After Kennedy-Longfellow Closure, Parents Urge Adequate Staffing at Students’ New Schools

At Tuesday night’s Cambridge School Committee meeting, Cambridge parents emphasized the need to support students displaced by the Kennedy-Longfellow School’s closure by ensuring their new schools have sufficient staffing, voicing concern about the district’s transition plan.

The School Committee voted to close the elementary school, which largely serves high-needs students, in December. Interim Superintendent David G. Murphy recommended the closure after K-Lo’s long struggle with under enrollment and low test scores.

Parents frequently cited the school’s high ratio of special educators to students with disabilities — reportedly one of the worst in the district.

Anne M. Coburn, whose child goes to K-Lo, said that the staffing at schools receiving displaced students should “reflect actual needs at K-Lo, rather than relying on current staffing levels at K-Lo,” emphasizing the need for more special education staff.

“Shifting students from one understaffed school to a different school without providing that needed support will not achieve the standard goals of the K-Lo closure, and we all want these kids to flourish,” Coburn said.

Lilly Havstad, another Cambridge parent, said she was concerned about the “inequitable distribution of staffing allocations across the district” and the need to ensure a successful transition for K-Lo students. Havstad said parents’ and educators’ questions “seem to be falling on deaf ears.”

“It’s time that the school committee and the district start answering these questions,” Havstad said. “How are you going to support the needs of these students in their new school placements, in particular, looking at staffing allocations?”

Murphy said K-Lo is among a subset of Cambridge schools that do not have any designated “substantially separate” programming in special education, which places students with learning disabilities in self-contained classrooms.

“If you were to discount the lack of the sub separate programming, the ratios would be significantly disproportionate with regard to the amount of special education staff assigned to the current Kennedy Longfellow, including additional staff that we added in September based on the perceived needs,” Murphy said.

Murphy said the district had engaged with families of K-Lo students starting the process of transferring to other Cambridge schools.

“The school’s population is 200 students and we have, over six or seven work days, made contact with 100 percent of those families in one form or another, and secured commitments for over two-thirds,” Murphy said.

“I would argue that that does not necessarily represent their concerns falling on deaf ears,” Murphy added. “This is an iterative process that we are engaged in, trying to be as responsive as possible to the families in the K-Lo community at large.”

— 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.