The future of Winter Hill Community Innovation School was recently discussed at a meeting of the city’s The School Building Facilities and Maintenance Special Committee. — Photo by Bobbie Toner

By Beatriz Leite

“It’s a decision for the next 50 years, so whatever choices we are making are the things that are going to impact the next several generations of students,” said Laura Pitone, Elected Ward 5 Representative for the Somerville School Committee.

This past Wednesday, October 4, The School Building Facilities and Maintenance Special Committee met to discuss the changes that are being made in the schools with plans to make improvements. The meeting was held by Chairperson and Ward 5 Councilor Beatriz Gomez Mouakad.

The meeting ultimately focused on the Winter Hill Community Innovation School, which back in June, had an incident with the ceiling falling and closing down the school.

The students from Winter Hill have been relocated to the Edgerly Education Center temporarily, not knowing how long they will stay in this facility.

Councilor and Vice Chair and Ward 4 Councilor Jesse Clingan expressed concern about the lack of progress and shared information with the Winter Hill project. As a resident of the area, he is personally hoping for some more advances in the rebuilding of the school. “I get it, it is a lot of pieces but I’m just hoping we can get something,” he said.

Both Chair and Vice Chair told Director of Infrastructure and Asset Management, Rich Raiche, how the community wanted to be more involved in the decisions and not get informed after decisions are made. “The talk is between if we are building a new school master plan or not, we would need a ballot initiative in 2024,” Clingan said.

Ward 6 Councilor Lance Davis suggested a website with updates about the school repairs. Everything would be concentrated in a single place and all the information would be accessed easily. Even though there is a website with the master plan, the Council is planning on doing something more informative in detail to help the community feel involved and knowledgeable of the matter. Chair Gomez Mouakad asked the administration to come up with a proposal of a page or ideas on how they could do that by their next meeting. “The community wants to know when they are gonna be involved, they wanna understand these steps,” Gomez Moukad said.

There was consensus about the need for more transparency and openness to discussion with the community about the projects. The price of the renovation is not known yet, because no design plan has been made yet. More will be discussed in future meetings.