A new Somerville school probably won’t be ready for students until December 2031, a Construction Advisory Group learned Wednesday, at its third meeting.
It came five days after the Massachusetts School Building Authority voted to advance the Winter Hill Community Innovation School to the next stage of its grant program, which helps rebuild or repair schools.
The group is tasked with presenting by November 2025 a recommendation on the location and scope of the next Winter Hill school, which may or may not incorporate another school in need of a refreshed campus – the Benjamin G. Brown – to Mayor Katjana Ballantyne.
The Winter Hill school closed unexpectedly in June 2023 over safety concerns. In previous meetings members questioned their ability to speed up the process and raised concerns over the way the meetings were facilitated.
The group met with representatives from several city departments, including a visit from Ballantyne, to help them understand the next steps in the timeline.
Director of infrastructure and asset management Rich Raiche presented the group with a new timeline, which he stressed was tentative, showing construction of a school to be completed in December 2031. Matthew Daniels, a group member and parent of two, noted that a previous estimate had a lower range of five years, which had disappeared from Raiche’s assessment. “As the parent of a kindergartener this is very disappointing,” he said in an interview Wednesday.
School construction timeline
The next step in the timeline is to hire a project manager and a designer, which will take six months. After that comes a feasibility study that will take 11 months. Construction will tentatively begin in January 2028.
Members pointed out that the city had already completed a K-8 capacity study and questioned if that would allow them to speed up the timeline as presented. “It seems there are opportunities to go outside of the linear process,” Daniels said.
Councilor Kristen Strezo also questioned details of the timeline, which failed to specify which recommendation it was based off of. Raiche clarified that one option of building a school at Trum Field could potentially shave three to six months off the timeline, since the current Sycamore Street location of the Winter Hill school requires demolition.
Manner of the meetings
While the timeline helped the group see the future with more clarity, confusion and frustration mounted toward the manner of the meetings. They are facilitated by Stacie Smith of the Consensus Building Institute.
Most of the meeting Wednesday was dedicated to the presentation by Raiche as well as one by Anna Gartsman of SomerStat that laid out potential topics to be covered in community surveys to be disseminated next month. The group was not left with much time to ask questions or discuss the information presented, which they felt needed many edits.
“What are we doing right now,” School Committee member Andre Green said. “I’m confused by the level of prework we could have been doing in the last year and a half when Winter Hill had problems. I know this is going to be a long process, but I feel like we keep missing opportunities to speed up where we can speed up.”
The frustration was shared by Daniels, who said group members did not get any of the documents they requested before Wednesday’s meeting and suggested that they cancel any future meetings for which information is not received in advance, so as not to waste the time of anyone involved.
Defending the process
Ballantyne’s chief of staff, Nikki Spencer, assured the group that while she appreciated their sentiments, a lot of work happens behind the scenes to allow the process to happen.
Surveys produced by SomerStat will be released in January, officially launching the wider community engagement and outreach process. The surveys will collect data from community members around priorities when choosing a school for their families and will be conducted in person, online and over the phone in six languages. The initial survey findings will be presented to the group by early March.
“I need you to sift through the data and the community input yourselves and make the recommendations that reflect a range of perspectives. We could not do this without community engagement, without you all as the advisory group,” Ballantyne said.
Daniels appreciated it. “I am glad to have finally heard more from her office about what engagement they are looking for, but again I do not see why we needed to wait until now to gather that feedback,” he said.
The next meeting of the Construction Advisory Group will go over municipal finance and is planned tentatively for January. Updates, including schedules and summaries of the meetings, can be found on the group website.
A stronger
Please consider making a financial contribution to maintain, expand and improve Cambridge Day.
We are now a 501(c)3 nonprofit and all donations are tax deductible.
Please consider a recurring contribution.