A parent of a Edgerly Education Center student wrote Somerville city councilor Willie Burnley Jr. with good news Sept. 26: A window in their child’s classroom had been repaired – after a year.
Burnley passed along the anecdote at the night’s City Council meeting,
“If that hadn’t been fixed before winter came, I wouldn’t want to send my child to a classroom like that,” Burnley said.
There’s been an influx of calls about the Edgerly to the city’s 311 line, which residents call to draw attention to repairs and services needed to city property, and Burnley motioned at the meeting for a written report from Inspectional Services of how many and which issues are yet to be handled, as well as for a plan to ensure that staff and students have safe and appropriate facilities.
Response times to the calls should be included in the report, as concerns from parents are mounting, councilor Will Mbah said.
That the problems weren’t being communicated more widely was disturbing to councilor Jesse Clingan. “Had I known about the window, I wouldn’t have stopped until it was fixed. These are the things that I need to know about in order to be able to get them addressed,” Clingan said.
The Edgerly is a 1920 concrete and brick masonry school building at 8 Bonair St. in East Somerville converted into offices for school district administrative staff – then turned quickly back into classrooms after the Winter Hill Community Innovation School building was closed permanently June 2, 2023, for safety concerns. The Edgerly became began serving at least half of the 422 displaced students from first to eighth grade starting Aug. 30, including those in the AIM program for students on the autism spectrum, but it didn’t take long for the building’s shortcomings to reveal themselves. Student complaints have included everything from broken bathrooms to scurrying rats.
In addition to classroom windows remaining broken, the building’s elevator has broken several times, and some teachers have been forced to leave their classrooms through the windows with the help of firefighters, Burnley said. The elevator outages are of utmost importance because they are a matter of federal law, he said.
The most recent elevator outage was found to result from faulty work by Eversource, the utility company, to an electrical box. The city worked hard to have the issue resolved, Burnley said,“working overtime to get Eversource employees driving back from New Hampshire on weekend evenings to get that fixed.” Council president Ben Ewen-Campen agreed that in this instance the problem “was not the result of the city dropping the ball,” and stressed the importance of clarity.
“The trust between the parent community and the staff and administration is at a really difficult point,” Ewen-Campen said. The staff who turned the building into a functional school in such little time deserve respect, he said, but he hoped staff would also acknowledge issues in the building and face them head on.
Clingan called for Public Works to provide the council with a list of elevator status in all city buildings.
Councilor Matthew McLaughlin said he would be able to get the issues attended to efficiently in his Public Health and Safety Committee, which have been moving along “at a brisk pace.” McLaughlin has asked for a meeting with the district superintendent, he said.
Staff reports were asked by councilor Lance Davis to come well in advance of the next School Building Facilities and Maintenance Special Committee meeting, set for 6 p.m. Oct. 28, so there was adequate time to review.
Improved reporting, along with the repairs, was essential, Burnley said.
“I would just really hate for us to repeat those mistakes at a time where students are already more isolated and separated from their classmates than they have been in probably living memory,” Burnley said.
A stronger
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