Kennedy-Longfellow community members received notice from interim superintendent David Murphy on Tuesday that confirmed long-held suspicions that the school would close.
“I have communicated my intention to recommend to the Cambridge School Committee the reassignment of all students in the school to other schools within the Cambridge Public Schools for the start of the 2025-2026 school year,” he said in reference to a meeting with staff that day, as well as a meeting he would hold with families in the evening.
The statement goes on to clarify that nothing will change in the current school year, and that the outcome has nothing to do with the teachers at the East Cambridge school. “It is a decision that is necessitated by a combination of enrollment and demand patterns along with the systemic structures that have resulted in a disproportionate and inequitable allocation of students across our district,” Murphy wrote.
This affirmation comes after several weeks of speculation from a Nov. 19 meeting at which Murphy presented data sets on the Kennedy-Longfellow School and Fletcher-Maynard Academy that distinguished them as outliers in the district, with disproportionate numbers of high-needs students and low-ranking test scores. The news was first reported by Cambridge Day on Dec. 3 after a Dec. 2 meeting held by Murphy with K-Lo community members doubled down on the data and engaged with questions from the community regarding a potential closing.
The school is home to roughly 220 students grades pre-K through 5. The merger of the Longfellow School, named for Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and the Robert F. Kennedy School dedicated June 10, 1973, it has been led by principal Christine Gerber since 2010. Its student body is 86 percent high-need, and it has the highest percentage of unhoused students at 20 percent. This year’s MCAS standardized test results show it has the lowest percentage of students meeting or exceeding expectations in English-language arts and math.
There has been no statements by Murphy to support that FMA will also be at risk of closing, but in an email he questioned the way extended learning time is used at the school, citing a schedule design process that will involve community engagement.
The decision to close K-Lo at the end of the school year is not confirmed until a vote is taken by the School Committee at a 6 p.m. Tuesday meeting, six days from now, but Murphy seems confident the committee will agree. “I believe there was clear consensus evident,” he said in an email Tuesday, referring to a Dec. 3 committee meeting.
Caregivers saw a pattern
The decision has loomed a long time, according to a K-Lo advocacy group who points to the Innovation Agenda – a capital building plan more than a decade ago that created middle schools – as the beginning of the end. K-Lo was used as a swing space while three schools were built; that will end next fall when the Darby Vassall Upper School opens.
“This decision is also something that has been many, many years in the making … And it’s not just about test scores – especially not test scores from one school on one day in May 2024. It’s about what the district’s test scores – school by school and year over year – tell us about past district priorities, enrollment patterns and building and facilities capacity, use, maintenance and repair. It’s our opinion that Kennedy-Longfellow was set up to fail, then blamed for the failures,” reads a Monday newsletter from K-Lo Caregivers Advocacy. “And now, the disrepair of the Kennedy-Longfellow building cannot be overstated.”
Members of the K-Lo Equity Council and other caregivers created the newsletter, which will be released Mondays and Thursdays for the foreseeable future; it has already seen nearly 200 subscribers.
Although the advocates have been working for years to bring issues with K-Lo to light, they hope that forming the coalition in more concrete terms will allow them to engage all of the members affected by the closing as well as play a close role in the next steps of the transition roll out process. “We are committed to supporting everyone through this transition, not just our own families,” they wrote Friday.
Community involvement
In Murphy’s Tuesday communication, he announced that he will be requesting volunteers to join a K-Lo Transition Advisory Committee to help advise the district on how to support students through the transitions to new schools. But there was not much public discussion of the committee at a family meeting Tuesday held in the K-Lo auditorium at 158 Spring St. At the start of the nearly two-hour meeting Murphy made his recommendation announcement, saying that although it is not a message he was happy to deliver, “strategically as a school district we don’t have a better option.”
Murphy fielded questions and comments from parents, mainly addressing concerns for the fate of their children in the district. “I would feel hurt and sad. I would feel extremely frustrated with the inability by the district to operate all of our school communities in a way that we feel confident is serving students well,” he said, responding to one parent who asked how he would feel in their shoes.
Three K-Lo students took to the microphone too. “This is our home away from home, we are diverse and filled with love. Please think about how your decisions will affect others,” they said, handing off a petition with more than 200 signatures organized in their fifth grade civics class.
Addressing a rumor
Murphy maintains that the school will remain a Cambridge Public School building. He called allegations from parents questioning the timing, which align with the potential redevelopment of a property owned by BioMed Realty at 320 Charles St. by K-Lo “misleading and blatantly false.”
