Planning for a new public school for Somerville advanced Thursday, as the Massachusetts School Building Authority’s board of directors held its October meeting and voted to move the Winter Hill Community School into the next design phase.
“Thanks to our collaborative work with local officials, we are working to build a 21st century educational facility that will provide Somerville students with a top-notch learning environment,” said state treasurer Deborah Goldberg, chair of the MSBA.
The project still has a long ways to go.
In the schematic design phase, the MSBA and the district look at options to replace the existing Winter Hill school at 115 Sycamore St., which closed after a piece of concrete fell in a stairwell in 2023.
A structural review decided the building would never reopen, and students and faculty were relocated, divided between the Edgerly Education Center and Capuano Early Childhood Center. After years of study and refinement, a plan for a new, six-story Winter Hill area school for 925 students was approved by the School Committee on Aug. 17.
It would replace not just the Winter Hill Community Innovation School, a 89,410-square-foot structure built in 1974 with 403 kids from prekindergarten to eighth grade: Incorporated into the new campus would be 225 kindergarten-to-fifth grade kids from the 19,014-square-foot Benjamin G. Brown School at 201 Willow Ave. not far from Ball Square.
The Brown School, built in 1900, is the city’s oldest and smallest, and has been named for decades as needing renewal. The city has long wanted to replace both, but got approval from the state for only one – and a suggestion to consider combining them – when the Winter Hill closed by surprise.
Somerville school leaders identified in their statement of interest to the state deficiencies in the existing Winter Hill facility “related to the structural integrity, outdated electrical and plumbing systems as well as the building’s envelope, including accessibility issues. In addition to the physical plant issues, the district reported that the existing facility does not support the delivery of its educational program as well as projected overcrowding,” the MSBA said.
“The potential new Winter Hill Community School will mean a better learning and teaching location for students and teachers,” said Mary Pichetti, executive director and deputy chief executive of the MSBA.
The agency was formed in 2004 to partner with Massachusetts communities to support the design and construction of public schools. It has approved more than 1,200 projects and reimbursed more than $19 billion for school construction. The cost of the new Winter Hill wasn’t discussed; Somerville High School was rebuilt for $256 million from 2018 until an opening in 2023. Whatever the state doesn’t pay for would be covered by the city’s taxpayers; a proposed override is expected to go on a special June 2027 ballot for voters to decide. “A vote to close the building on Willow Avenue can’t happen until we’re on the other side of a debt exclusion vote,” mayor Jake Wilson said in March.
