The fates of the Winter Hill Community Innovation School and the Benjamin G. Brown School, including whether to merge Brown with Winter Hill to make a larger school, will be decided at Monday night’s meeting of the School Committee.
Monday’s committee vote is the final recommendation from the city to the Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA) on potential renovation, a district spokesperson told Cambridge Day. School Committee Chair Emily Ackman said that “pending MSBA’s acceptance,” the vote represents a final decision on the matter. (The MSBA is funding Somerville’s school renovation project through state grants.)
If approved, the merger option would result in a 925-seat Pre-K-8 school at Winter Hill’s 115 Sycamore Street site, making it one of the district’s largest. Under this option, the Brown School’s Willow Avenue building, which is also facing structural challenges, would be decommissioned.
Some residents were surprised last summer when the city announced the option for the 925-seat school instead of the expected 690-seat school, which would have left the Brown School open. Construction of the larger, merged school has remained the leading option since the Construction Advisory Group (CAG), the working group created to advise on renovations, issued a recommendation for it in January. The School Committee voted 7-2 in March to advance plans for the merged school.
Monday’s vote is one of the final steps in what has been years of back-and-forth between city officials and residents on renovation plans. Winter Hill’s Sycamore Street building has been vacant since June 2023, when it was deemed unsafe after a piece of concrete fell from a ceiling in a stairwell. Renovation plans were delayed in 2024 from an earliest expected completion of 2028 to 2031.
Some Brown parents in opposition
Several parents of students at the Brown School have rallied to protect Somerville’s smallest and oldest school building, and the only standalone elementary school in the district.
“There’s such an invisible safety net of academic and social needs overlapping in such a small environment,” said Kelly Williamson, a parent to two kids at the Brown School, on its unique learning environment. “I just think more children will get lost in a larger school, even if they create ways for it to feel smaller.”
Some parents have put together a website with their concerns, and Somerville parent Ksenia Samokhvalova said that over 1,200 emails have been sent from residents to the city and School Committee. A city spokesperson said that the Mayor’s Office has received roughly 55 individual emails, and will review all concerns regardless of their magnitude.
Other concerns about the merger school surround traffic and transportation, namely the loss of walkability for families who reside in the area of the Brown School. Surveys show that most Somerville residents rely on walking and biking over driving to commute to school.
Williamson said her rising third grader loves the autonomy of being able to walk to school himself.
“It’s the reason we live in Somerville, to have this hyper-local reality,” Williamson said. “If we aren’t able to walk our children to school, that dramatically changes our commute and our ability to start our jobs on time and end our jobs on time.”
“Without opening capacity at other schools on the west side, I don’t see a way to redistrict in such a way that wouldn’t introduce this dead zone” where certain residents do not realistically have the option of walking to school, Samokhvalova said.
Ackman said that while the proposed merger school will increase the commute for certain residents, it will still be walkable according to state metrics. (Massachusetts defines walkability as living within a 2-mile radius of a school, and Somerville does not provide free busing for residents outside a 2-mile commute of their school.)
To remain open, the Brown school also would need a costly retooling to make the space comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), as the older building lacks mandated facilities.
Both Williamson and Samokhvalova said that while the city has held community engagement sessions and issued surveys, concerns about walkability, districting, and the cost of ADA compliance have gone largely unaddressed.
Funding and design planning will continue until major construction begins in January 2029 and is set to be completed by 2031, according to the city’s website.
“I believe this is the right path forward for the city,” Ackman said. “This is our best bet for providing capacity to the district, hopefully at a cost that won’t overburden Somerville taxpayers.”
The School Committee’s vote will take place virtually at a Special Meeting on Monday August 17 at 6 p.m.
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