Three scenarios were presented Tuesday for the empty public school campus at 158 Spring St. in East Cambridge, including the relocation of The Amigos School; a giant hub for the expanding Cambridge Preschool Program; and a place to merge upper schools, meaning district campuses for sixth, seventh and eighth graders might go to two from four.
Superintendent David Murphy presented the options to the School Committee along with a timeline for “a public engagement tour” and series of meetings to settle on a recommendation in early October with a vote no later than Oct. 20.
That’s within an October-to-November school registration period that allows changes up to Nov. 15, so parents could think about where their kids might spend as much as the next 10 years of their life. It’s possible the campus could be ready for move-in as soon as the fall of 2027, Murphy said. There’s also “a distinct possibility” it wouldn’t open until the fall of 2028, a date that “continues to be the sort of official word.”
The work between now and an October vote would “take into account the truly communitywide and citywide implications of the decision, and really think through what the long-term ramifications are,” as any decision will have ripple effects, Murphy said.
Complicating matters even more is that the East Cambridge school holds around 680 students, but an analysis shows it could hold more. Just not anytime soon.
“If the building were to be rebuilt, the absolute max capacity would be 850 students,” Murphy said, but that would require “a major construction project that will not start for close to 10 years, based on the city’s financial capacity.” The recommendation of the district’s consultants was a student capacity of 750.
The campus held the Kennedy-Longfellow School for 51 years. The committee voted to close the K-Lo in December 2024 at Murphy’s suggestion, the result of a system that concentrated high-needs students disproportionately and delivered low performance on standardized testing. The school was also underenrolled: The shutdown affected around 200 students and 75 staff members.
Since the school closed its doors at the end of the 2024-2025 school year, the 122,000-square-foot property has remained vacant, although in February around $17 million in “targeted improvements” were announced to address “aging infrastructure and improving safety, accessibility and major systems such as HVAC, electrical, plumbing and building envelope components,” as well as classroom and playground upgrades. Ahern Field, which is used by the campus for games and recreation, is next door and getting a $7.5 million redesign and reconstruction.
More details wanted
Committee members urged Murphy to bring more financial details to meetings so they could judge better what decisions to make, which followed the superintendent saying the district was in reasonable shape in that none of its buildings were so deteriorated that repair is a crisis. While refurbishment was needed on Spring Street, “this is a building that if within a week we had to move students in, we could.”
Could, maybe, but should not, said member Richard Harding, who grew up in Cambridge, reminding Murphy that one of the reasons to close the K-Lo was its physical condition. “Acting as if tomorrow we’re opening the palace of Versailles and kids could go back there … I don’t think that’s true,” Harding said. “Those seats in that place are the same seats, literally, that I sat in or my mother and father sat in when I recited ’A Dream Deferred’ there over 30 years ago. That building needs to be fixed up for real.”
“When we closed it, that building sucked,” Harding said. “We need to get a concrete understanding of what is going to happen.”
Amigos, at 15 Upton St., not far from Central Square, is in a 58,900-square-foot building built in 1852 that does not have an auditorium or field for its 421 students. It has been recognized nationally and has some of the highest MCAS scores in the district, with 71 percent of third through eighth graders meeting or exceeding expectations on the English-language arts part of the test in 2025.
Until passage of the “Innovation Agenda” in 2011, Cambridge was a district of K-8 schools; when the creation of upper schools was approved by the committee, Amigos’ unique Spanish-language instruction made it the only one spared.
Three scenarios
Scenario one in Murphy’s presentation was relocating Amigos, “a very high-performing school that is squeezed into a building that it doesn’t particularly fit.” Moving the Amigos to Spring Street from Upton Street would let more students attend.
“Moving schools is a challenging thing. There would be a significant logistical lift to this,” and an emotional one, Murphy said.
An early childhood hub was the second scenario, with Murphy explaining that the district had been considering how it into the Cambridge Preschool Program, now in its third year and seeking to expand from serving all city 4-year-olds and many 3-year-olds. On Monday, the City Council was told the mayor and city manager are setting up a task force that will report back in June about providing more access to high-quality childcare for infants and toddlers.
The hub would open up space at schools across the district “that could benefit their organization in any number of ways,” including by facilitating specialized programming such as for high-need students, Murphy said. Drawbacks include the difficulties parents from around the city would have getting to the site, its potential underuse and the “not insignificant capital investment” needed to adapt the school for such young children.
The third scenario, for a merged junior high, would help the district adjust “feeder patterns” from elementary schools that are “becoming antiquated,” Murphy said, provide more course offerings and better positioning students for high school, but it was “the most disruptive of the scenarios, I would say by a large measure.”
A requested review of the Innovation Agenda has yet to happen, Harding noted, and it would be difficult to take such a drastic step without it. The third scenario was “a bit of an underdog,” Murphy acknowledged.
A favorite emerges
A relocated Amigos stood out as a favorite and the most anticipated option. “The moment we closed the K-Lo, I think Encore probably had even money if not better that the Amigos is going to go into that building,” Harding said, referring to the Encore casino in Everett. “The Amigos people are betting heavily on the fact that the School Committee is going to make that as the choice.”
How the Amigos’ building on Upton Street might be used if it became empty was a recurring question. And after vice chair Caitlin Dube emphasized the committee’s interest in understanding what moves might follow throughout the district “particularly with Amigos in scenario one,” Murphy responded that it “seems to me, based on this discussion, represents a consensus of the committee.”
The upcoming meetings on the options are Sept. 29 at the Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, 459 Broadway, Mid-Cambridge; Sept. 30, online; and Oct. 1 at Amigos, 15 Upton St., Cambridgeport.
