It’s “essentially inevitable” that if one school moves into the former Kennedy-Longfellow school, it will be Amigos, which teaches preschoolers through grade eight in a Cambridgeport building, superintendent David Murphy told School Committee members Tuesday at their summer meeting.
A timeline is needed for answers about the campus at 158 Spring St., committee members said. They adopted a motion by members Elizabeth Hudson and Richard Harding with a Sept. 4 deadline – the end of the first week of school – for Murphy to say when he will give formal recommendations and to declare the earliest school year in any resulting change could take effect.
“If we cannot provide them guidance,” said Hudson, referring to families registering for preschool and kindergarten, “we at least need to give them a plan, a timeline by which we will provide them guidance so that they can adjust accordingly.”
Murphy said he acknowledged to the Amigos community at the end of the school year that “it is inevitable that we consider the Amigo School, as our one stand-alone pre-K-to-8 school, for potentially being housed in that building.” It makes sense logistically, when comparing the size of Amigos with the empty campus, and “there are some very significant instructional and programmatic benefits,” Murphy said.
Still, Murphy said he planned to present the committee with three options and that he could do it in September, though “I don’t know that I personally think it is a necessity that we have a formal recommendation before you” then.
The building can open with a new school community or communities in the fall of 2028, with a possibility that the opening could be moved forward a full year to the fall of 2027, but “I don’t know that I will know the answer to that” in September, Murphy said.
The committee voted to close the Kennedy-Longfellow School in December 2024 at Murphy’s suggestion after he showed underenrollment, a disproportionate concentration of high-needs students and low performance on standardized testing. Only 30 percent of students met or exceeded expectations on the English-language arts portion of the 2025 standardized test known as the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System, compared with a state average of 42 percent.
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 it was announced that the city would begin “targeted improvements” of around $17 million addressing “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.
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 middle schools by separating out their sixth, seventh and eighth graders was approved by the committee, Amigos’ unique Spanish-language instruction made it the only one spared. The mix of factors now suggests it’s suited for the K-Lo campus.
“There are both programmatic instructional benefits to considering Amigos and moving our K-8 school and our high-performing dual-language school into a larger building with a nicer campus,” Murphy said.
One benefit could be expanding the number of students who have access to the school. “To have a dual immersion program that is such a jewel, I think that we should be offering this to more families as a viable option,” Harding said.
Also discussed at the meeting were algebra in high school, elementary literacy and standardized testing. The next committee meeting is Sept. 1.
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