This week we learned that the interim Cambridge Public Schools superintendent, David Murphy, will recommend to the School Committee at its Tuesday meeting that the Kennedy-Longfellow School be closed. The intention is to reopen in September 2026 once repairs have been made. After reviewing the financial budgets for the next two years, it is hard to reconcile the interim superintendent’s statement with the financial realities.
By closing K-Lo and opening the door to a potential disposition of the building, the city will effectively put together the biggest piece of land in East Cambridge since Kendall Square: Ahern Field plus K-Lo plus the Eversource site on Fulkerson – approximately 6 acres. The current market price in East Cambridge is approximately $50 million per acre. That means the site’s value is around $300 million. The value may be even higher given the potential benefits of spot zoning and future tax revenues. With numbers such as these, there is a clear incentive for the school’s closing and sale: to bolster the city’s financial standing.
The possibility that officials may be positioning K-Lo for a sale becomes more likely when we examine city budgets for the fiscal year 2025-2026, when Murphy said renovation would occur. There does not appear to be any allocation for renovation in fiscal 2025, while an addition to the fiscal year 2026 budget would need to be discussed in Q1 or Q2 of calendar year 2025 and the City Council will need to allocate the monies.
The budget for 2026 is under review by the council’s Finance Committee. Its public investment document was submitted to the committee Wednesday with no money for K-Lo but with a few important considerations.
Page 19: “To achieve our operating budget target and avoid large tax increases and eroding our levy limit, we need to constrain the growth of our capital budget.” My comment: Let’s not add more pressure to our already strained public finances. We already have a lot on our plate.
Pages 22 and 34: “Project costs and prioritize initiatives not yet fully scoped, including Beudo electrification; major school renovations; municipal broadband; Central Square library; day center; municipal cemetery.” My comment: It would be good to know if K-Lo is added to current renovations, i.e., the King Open, MLK and Tobin schools, funded with around $15 million. It is not mentioned.
Page 25: “We need to work together to make hard trade-offs, including reevaluating past city policies and ordinances in context of current constraints.”
After reading the approved 2025 and proposed 2026 budgets, it appears that the priorities are the renovation of the three schools and reducing our bond payments. There is no reason to believe that K-Lo will reopen.
Let’s explore a couple of scenarios explaining why we are here today and what the future might hold.
Planned obsolescence
If there is no link between BioMed Realty’s 320 Charles St. parcel, the Eversource parcel on Fulkerson and the closing of K-Lo, it would mean the plan is neglect. Murphy said clearly there are no plans postclosing except to keep the building as school property.
Why has K-Lo been neglected year after year? Planned obsolescence. The closing is the next phase. Once empty, with no renovation budget, the building will decay. Once it has decayed beyond the capacity of the city to renovate or replace with a new building it will be declared too costly to engage with. Wisdom will dictate selling the building – planned obsolescence. By then, many of us will have left the city and the councillors of the time will be praised for remediating an eyesore.
Opportunistic zoning
The city has a plan and will use contract zoning to sell the parcel to developers.. How can it resist? Today, with land value at $50 million per acre, the additional public benefits are approximately $15 million per 100,000 square feet; the K-Lo lot on its own is about 2 acres, which could hold a 300,000-plus square-foot building. That is $100 million in cash and approximately $30 million in public benefits. Then comes the future tax revenue. We can do the same analysis for Fulkerson. If combined, the lots have irresistible revenue potential.
In either case, the interim superintendent is putting the nails in the K-Lo coffin.
The city’s strategy of reassigning K-Lo students and dismissing educators and staff begins to look like a minimal downside compared with the very significant financial upside, especially if BioMed’s 320 Charles St. lot is included. It would be in the city’s interest to encourage BioMed to push for maximum density independent of the quality-of-life, environmental and infrastructure costs to the East Cambridge, Linden Park and Port neighborhoods. It will create more revenue and an additional $50-plus million in public money and will set the tone for the parcels the city owns. Through that development, and without sacrificing Ahern Field, the city can replenish its free cash and create revenue – an insurance policy for financial security. It will help secure a AAA bond rating for the next 20 years.
Sacrificing K-Lo strategically to maintain our AAA bond rating and long-term financial security looks on the surface like a tolerable price. If only it weren’t affecting our most vulnerable kids and compromising the city’s values of diversity, inclusion, and equity.
Our manager is only following the track laid by his predecessors. Hence the years of neglect of the school, its children, teachers, caregivers and principal. Planned obsolescence. The silent rotting of infrastructure for future financial necessity. A slow, premeditated death.
Until proven otherwise, it is why K-Lo will close.
Ilan Levy, Spring Street, Cambridge
A stronger
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Wait what?- I read the start of this and think the city is closing a school and selling it then read further and nope, it’s just some elaborate letter writer’s crackpot conspiracy theory!
What?
Some things are so obvious that they don’t need a conspiracy.
But since you seem to like accounting…
The school was really underutilized. Some overhead cost just don’t scale with the number of students (“fixed costs”). That means it becomes very expensive per student (and often at the expense of their experience.)
We have spots elsewhere at better performing schools.
Unfortunate for the students and families to go through the change, but this is absolutely the right call. I commend the district for making it.
This is absolute nonsense. The superintendent made it very clear CPSD will continue to use the KLo facilities. In the past, many discussions were held about moving currently space-constrained schools to the KLo building, possibly Amigos—which lacks room for music spaces, counselor offices, etc.
Also, two of the three schools listed, MLK and King Open, have ALREADY been completely rebuilt and Tobin is almost done. No one is selling KLo and Ahern, and certainly not to pay for school renovations that have already been paid for.
Do better, Ilan and Cambridge Day.
Also, if the diverse student body from KLo moves to the rest of the schools, it will improve the diversity of those schools.
Apparently CPSD managed the influx of kids from the family shelter in East Cambridge by having most of them attend KLo. That is certainly not equitable or inclusionary.
Setting aside the hyperbolic suggestion that Ahern Field would be included in a private redevelopment scenario, I would be surprised if the city was unwilling to explore using the K-Lo land for an affordable housing development. It would be irresponsible not to, given the urgent need for affordable housing and the repeated calls for the city to “build on land it already owns” to make such developments more financially feasible. Proximity to jobs in Kendall and the T — and to existing open space at Ahern, Little Binney and Rogers/Third (Toomey Park)– would seem to make this site ideal for such a development.
I don’t know if the author of this piece is completely correct, but they are right that this is all about the money. It has nothing to do with “helping the students” or “righting a wrong.” It’s pure technocratic austerity with the hue of progressivism. Classic Cambridge.
Since the public investment document seems to be the source of the speculation, it might be good for someone with more of an insider hand of things to find out what the status of this document and its status is and when it will be considered and whether there has been any supplemental input from the council on it as yet that is available to the public.
The proposal to close the K-Lo for a year has not been submitted for discussion, much less approved, so there would not be an allocation in the FY26 budget for renovation, yet.
The writer is connecting dots that are not on the screen.