Parents of students in the Sumner and Philbrick schools in Roslindale were ambivalent in 2022 when Boston Public Schools officials announced the school communities would merge. The district has merged and closed dozens of schools over the last 20 years and the processes have often left parents and students angered and disillusioned.
Last Wednesday (Oct. 7), Mayor Wu cut a ceremonial ribbon on the newly renovated Sarah Roberts School building on Cummins Highway, which now houses the Sumner and Philbrick school communities in the name of a plaintiff in an 1847 school desegregation lawsuit that led the Legislature to outlaw segregation in public schools.
“This location offers more opportunities than ever before for the 700 students who get to go here,” Wu said, speaking in the school’s auditorium. “The school centers our students’ needs: green space for outdoor learning, modern classrooms filled with natural light, and — some of the teachers pointed out to me — matching furniture, a new bilingual curriculum, state-of-the art STEM and music programs, an amazing playground, and so, so much more.”
The Roberts school renovation comes amid an increased number of mergers, renovations and new construction, including the design phase for renovations at the former McCormack Middle School in Dorchester’s Columbia Point, which merged with the Boston Community Leadership Academy High School and is now the Ruth Batson Academy serving grades 7-12.
In September, the city cut the ribbon on a newly constructed building for the Carter School in the South End and is near completion on the renovation of the P.J. Kennedy School in East Boston.
In 2023, the School Committee voted unanimously to merge the P.A. Shaw and Charles Taylor Elementary schools in Mattapan and Dorchester. The school district’s plan to build a new school for the merged Shaw-Taylor community has been approved for funding by the Massachusetts School Building Authority, a quasi-public authority that taps funds from the state sales tax to help finance the construction of new buildings.
A feasibility study to locate a new site for the school is underway.
“We currently have more school construction projects or renovation projects underway right now and in the pipeline than in the last 40 years combined,” Wu noted.
On Columbia Point, the recently closed Dever School, which is attached to the McCormack via a gangway, will likely be part of the reconstruction, Superintendent Mary Skipper said.
“We are going to use that building in some way, either for a swing space while the construction’s going or it’ll figure into the design,” she told The Reporter.
The aim of the city’s new building construction, renovations, and mergers is to create schools that serve more of students’ needs, Skipper said. Many current smaller and older school buildings lack basic facilities such as auditoriums, gymnasiums, libraries, kitchens, and cafeterias.
At the same time, the district’s enrollment has dropped as working-class families are being priced out of Boston. There are currently 46,094 students enrolled in the district, according to data submitted to the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, down from 54,312 in 2015. As the number of students trends down, district officials are hoping to save costs by closing and consolidating schools.
When Wu took office in 2022, she pledged to spend $2 billion on school renovations and new construction.
For the McCormack building plan, the city plans to receive matching funds from the School Building Authority.
The processes for school closures and mergers has sparked controversy in recent years. Officials announced the closure of the McCormack in 2018, as part of a broader push to close middle schools as the district pivoted to K-8 and 7-12 grade configurations in its school buildings.
After students, parents, and teachers advocated against a closure, the district agreed to a merger with Boston Community Leadership Academy, with a promise that students would enjoy a new facility. Instead, BCLA students were transferred to the existing McCormack building with limited renovations to some classrooms.
“We have teachers sharing classrooms,” noted Ruth Batson teacher Sarah Cook. “Some of our classes are taking place in the Dever building. If teachers have whiteboards in their classrooms, it’s because they bought them.”
Cook said the current McCormack building gymnasium is too small for the needs of high school students and she noted that the outdoor playing fields and basketball courts that were school property were leased to the Boys and Girls Club for the construction of the Dorchester Field House.
The city council last week approved $2.5 million in funding for an architectural design study for a New Batson Academy building. There is as yet no timeline for when construction will begin.
If the new Sarah Roberts building is any indication, the new school will likely be a vast improvement over the current facility. Aside from a new steel and glass entryway bearing Sarah Roberts’s name, the renovations have taken place entirely within the former Washington Irving School building. New lighting fixtures, carpeting, bathrooms, and other facilities give the early 20th century building’s interior a modern feel. Outside, a two-lane track surrounds a turf field in the renovated school yard.
In her remarks last week, Wu praised the architects and construction managers who worked on a tight timeline to finish their work before students entered the building in September.
“It is absolutely beautiful and incredible,” she said. “New windows and floors, redoing the bricks, ensuring that every inch of an old and historic building would be updated with the most modern amenities for our young people and our teachers.”