“The building at 158 Spring St. requires significant capital investment, but it is an important asset in the district’s portfolio. It is my hope that by the 2026-2027 [school year] it is a fully operational school that advances the goal of providing high-quality seats for the most number of CPS students, with a particular focus on high-need and most vulnerable student populations,” Murphy said in an email after the Tuesday meeting, at which the building’s future did not come up.
Focused on next steps
Members of the K-Lo caregivers advocacy group acknowledge that there have been many mistakes made to get the district to this point, but they said they are focused on the next direct steps and how they will affect the K-Lo community, emphasizing the need to be involved. “I have my reservations about them really taking us on, because this has been a top-down process. They didn’t engage the community or the parents for the decision-making, right? So there’s a need for trust building there,” said Virginia Cuello after the Tuesday meeting.
Murphy has promised that displaced K-Lo families will get priority in choosing their next school, but according to the caregiver advocates the parents and children need to be given the tools to make appropriate determinations. “I want a robust transition plan to be created for each student,” said Anne Coburn, parent of a K-Lo fifth grader and member of the K-Lo caregiver advocates.
Coburn wants the district to take a holistic approach to each displaced student by using the student success model piloted at the Putnam Avenue Upper School, “Because a lot of our kids are high needs, they have multiple intersecting issues that go on, from language to learning disabilities to trauma,” she said.
“There will be a lot of conversations”
Cuello, a parent of a high-needs second grade K-Lo student and member of the caregiver advocates, urges the district to help parents understand their options in schools, facilitating school tours and walking them through the process one on one. “I want to teach the district that if you really care about families, you listen to them and you try, even if they don’t get exactly what they need,” she said.
“This will not be the last time we are engaging, there will be a lot of conversations going forward during this difficult period,” Murphy said Tuesday. “I fully recognize that not everyone does or will agree with the decisions. They are being made because I believe it is in the best interest of your students.” The hope is for most schools to be identified for students by mid-February, Murphy said.
There will be an online version of the family meeting via Zoom video conferencing software on Wednesday 5:30 p.m. and again Monday for non-native english speakers in the K-Lo auditorium at 158 Spring St. On Tuesday at 6 p.m., the School Committee will vote on the recommendation presented by Murphy to close the school.
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The interim superintendent is mighty sure of himself in a domain that is not his expertise or purview. But let’s indulge Mr Murphy.
Scenario One. If he is right that there is no link between BioMed Realty 320 Charles St parcel, the Everesource Fulkerson parcel, and the closing of K-Lo, it would mean there is no plan. We know this to be true for K-Lo; it is something Mr Murphy stated clearly: they have no plans post-closing except to keep the building as school property if that is even a plan.
Why has K-Lo been neglected for years and years? Slowly decaying. Planned obscolecense. The closing is the next phase. Empty, the decay will continue, probably accelerating as it ages. Planned obsolescence. Once it has decayed beyond the capacity of the City to renovate or build a new school, the “It’s too costly” mantra will be repeated. Outside help will be required, and wisdom will dictate the building to be sold. Planned obsolescence. By then, many of us will have left the City for other pastures, and the Councilors of the time will be praised for remediating an eyesore. Planned obsolescence.
Or the alternative. The City has a plan and will use contract zoning. The mafioso way to do spot zoning. “You give me money, I give you density”, all sanctioned by the Massachusetts Supreme Court*. Money for density is the mantra to be repeated. How can the City resist selling the Fulkerson Eversource Lot and K-Lo. Today, An acre of land is worth more than $50 Million. And then you add the benefits, another ~$15 Million per 100,000 sqft. The K-Lo lot by itself is about 2.5 acres. Which could hold a 300,000 sqft building. That is a total of ~$45 Millions of benefits. Then comes the future tax revenue. We can do the same analysis for Fulkerson. Combined, the lots have significant revenue potential. The City is not in the business of owning land or being a landlord.
So which one is it? Planned obsolescence or Planned density. In any case, the death of K-Lo is premeditated. And the interim superintendent put the nails in the coffin.
PS: We always hear from the attorneys of big developers and the developers themselves about Cambridge’s “strange ways”. Now I know why.
*Thanks to Iram Farooq at CDD for the explanation
I made an error. Planned density needs to be corrected. It is Opportunistic density. Planned density doesn’t capture the spot zoning idea behind contract zoning.
Opportunistic zoning: Using spot zoning to extract “public” benefits from density increases, expanding tax revenues. More clearly, it is the breach of the common consensus, zoning, to extract more money from permitting extra density.
