’s staying that way.”
Banneker, founded in 1996, is tuition-free and public and is considered Greater Boston’s only K-6 science, technology, engineering, art and mathematics school.
“This move to the Matignon campus represents a significant milestone in our journey, and we are eager to share the exciting plans that will come with this transition,” said the school, run by executive director Sherley Bretous. The session will discuss the reasons behind the move and its benefits, provide an overview of the new campus and answer questions about the move, according to a school email.
Layla Kennington contributed to this report. It was updated July 17, 2024, to clarify that the sale is under contract but not complete.
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Where did the Banneker get the money to buy this site? That’s a lot of money for a school that struggles – and fails – to provide the same level of educational quality and benefits of the Cambridge Public Schools.
And I would be curious to know an updated number of how many Cambridge kids attend this school. Historically that number has been very low.
At Cambridge public the % proficient in english and math if you tried you couldn’t get half the students down to only 50% but they’ve someone managed it.
The current Banneker is on the other side of town and at capacity.
Soon enough CPS will need to address the under performance or else less and less students / funding.
Maybe Banneker knows something cps doesn’t. That’s a heck of a lot money to spend never mind staffing it etc.
Maybe Banneker can buy the Graham and Parks building eliminate the all admin while keeping all the teachers and run it. That would be fun to see the results.
in response to the Banneker achievement by thge admittedly limited measure of state assessments – top of the state.
https://cambridgema.iqm2.com/Citizens/Detail_LegiFile.aspx?Frame=&MeetingID=4387&MediaPosition=&ID=20885&CssClass=