Somerville’s Winter Hill school closed suddenly a year ago and hasn’t reopened. What’s next?

“I just really don't want them to forget about the kids that are there now."

Members of an eighth grade civics class were met with thunderous applause at a recent Somerville School Committee meeting as they presented their in-depth survey on how Somerville should replace the Winter Hill Community Innovation School, a year after it suddenly closed.

The students said they wanted their voices to be heard as the city plans a new school. The pandemic, building issues, and then a piece of wall concrete falling in the hallway of the K-8 school have combined to derail their education since fourth grade, they said.

“That is four buildings in four years,” one student told the School Committee. “Our community has an important decision to make. How will we rebuild the Winter Hill school?”

With Winter Hill closed, its students have spent the last year at the Edgerly Education Center in East Somerville. Parents said their children are learning in a less than ideal environment, while a new building won’t be built for at least five years.

“I just really don’t want them to forget about the kids that are there now,” parent Shauna Powers said.

Winter Hill closed one year ago

Students were suddenly relocated from the Winter Hill school after a piece of concrete fell in a hallway in June 2023. There were just 10 days left in the school year, and Somerville Public Schools rushed to place the students at other school buildings or at Tufts University.

The falling concrete wasn’t a surprise, but finding the school was considered unsafe for learning was, parents said in interviews with Boston.com. At the time, the Somerville Educators Union said they had been advocating to repair the decrepit building for three years.

Somerville City Councilor Willie Burnley, Jr. said the city neglected public buildings like Winter Hill for years despite teachers asking for more support.

“They warned us a year before the collapse that if they did not receive support from the city that something bad could happen, and that is exactly what happened,” he told Boston.com this week.

Rich Raiche, the city’s director of infrastructure and asset management, said they found that the building was structurally sound last summer. But, the 1970s-era, brutalist building was full of dangerous, cracked prefabricated concrete, which needed to be removed, he told Boston.com.

“It wasn’t that we couldn’t move back into that building, if a gun were to our head,” Raiche said, but “we couldn’t get that building back open for the start of the school year (last fall), so moving to the Edgerly was the better of the two choices.”

Asbestos and capacity issues at Edgerly

The Edgerly Education Center, an old high school being used as offices, was chosen as the best location for the displaced Winter Hill community. But, families’ first venture to the new site last summer was rocky.

Summer programming, including for autistic students in the AIM program, was cut short after families became upset when they saw asbestos being removed from Edgerly during renovations.

Raiche said while there were no safety risks to the students, administration thought it would be “easier” to end the program early.

“We knew where the asbestos was,” Raiche said. “What we didn’t anticipate was that when they saw the people come in with their work gear and a containment zone, there was a lot of concern.”

The Winter Hill community’s first year at Edgerly also divided the K-8 school. Pre-K and kindergarten students from Winter Hill took classes at the nearby Capuano Early Childhood Center this school year.

Winter Hill Principal Courtney Gosselin said the separation of the youngest students affected parent pick-up and drop-off, as well as community events.

“Our identity is as a pre-K-8 school,” she said. “They’re a part of our community, and it really is challenging when you’re not able to see everybody on a day-to-day basis.

After a year apart, the Winter Hill community was planning to reunite at Edgerly in the fall. But, families were notified in March that construction to renovate an old boxing club inside the building this summer may not come to fruition. The district said they would reach out to families and give pre-K and kindergarten families a chance to revise their first-choice school.

Powers, a parent with a kindergartener and a second grader from Winter Hill, said it caused a lot of concern.

“It was just this crazy thing,” she said. “They called parents of pre-K and kindergarteners, asking them if they wanted to unenroll in the school.”

Two weeks later, it had been ironed out. Another letter went to families that music classrooms, a theater room, and offices would be rearranged and renovated to accommodate the three pre-K and kindergarten classrooms. Gosselin said it required some creative thinking.

“Our staff has been really supportive,” she said. “We’ve been able to make sure that everybody has a space that works for what they need to do.”

Raiche said the planned renovation of the old boxing club — a large concrete basement storage space with exposed pipes — would have been more extensive than they originally thought. The cost would have amounted to more than 30% of the building’s value, which would trigger major accessibility upgrades, per state law.

“We realized that we couldn’t move forward with that plan,” Raiche said. He said the initial notice to families was for “ultra transparency.”

