The fates of the Winter Hill Community Innovation School and the Benjamin G. Brown School, including whether to merge Brown with Winter Hill to make a larger school, will be decided at Monday night’s meeting of the School Committee.
Monday’s committee vote is the final recommendation from the city to the Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA) on potential renovation, a district spokesperson told Cambridge Day. School Committee Chair Emily Ackman said that “pending MSBA’s acceptance,” the vote represents a final decision on the matter. (The MSBA is funding Somerville’s school renovation project through state grants.)
If approved, the merger option would result in a 925-seat Pre-K-8 school at Winter Hill’s 115 Sycamore Street site, making it one of the district’s largest. Under this option, the Brown School’s Willow Avenue building, which is also facing structural challenges, would be decommissioned.
Some residents were surprised last summer when the city announced the option for the 925-seat school instead of the expected 690-seat school, which would have left the Brown School open. Construction of the larger, merged school has remained the leading option since the Construction Advisory Group (CAG), the working group created to advise on renovations, issued a recommendation for it in January. The School Committee voted 7-2 in March to advance plans for the merged school.
Monday’s vote is one of the final steps in what has been years of back-and-forth between city officials and residents on renovation plans. Winter Hill’s Sycamore Street building has been vacant since June 2023, when it was deemed unsafe after a piece of concrete fell from a ceiling in a stairwell. Renovation plans were delayed in 2024 from an earliest expected completion of 2028 to 2031.
Some Brown parents in opposition
Several parents of students at the Brown School have rallied to protect Somerville’s smallest and oldest school building, and the only standalone elementary school in the district…