Somerville Moves Forward With Plans For New School

SOMERVILLE, MA — City officials have officially selected their preferred plan for a new school building following more than a year of planning and discussion over the future of the project.

The city is moving forward with plans to build a new school for up to 925 students at 115 Sycamore St., the former site of the Winter Hill Community Innovation School. Somerville included the preferred option in its latest submission to the Massachusetts School Building Authority, marking one of the latest steps in its effort to secure state funding for approximately half the cost of the project.

The decision follows a lengthy process that began with the MSBA advancing the city's proposal for a new school building. The city's Construction Advisory Group unanimously recommended late last year that the school be built at 115 Sycamore St. rather than Trum Field at 541 Broadway. The group cited the additional costs associated with replacing open space at Trum Field under state law as well as strong community opposition to building at the field.

While members unanimously supported the Sycamore Street location, they were more divided over the size of the school. Nine of the group's 13 members recommended building the facility to accommodate the maximum number of students supported by the state, while two supported a 700-student option and two others favored building only enough capacity to replace Winter Hill enrollment.

Mayor Jake Wilson later backed the majority recommendation, saying in January that he supported building the school with the “largest possible capacity” at Sycamore Street. The School Committee and School Building Committee have since approved the preferred option.

“Our students deserve top-quality school buildings built with design approaches proven to aid their learning and development, and this is a major step forward in our community’s efforts to provide exactly that,” Wilson said. “This will add an outstanding facility to our district that will serve Somerville students for generations to come.”

The larger facility will also impact the future of the Benjamin G. Brown School at 201 Willow Ave. Wilson previously said approximately 250 Brown School seats would ultimately be relocated to the new facility under the larger option. The city now plans to transition the Brown School's student population to the new school once it opens, addressing accessibility, aging infrastructure, and other facility issues at the Willow Avenue building.

The preferred design was developed by project architect Perkins Eastman and includes grade-level “clusters” designed to create smaller communities for students of different ages within the larger building. Plans also call for keeping the schoolyard in its current location while using the site's natural slope to create a rooftop play space accessible at street level from Evergreen and Sycamore streets.

The gym and cafetorium would also be easily accessible for community programming outside of school hours. City officials said the larger building is intended to provide additional district-wide capacity while creating dedicated spaces for specialized programming and student services.

The project stems from the 2023 closure of the former Winter Hill Community Innovation School building, which forced students and staff to relocate while Somerville began pursuing a long-term replacement. The city has since worked through the MSBA process while considering the location, size, and scope of a new facility.

The MSBA will now review the city's Preferred Schematic Report before its board of directors votes on whether to advance the project to the Schematic Design phase.

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