Members of Somerville’s Construction Advisory Group are speaking out after the city launched phase one of the community engagement process into determining the scope of a new elementary school, calling the efforts biased.
The group is tasked with presenting a recommendation to Mayor Katjana Ballantyne on the scope and location of a new or renovated school to accommodate the displaced students of the Winter Hill Community Innovation School and potentially the students of the Benjamin G. Brown School. The project will be funded partially by a grant from the Massachusetts School Building Authority, which leaves the deadline for a recommendation to be reached in November.
Since the first meeting of the group in October, members have raised concerns over the time management of meetings as well as a lack of clarity as to their purpose in the advisory group. At the December meeting Ballantyne spoke with the group to reassert the importance of their role; community engagement has been a focal point of her administration, despite criticisms from community members that processes are being drawn out, delaying intended progress.
A Jan. 23 press release from the city came as a surprise to members of the group, who believed they were going to see the survey before it was publicly released.
A late order came before the Somerville City Council just hours after the survey launch, calling on the administration to remove the survey from circulation immediately. Councilors Kristen Strezo and Lance Davis, sponsors of the late order, said the survey was clearly slanted in favor of building one large new school as opposed to renovating community schools.
The survey was curated by SomerStat, an office that functions under the mayor to use data in decision-making, and asks respondents 24 questions covering topics such as school size, walkability and costs. Strezo called the questions embarrassing and leading, pointing out that all of the response selections were variations of agreeing with the prompt, leaving little room for dissenters.
“The poll is a joke. It’s just laughable,” Davis said. “It made my brain hurt reading this, how completely ridiculously slanted it was and how absolutely obvious to any reader it was.”
“To shepherd our residents to an answer like this is not a community process,” said Strezo, a CAG member and parent of a student at Brown, in an email to Cambridge Day.
The survey contributes to the fears of residents who already doubt the value of community engagement, Davis said. “Here is another case where it’s just almost impossible for me to make a good faith argument to any constituent who says that this decision isn’t already made, that this entire process is a sham, that that all the time that’s being asked of people is a complete waste,” Davis said at the City Council meeting.
Refuting bias allegations
City officials spanning several offices were all present at the monthly meeting of the CAG Wednesday. Director of SomerStat Anna Gartsman and director of communications and community engagement Denise Taylor spoke to the group, clarifying points of concern and explaining survey decision choices.
Gartsman explained that the questions were designed to be accessible to community members who do not have as many details as the group members, pointing to “other” options that allowed respondents to reply in an open-ended manner.
Construction Advisory Group and Brown parent-teacher association member Ryan Williams said members of the group have pleaded to receive materials in advance to allow more time for meaningful discussion during their once-monthly three-hour meetings, but not much has changed.
Repeated questions, concerns
The same question comes up at every meeting – this time raised by a business community representative and former city councilor Jack Connolly: “What are we trying to achieve here?”
The confusion is highlighted by the fact that seemingly none of their survey recommendations compiled from previous meetings were considered in the final product, Strezo said. “It was put forward ignoring the will of the community, and of the specific construction committee assembled to help create the process,” she said in an email to Cambridge Day.
Strezo has raised concerns repeatedly over the lack of including perspectives of families with neurodivergent children, especially since the Winter Hill school hosts an Adapt/Include/Motivate program for children on the autism spectrum. “We will actually be doing harm to the community if we’re not taking that into consideration,” she said during the council meeting last week.
Extra care asked
Group members have reported concerns from Somerville parents over the survey content; Taylor confirmed that at least two community members had reached out to the city with similar complaints, which they are working to remedy.
A public Facebook post from the evening of the survey release drew the attention of community members, many sharing their discontents toward the framing of the survey. One commenter wrote “I think I will make ample use of the comments field.”
The confusion was avoidable, Williams said, and the city should take extra care with a school community that has already experienced a lot. “It’s been over 600 days since the Winter Hill roof collapsed and 10 years since the Brown roof collapsed. One or two days of review to make the survey better and balanced is not what is holding us back from making progress for the kids,” he said in an email after the meeting.
“All options remain”
Taylor said they are not seeking any particular outcome for location or scope of the school. “All options remain on the table,” she said in an email to Cambridge Day on Friday. At the CAG meeting she clarified that it was never the goal to have advisory members define the public outreach, rather to be the recipients of the data it produces.
Taylor confirmed that the mayor did not view the survey before it was publicly launched, calling any involvement in such a matter unusual. “We had staff and consultants with expertise in survey development, community engagement, language access, the city’s capital investment plan and the project details develop and test the survey and incorporate feedback,” Taylor said.
While still available, the survey has stopped being advertised and the revised version will be public within the next two to three weeks. “I look forward to reviewing with city officials to identify ways we can improve the quality of data we collect,” Williams said. The resolution is on the agenda for the Thursday meeting of the School Building Facilities and Maintenance Special Committee.
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