Somerville parents concerned over crumbling buildings with school year approaching
SOMERVILLE – After Winter Hill Community Innovation School in Somerville was closed for major repair work, forcing students out, the building intended to house students in its place is now having problems of its own.
Rising Somerville fourth grader Reuben is looking forward to the school year ahead – and spending time in the library, his favorite room.
But after his third-grade year at Winter Hill Community Innovation School was cut short because of concrete falling into stairwells, forcing the building shut down for construction, the future feels uncertain. And the crumbling concrete wasn't even the only issue.
"The AC was really bad. It was like 90 degrees in the gym. A ton of broken drinking fountains and toilets," Reuben said.
With Winter Hill under construction, the district is hosting summer programs and possibly the fall school year at Edgerly Education Center. But now that building is falling apart too.
"We've been raising the issue of the building for multiple years in a row and the city has not treated it with any particular urgency," says Reuben's father, Ethan Contini-Field.
Ethan and Aili Contini-Field and countless neighbors on social media claim the district ignored the problems and now there's not enough time to fix them before the next school year begins.
"Our school has the district program for autism, and they get federally mandated summer programming to practice skills. And that was at the Edgerly this summer," Aili Contini-Field said.
The district admitted the building needed maintenance, writing to WBZ-TV in part "…we knew that roofing, masonry, and window caulking needed to be improved to keep the building watertight. There is non-friable asbestos in the window caulking at Edgerly."
"The city is like 'We've got to fix the building, we're going to start doing asbestos work.' There are still a bunch of kids having classes in the building while there are teams walking around in hazmat suits," Aili Contini-Field said.
After several complaints, Somerville Public Schools has now closed Edgerly too. Parents say for students who spent summer inside, the damage is already done.
"You decided to hold the program in their anyway," Aili Contini-Field said.
If the buildings aren't fixed by fall, parents like the Contini-Fields may have to come up with a plan for learning someplace else.
"The kids are happy with their teachers. We like the school community, we don't want to abandon our community," Aili Contini-Field said.