Opportunistic zoning greatly contributes to displacement, gentrification, housing crisis, and significant infrastructure issues. The bigger the commercial building, the harder the residential life. More density leads to less trees, sky, sun, community and infrastructure. Opportunist zoning uproots the common good, zoning, the consensus document developed over many years, for immediate gratification independently of future consequences. Contrary to the legend, no city has become cheaper with more density. Quiet the opposite. The bigger the City, the more expensive it becomes. London, Tokyo, Shangai, New York, San Fransisco, Boston, Cambridge, Somerville … Let me know if you have a counter-example.
Or they fix up the building and refill it with additional kids as our population grows?
Pretty sure people were bloviating in the comments of another article about how horrible it was going to be when the additional housing is built by Porter and there’s no more room for kids in the schools. I have no idea what the city is planning, but it’s -possible- there aren’t nefarious intentions…
I am curious where the KLo kids will go next year because my impression was that most schools are pretty close to full. Will Amigos take any Spanish speakers? Will Tobin allow non-Montessori mid-cohort? I would hope the superintendent has made sure the numbers will work before making this announcement, but I’m having trouble wrapping my head around where the teachers will go.
Story embedded in the story:
>”K-Lo was used as a swing space while three schools were built; that will end next fall when the Darby Vassall Upper School opens.”
While four upper schools will have been rebuilt at that point the fifth upper school, Amigos is now located in an old building, (built in 1909, last renovated in 1983) which school administrators said would never house a school again.
Then there is Fletcher Maynard, this building built in 1929 and I think last renovated in 1983.
Oh, and Graham & Parks was relocated from the Amigos building on Upton to its current location partly to house them in a more modern space, built in 1960. For the past few years there has been agitation to renovate that school
Cambridge will still need a swing space unless it leaves these schools and students to shift for themselves amidst failing infrastructure.
It is not nefarious to question the decisions and their intent, especially when they evade prior public scrutiny.
I would look at the budgetary constraint of the next few years and how our taxes have regularly increased far above the 2.5% limit set by Proposition 2.5. If we keep on spending hundreds of millions on schools. We need some way to finance all this. Something has got to give. We don’t want taxes so high that our homes become unaffordable (increase in value and tax rate). So, more commercial real estate is needed. There are only two areas where that has happened over the last 15 years. East Cambridge and Alewife. East Cambridge, with Kendall Square, is the world hub of biotech, and Cambridge wants to protect its “leadership” at any cost. The only space left is in the neighbourhoods. With the closing of K-Lo, all of the buildings around the Ahren fields are now ripe for a new life. But the City doesn’t have the money or resources to make it happen. It needs private equity and their developers, BioMed Realty, Boston Properties, and what happens next is pretty obvious. Good or bad is for each of us to decide. One more question comes to mind. Our City Community Development Department has exceptionally competent staff. I heard that one of the leaders was hired by Harvard. They must be paying attention.
Here is how ESL was once taught, and could be taught again. From Michael Chabon’s article in this issue of the New York Review of Books.
” Then my grandmother would sit on the edge of the daybed she had made up for me in the living room, reciting poems- Longfellow, Bryant, Tennyson, Kipling- that she, an immigrant from the Pale of Settlement in the first decades of that century, had been obliged by the New York City public school system to memorize by the dozen.”
@Concerned43 tell me you know nothing about pedagogy without telling me you know nothing about pedagogy.
tell me you know nothing about the real world,
without telling me you know nothing about the real world.
Wow, what a baseless conspiracy, Ilan, with zero evidence. CPSD has said from the start that it will continue to use the building.
You are completely wrong about taxes. Cambridge has one of the lowest residential property tax rates in the state, and we are well below our Prop 2.5 tax cap. Prop 2.5 only limits municipalities that already tax their residents the maximum amount permitted under Prop 2.5, and Cambridge taxes are much lower than that maximum.
Our housing is already completely unaffordable because we have terrible zoning and have refused to build enough housing. It’s hilarious for homeowners with million and multimillion dollar assets to complain when they are simultaneously using zoning to artificially limit the supply of homes and inflate the values of their homes. If you want to keep taxes low, build more homes!
In terms of facilities, as someone who has been in all of these schools, KLo is not in great condition, but it’s not the worst. The Amigos and FMA buildings both need top-to-bottom renovations. KLo has two gyms and an auditorium that are all in decent shape, as is the cafeteria.