The version of a new, six-story Winter Hill area school for 925 students moved toward a state funding process Monday with an 8-1 vote by the Somerville School Committee, an outcome signaled in a previous vote held in the spring.
The sole vote against the plan was City Council president Lance Davis, who repeated his protests from the past months that a 690-seat school would be preferable. But even Leiran Biton, who was Davis’ sole ally in opposition in a March 16 vote, was ready to move on.
“I have been in the minority voting against the overwhelming consensus that we will prefer a larger school,” Biton said. “We’ve had that debate and had that conversation. I still have my reservations, but I am committed to making sure we build the best school we can at the site.”
The campus coming to 115 Sycamore St. would open in 2031 if the city’s voters agree to pay for costs not taken care of by the state.
It would replace The Winter Hill Community Innovation School, a 89,410-square-foot structure built in 1974. The school closed for safety concerns June 2, 2023, after a piece of concrete fell in a stairwell; its 403 kids from prekindergarten to eighth grade were divided between the Edgerly Education Center and Capuano Early Childhood Center. Joining it 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.
The past three years have seen the work of a Construction Advisory Group, which met for 18 months to study the situation, hold focus groups and conduct a poll to set a path. The Massachusetts School Building Authority demanded also that a School Building Committee be created in 2024.
Next steps
The building committee met on Monday immediately before the School Committee, also to vote on the design. It endorsed the 925-student school unanimously and expects to submit its 1,260-page report to the state next week, after which the building committee will keep meeting monthly on design issues.
Parking, ground-source heat pumps and the possibility of construction using mass timber will be on the agenda, said Rich Raiche, director of infrastructure and asset management for the city. Mass timber is made by layering and bonding wood to form strong structural components that can replace steel or concrete, which makes construction faster, easier and less expensive.
More details will be checked off a state list at a Facilities Assessment Subcommittee meeting in September, said Lisa Pecora, a senior associate at the architecture and planning firm Perkins Eastman. The state also expects an educational plan, all given at a crucial meeting to be held with an MSBA panel before its board meets Oct. 28 to decide whether the project can move forward.
Objections
Each meeting on Monday began with a look at aspirational design elements such as a combined cafeteria and auditorium and a variety of workspaces, meeting spaces and nooks where students could find privacy – images borrowed from schools in Cambridge, Easton, Westwood and Newton.
Davis saw the images as an example of what was wrong with the process and the proposed school. “We’re talking about kindergarten and elementary school students here, a couple grades in middle school. These aren’t kids that are going to be sort of strolling around on their own, hanging out under the stairs or in little pockets. This is a structured organization,” Davis said, citing concerns about whether the school would be inclusive, quiet or manageable with five classes in each grade and parents’ cars crowding surrounding streets twice a day. “This is completely opposite of what we’ve been celebrated for having done … this school is a bad choice.”
“I, under no circumstances, am arguing that a 126-year-old building that’s not accessible is the right long-term solution,” Davis said, but the city should replace the Winter Hill, then address the Brown School.
On to a “crown jewel”
Other members pointed out how long the school process has been going on, and with the larger school locked in as the model. “The train has already left the station,” member Laura Pitone said to Davis’ idea of holding a vote on the smaller version of the project. The project will take enough time – last year’s kindergarteners will graduate from the fifth grade at Brown – to address problems thoughtfully, she said.
Cost would be a significant issue if the Brown School weren’t included on Winter Hill, Pitone said. She pointed to a past study of adding an elevator, make the Brown School accessible to students of all abilities but taking up nearly all its open space and alone costing $94 million.
There’s a final factor at the Brown School that committee member Andre Green saw as reason for change.
“It represents a segregated neighborhood in a segregated city. If we are serious about ending segregation in our schools, that requires changing how our schools function,” Green said. “We have an opportunity to do that in a school that will be the crown jewel of our system – and I cannot believe that after 30 years, we’re still having this conversation.”
