Three to six options for the future of 158 Spring St. are expected to be presented to Cambridge Public Schools families in May, district superintendent David Murphy told School Committee members at a Wednesday meeting.
First a comprehensive analysis of the former Kennedy-Longfellow School is underway by W.T. Rich – the firm that built the new Tobin Montessori and Darby Vassall Upper School Complex in West Cambridge, Murphy noted. But that project was the end of the city’s ability to spend seemingly endless wealth on remaking school campuses.
“Nothing like that will be seen for the next 10 years,” Murphy said at the Buildings & Grounds Subcommittee meeting. “We have legitimate financial limitations that do to some degree narrow the scope of our decision-making.”
The Spring Street building, opened June 10, 1973, served 220 students in grades pre-K through 5 and has been used as swing space since 2011 as Cambridge remade the Martin Luther King Jr. and Putnam Avenue Upper Schools ($95.5 million); the King Open and Cambridge Street Upper Schools and Community Complex ($159 million); and the Tobin and Darby Vassall ($299 million). “This is a building that has a lot of miles on it,” Murphy said.
It was closed in June 2025 after Murphy explained that it was dealing with a “disproportionate concentration” of high-need students directed there by a flawed system of school choice. The initial hope was that the school could reopen this year, especially since there’s a high concentration of district students in the neighborhood.
The current timeline proposes to absorb the W.T. Rich analysis, present options for community feedback in May and present a plan to the School Committee in September. Later than that “wouldn’t necessarily be my preference, because I’d like students back in that building sooner rather than later,” Murphy said. But supply chain problems or construction slowdowns “could result in the building not being ready until later in the 2027-2028 school year.”
The presentation of options will explain effects elsewhere in the district – “This is how students benefit; these are the things that it does not solve; these are the potential problems that it creates; and these are the these are the upsides,” Murphy said.
It will have to, subcommittee chair Arjun Jaikumar said. “The choices that we make here affect not only this building and this facility, but also, to throw names out there, the Amigos facility, the Fletcher Maynard facility,” he said, explaining his concern at a time of financial constraints on Cambridge: “If we spend X amount of money on this facility and Y amount of money on another facility, we don’t have enough left over for Fletcher Maynard.”
Putting a dollar figure on the work would be “extremely challenging” at this point, but Murphy promised a building that “we can take pride in,” even if it doesn’t equal the new, multimillion-dollar campuses. While public comment included concerns from parents and recent School Committee candidates Jess Goetz and Anne Coburn about the building (“You can literally see the outdoors from the inside of the cafeteria, and not through a window,” Goetz said), Murphy assured that 158 Spring St. “is a functioning building. It is a safe building.”
“It’s a building that requires some not insignificant investment to get it to a place where we will be more happy and more enthusiastic to have children in it,” Murphy said. “The building will be perfectly suitable. Will it be optimal? No.”
A presentation identified 15 areas of improvement ranging from the operational (heating and plumbing) to the aesthetic (restroom floors), and some very general (the auditorium and school “technology”). The existing facility could seat more than 650 students, and the abutting John A. Ahern field will be useful for students and the community, the presentation said.
Improving district busing
Progress toward more reliable student busing was also addressed at the meeting – transportation being an persistent problem for CPS. It is being tackled by Damon Smith, the 14-year principal at Cambridge Rindge and Latin high school who was chosen by Murphy in September 2024 to fill Murphy’s former district role: chief operating officer.
“We have not had the greatest track record, but I do want to say in the last quarter of this school year, we have seen remarkable improvements,” Smith said of the district’s $80 million student busing system.
Updated routing and telematics software bought around a year ago has improved families’ ability to track where buses are in the city, Smith said, and next year the district moves to having two morning drop-off times for students (between 7:35 and 7:40 a.m. for six schools and between 8:25 and 8:30 a.m. for the remaining eight) rather than trying to squeeze three drop-offs into roughly the same period (7:45, 8:15 and 8:45 a.m.).
“We believe eliminating that second tier that we had this year will provide more opportunity for us to route our buses more effectively and drop students off reliably at their school sites in enough time for them to get breakfast, to enjoy some activities and then start the school day on time with more reliability,” Smith said.
Routes to efficiency
The district has also been examining where buses lose time in hopes of streamlining their trips, including consolidating bus stops. In some cases, this means kids coming closer to buses at major pickup spots rather than the buses coming closer to them – such as avoiding entering driveways at Rindge Towers for kids waiting in lobbies. The students may have to come out to Rindge Avenue. The change, which Smith said saves crucial minutes, will be tested in May and June and include community engagement, possibly becoming a permanent change at the start of next school year.
“There was a great reason for doing it, I’m sure,” Smith said of driveway pickups, “but it is impacting our ability to be on time.”
The true test, Jaikumar said, would be “when there’s bad weather in the fall and winter next year.”
After the North Cambridge changes, the next area to look at might be North Point, Smith said.
Member Elizabeth Hudson, whose dissatisfaction with district and committee practices has made her something of a dissident over the past few years, greeted Smith’s presentation with warmth. “This is the focus and the energy and the detail that that we should be bringing to these conversations,” she said.
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