Looking forward at Edgerly

With all students from Winter Hill starting classes in the same location beginning in the fall, students, families, and educators are looking ahead. While plans for a new building are still murky, the Winter Hill community will be making Edgerly their home for at least the next few years.

Eranthe Phinney’s first grader and preschooler were split between Edgerly and Capuano this year. Phinney said her family is glad to be all under one roof, but her son will miss Capuano’s play structure.

“My son spent his whole weekend crying about the fact that he needs to leave Capuano,” Phinney said. “He’s sad that he has to leave his playground behind, and he knows he’s going to a school that doesn’t have one.”

Currently, there is no play structure at the Edgerly school, and there is no plan to build one. Raiche said the courtyard is used for morning and dismissal activities, and the building itself makes up most of the rest of the space on the lot.

“Operationally, there’s just no way to facilitate a play structure,” he said.

Gosselin said students have twice a day or daily recess in Edgerly’s play area, where there’s a basketball hoop and four square boxes. Then, once a week, the students have a 30-minute recess at the nearby East Somerville Community School.

Phinney, a former preschool teacher, said the weekly excursions aren’t enough.

“Little kids have lots of energy — if they don’t figure out a way to get these kids’ energy out, we’re going to start seeing it impacting their education,” Phinney said.

Parents also said Edgerly needs soundproofing. Raiche agreed. He said this summer, the school will get acoustic treatments to quiet classrooms down and an electrical upgrade which will allow for air conditioning in the cafeteria.

“I foresee chipping away at little projects every summer in that building,” he said.

What could the new building for Winter Hill students look like?

Right now, the Winter Hill school is sitting empty (except for some teachers’ school supplies) on Sycamore Street. After the Massachusetts School Building Authority — the quasi-governmental agency that works with school districts to fund major school building projects — accepted Winter Hill into consideration for funding, Somerville has a choice. The district is weighing five options to address the needs of both the Winter Hill and the Benjamin B. Brown schools.

The Brown School is a K-5 school near Davis Square. Raiche said the building is more than a century old. The MSBA said it would consider paying for a single project that would combine the two schools.

“Neither set of parents really wants school consolidation,” parent Klaus Schultz said. “Nobody wants that ever, but cities do it when they need to.”

An architecture and planning firm presented five options to the community in December, broken down between two-building options and single-building scenarios. Both address the needs of Brown and Winter Hill students.

Plan A is to completely rebuild Winter Hill as a larger building with four stories, compared to three in the current building. This option could impact play space at the Sycamore Street site, but there’s potential to create new play space across Thurston Street, a representative for Beyer Blinder Belle said. Brown would get a complete renovation and addition.

Plan B would rebuild Winter Hill as in Plan A, but the John F. Kennedy School near Porter Square would get an addition to accommodate Brown students there.

Plan C would be a large combined school for Winter Hill and Brown on Sycamore.

Plan D would be a renovation of Winter Hill as it stands now with a planned addition. Raiche said renovating Winter Hill, which is already too small, is unlikely.

“We couldn’t just renovate that building. It would have to be a renovation and an addition, and because it’s built into the side of a hill and it’s very narrow; the configuration of that building is also very awkward,” Raiche said.

Plan E would be a large combined school on Somerville’s Trum Field, which would take about half of a park that has baseball and soccer fields. The plan would allow for one field to remain at Trum.

The eighth graders who presented a survey to the School Committee surveyed 600 people including educators, parents, and students. Their data, which will be available on their website in the next week, showed respondents had a preference for options A, C, and E. She said their work is legitimate research.

“They turned their anger at an injustice that they have directly experienced into doing community good,” Megan Brady, their teacher, said. “I also celebrate that eighth graders took on a task of soliciting community feedback and ideas in a way that I haven’t seen the city do.”

Somerville is still in the beginning stages of securing MSBA funds. They’re working until the fall of 2025 on a feasibility study and community engagement to solidify the design plans for the project and figure out funding. Then, work will begin on a specific design.

“From finding a contractor to installing the last door or light, school projects can take several years to renovate or build as can be seen with the new High School or the renovated East Somerville Community School,” the city wrote on its website.

Gosselin said Brady’s class project gave students an opportunity to share their needs with the School Committee.

“I’m looking forward to see what our next steps are and how the community goes about choosing and hopefully using the information that the students have gathered in terms of making their decision,” Gosselin said.