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More than 200 students at the Kennedy Longfellow School received their new school placements on Feb. 10 as Cambridge Public Schools prepares to shut down the elementary school after this academic year.
The School Committee voted to close the school, which has long suffered from low enrollment and test scores — and is also disproportionately home to students from low-income and immigrant backgrounds — on Dec. 17.
Last month, the school district gave parents a choice: transition their student to one of the two schools nearest K-Lo, or attempt to lottery into an elementary school of their preference.
While parents The Crimson spoke to said they were grateful to have some say in the transition, many emphasized that the timeline for that choice felt rushed — the district gave them exactly two weeks to make a decision.
The majority of parents selected the former option, transitioning their students into schools located near K-Lo. Just 32 out of the 215 students decided to participate in the special lottery instead.
CPS spokesperson Jaclyn Piques wrote in an emailed statement that 99 percent of students who participated in the special lottery were assigned one of their school choices, with 69 percent getting their first choice.
Kara Keating Bench, the parent of a current first grader at K-Lo, said she appreciated that parents had the option to choose between a lottery and a guaranteed school, adding that some parents might end up disappointed with the lottery results.
Rather than enter a lottery, Bench chose to stick with the designated cohort option, and her child will attend King Open School next year. She noted that proximity to her home was an important factor in her decision.
“Being able to walk to school is something of a priority for us, so the King Open School is the next walkable school,” she said. Bench added that although she was satisfied with her choice, she — like many other K-Lo parents navigating the transition — still would have stayed at K-Lo if given the option.
Jia-Jing Lee, another K-Lo parent, was one of the few who opted into the special lottery, and is now on the waitlist for the King Open school. In an interview, Lee criticized the process, saying parents had too little time to make their decision, which risked leaving behind working parents and non-native English speakers.
“A lot of parents have to work. They don’t have that much time to understand all this,” Lee said.
“I have to take time off from my other things to actually follow this, to make sure that we don’t miss any important information,” she said.
Though the district held several open houses for families about the transition options, they all occurred in the final three days before the Jan. 24 deadline for parents’ decision to lottery or go with the default option.
“The district could have provided more time and scheduled the open houses much earlier,” Lee said, adding that she was skeptical the district was able to fully communicate essential information to families with language barriers. More than half of K-Lo students speak English as a second language.
Kate L. Whelan, a parent of current fourth and fifth graders at K-Lo, said the decision to close the school was “kind of thrust upon” parents on “pretty short notice.”
While all students have now received their school placements for next year, the school’s staff faces lingering uncertainty.
Dan Monahan, president of the Cambridge Public Schools’ educators union, said that the union is currently in negotiations with the district about the timeline and process for the reallocation of K-Lo staff.
“We’re hoping that this week, we can have some real conversations to try to come closer to some kind of agreement as to how to make this happen,” he said.
Monahan also said that some K-Lo teachers may have an opportunity to take positions that open up in the district, when contracts are not renewed due to poor performance or retirements.
“Essentially what we’re trying to negotiate is a smooth and easy process for K-Lo educators to be transitioned into those positions without having to go through the whole interview process,” he said.
“Classroom teachers are critically important, and they are only one piece of the staff at the school that needs to find a new place,” Monahan added.
The fate of administrators, custodians, and other members of the school’s staff is still being determined, according to Interim Superintendent David G. Murphy, who spoke on the issue during a joint roundtable between the CPS School Committee and Cambridge City Council on Monday.
“We have not finalized the entirety of the staffing structure,” Murphy said, adding that “it is definitely true that a high concentration of staffing resources will be redeployed.”
— Staff writer Ayaan Ahmad can be reached at ayaan.ahmad@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @AyaanAhmad2024.
— Staff writer Claire A. Michal can be reached at claire.michal@thecrimson.com.
