Shuttered since its closing last year, the fate of the Kennedy-Longfellow School building still hangs in the balance. The new school committee continues to grapple with the best use of the facility, located on the corner of Spring Street and Fulkerson Street.
The district’s administration expects to provide the school committee with a formal recommendation for the building’s use “no later than September,” Superintendent Dave Murphy said at a March 18 meeting of the Buildings and Grounds Subcommittee.
At the same time, Superintendent Murphy has been clear that the building will remain under the school district’s jurisdiction and will become a fully operational school again. “This is a building that we want to have a CPS school in, and we want to have it in soon,” he said at the meeting.
While committee members loosely discussed the possibility that the building could be ready for students come fall of 2027, no official timeline for the project has been set and Murphy said he would not make “any ironclad guarantees” about the building being ready for the start of the 2027-28 school year. A Fall 2028 opening date was discussed as the latest option.
Timing will depend on estimates from the district’s construction partners, the school committee’s readiness, and the timeline for community engagement, Murphy said, adding that the district has planned “robust” community engagement opportunities in the coming months.
When asked about plans for the building, Chris Montero, president of the district’s teacher’s union, stressed the importance of educator involvement. “My biggest worry is that decisions get made without caregivers and educators actually being involved, much like the decision to shut [Kennedy-Longfellow] down in the first place,” Montero said.
That decision, first recommended by then-interim Superintendent Murphy in 2024, stemmed from enrollment challenges. Under-enrollment was a persistent problem at the elementary school, which could house up to 650 students. Murphy said at the time that the challenges were linked in part to the city’s controlled choice system, where both family preference and socioeconomic background are considered when placing students at the district’s various schools. The roughly 220 students who were enrolled at Kennedy-Longfellow when it closed in 2025 were relocated to schools around the district for that school year.
A review of the controlled choice system has been proposed at some recent committee retreats.
Kennedy-Longfellow was facing other challenges prior to its closure. In his recommendation, Murphy also cited a disproportionate number of high-need students who were concentrated at the school, poor outcomes data, like results from the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS), and necessary building repairs.
The building repairs were first announced in a presentation by the Superintendent last summer, with an estimated $10 million allocated for “building infrastructure.” While that estimate has not been officially updated, Murphy said that the project’s construction manager, W.T. Rich is reviewing the project.
W.T. Rich is the same firm responsible for the $300 million renovation of The Tobin Montessori and Darby Vassall Upper Schools and Community Complex completed last Fall.
Given the cost of the Tobin Montessori and Darby Vassall renovations, Murphy emphasized budget limitations for the Spring Street project. “Cambridge is coming off a historical level of investment in school infrastructure,” he said.
While he acknowledged the financial limitations of the Spring Street project, Councillor Marc McGovern said he is “really happy that [the building is] finally going to get some of the TLC that it deserves.”
Renovations for Ahern Field, the main green space at 158 Spring Street, seem to be developing sooner than plans for the building itself. The 2.6 acre outdoor space will be closed for renovations until September of 2027, according to the city’s proposed timeline. Installation of artificial turf and a boost in hours for sports programming are among the biggest changes coming to the space.
Longtime school committee member Fred Fantini acknowledged the importance of the building’s geographic position.
“East Cambridge deserves the school system on the other side of the railroad tracks,” Fantini said. “They need a school that’s close to where they live, so they can walk to school. That would certainly be considered a priority for me.”
At the end of the day, the need for time is what Murphy emphasized. “We are not going to have a new school at 158 Spring Street,” he said. “I’d like every student to go to a school in an environment that’s as technologically advanced and as operationally sound as our new buildings. But that takes time, and it’s not going to happen in the next two years.”
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