With condemnations for a confusing state process – and plenty of acknowledgments that, if purposeful, the confusion was effective on many people – the Somerville School Committee voted 7-2 on Monday for plans toward combining two aging schools at 115 Sycamore St., Winter Hill. A 925-student school to open in 2031 will be built on the site if the city’s voters agree to pay for the costs not taken care of by the state.
That will close the Benjamin G. Brown School at 201 Willow Ave. not far from Ball Square, and demand thinking about the future, some committee members said. “We’re leaving parts of West Somerville now without any walkable school, which creates challenges,” said Leiran Biton, one of the votes opposed. The other “no” vote was from City Council president Lance Davis, who agreed the plan was “abandoning the neighborhood school process. It’s certainly abandoning the walkable city concept.”
The plan was “a grave mistake,” Davis said.
It was also not really in the committee’s power to reject, most members agreed. Much of the discussion leading up to the vote was members groping toward an understanding of what they were voting and why. Technically this was a “motion to authorize the chair to sign” a space-use summary and 77-page educational program by superintendent Rubén Carmona and staff.
“Voting to put it forward tonight is endorsing the 925-seat building,” chair Emily Ackman clarified for her members.
In fact, the previous committee endorsed in December a draft recommendation for a 925-student school from the city’s Construction Advisory Group, which met for 18 months to study the situation, hold focus groups and conduct a poll to set the city’s path toward school construction using money from the Massachusetts School Building Authority.
The state demanded that a School Building Committee be created in 2024, and “the primary authority, in the view of the MSBA, is the School Building Committee,” said Rich Raiche, director of infrastructure and asset management for the city. The mayor had an “insistence that the School Committee be involved,” Raiche said. “That adds another level of complexity.”
Even the clarifications were confusing, and at one point Raiche credited a committee member with “stating the ambiguity correctly.”
“I understand everyone’s need for clarity. Unfortunately, in this case, transparency on this process is nonclarity,” Raiche said.
While an “explicit statement” of preference doesn’t come until a School Building Committee vote in August for a design, Monday’s documentation “is indicating our preference” for the biggest school rather than a 690-seat school even though “the ed plan could scale to either option,” Raiche said.
Mayor Jake Wilson insisted that the night’s vote was Somerville “basically tipping our hand to where this is likely headed” without locking the city in.
Train is on the tracks
Most members of the committee, though, decided they were getting aboard a train that was already rolling down the tracks. “The decision has already been made,” Laura Pitone said, and Michele Lippens pointed to the impossibilities of improving the Brown School with its “significant remediation and maintenance” issues and, “more critically,” lack of compliance with code that ensures access to people with disabilities. Andre Green – also a Construction Advisory Group and School Building Committee member – noted that school committees had been talking about closing the Brown School for 30 years. It’s the city’s oldest school, and the Winter Hill is the second-oldest.
The Brown, a K-5 school educating 225 kids annually in 19,014 square feet, was built in 1900, and had long been eyed as needing replacement with the high school (rebuilt for $256 million from 2018 until an opening in 2023) and Winter Hill school.
The Winter Hill, 89,410 square feet built in 1974, closed for safety concerns after a piece of concrete fell in a stairwell June 2, 2023. Its 403 kids from prekindergarten to eighth grade got split between the Edgerly Education Center and Capuano Early Childhood Center.
The city wanted to replace both but got approval from the state for only one school replacement – and a suggestion to consider combining them.
Voters get a decision
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,” Wilson said.
The Monday vote made the closing of the Brown School “predetermined,” Biton said, with some bitterness for the choice: “We’re being asked our opinion to endorse a decision that the mayor has already made. Any notion that what we have before us is an actual choice, I believe, is a misrepresentation.” Member Emma Stellman agreed that “many of us, including myself, misunderstood the agency that we had, and that’s really problematic.”
More criticism went to the state for the choice it forced. “I want to apologize to the Winter Hill school community. This conversation should never have been about the Brown School,” Biton said. “The fact that the process of building a fantastic new school that will be the envy of all students and educators in the city has been taken over by a dialogue about the closure of the Brown is a travesty.”
Aggrieved but looking forward
Members Pitone, Liz Eldridge and Davis spoke also of the incoherence of the process. “This entire issue is clear as mud,” Davis said. “The vast majority of people with whom I’ve spoken about this issue have absolutely a complete and utter lack of understanding and clarity on where the process is. People thought there was going to be an opportunity for input.”
“The MSBA process doesn’t work. It is designed to obfuscate authority,” Green said.
The members also looked forward to work that was theirs: developing and communicating a transition plan for the schools, solving the lack of walkability for school families in the west side of the city and any demographic issues that might arise. (There are no studies suggesting a substantial increase in student numbers on the west side of the city in the foreseeable future, Green said.)
The possibilities on Sycamore were also good to contemplate, some said. “There’s just a palpable sense of excitement for a new building. Our teachers see the school as more than just a school, it’s a chance to level the playing field,” Lippens said. A larger campus creates a opportunity for “a greater mixing of racial, socioeconomic and ability levels. This is how we improve the learning environment and educational experience for everyone.”