With Boston Public Schools moving to downsize its 119 schools as part of a yearslong effort to consolidate under enrolled schools with poor building infrastructure, Brighton’s Mary Lyon Pilot High School is now among those on the chopping block.

“It’s awful. As a parent, it’s scary,” said Cristin M. Stegemann, a parent and the current president of the Lyon’s School Council, an advisory board of school affiliates. “Where can you send your kids if they’re closing all of our schools?”

The proposal is part of a recent slate of school closures and downsizings, which have left many families in Brighton and neighboring Allston worrying the area’s ability to support them may be floundering.

Though Allston, a place most associated with the young people and artists that give it a lively reputation, is not usually known as a neighborhood of families, it has long been one.

Supporting a diverse population of families with the draw of public services and cheaper housing than the cities that surround it, generations of immigrants have settled in the neighborhood alongside a cohort of long-timers highly active in its civic life.

But as bitter climbs in rent Allston-Brighton rent have pushed up the cost of living there to an unprecedented high, the decline of public services — including four different schools and the only community center — are raising fundamental concerns about its livability for families.

A String of Downsizings

BPS’ January announcement that the Mary Lyon Pilot High School might close sent families into a frantic campaign to save the school — and forced them to suddenly recalibrate plans for their children’s education before the school’s proposed closure at the end of next school year. The school currently serves 96 students across grades 9 through 12.

The proposal, which would also reconfigure the Mary Lyon’s Lower School to serve students in grades Pre-K-6 instead of K-8, adds to the neighborhood’s loss of three other seventh and eighth grade options over the last three years. It will send 41 students in seventh and eighth grade to new schools and 95 high school students away.

In 2022, the district closed Allston’s Jackson-Mann K-8 School, which served 429 students. Plans to build a new K-6 school on the site are still in their planning stages, but the district has made no clear progress since 2021.

In June, Allston’s Gardner Pilot Academy will also cease offering seventh and eighth grade, sending another 72 students packing, though the reconfiguration was initially delayed a year due to controversial leadership upheaval. Brighton’s Edison K-8 School also reconfigured last fall to end its seventh and eighth grade offerings, impacting 91 students enrolled at the school.

These changes are part of a broader trend in Boston Public Schools’ effort to consolidate schools and minimize student transitions by reconfiguring elementary schools to offer grades Pre-K to 6 and high schools to offer grades 7 to 12.

The recent closures and reconfigurations have left Allston-Brighton students with just Brighton High School and Boston Green Academy as local public options for seventh, eighth grade, and high school. Some parents noted both schools as less desirable than their shuttered peers, citing Brighton High’s long underperformance and far larger class size, and the Green’s lottery-based admission and plans to soon relocate out of the neighborhood.

In interviews, Allston-Brighton parents said the diminishing public options to educate their children raised fundamental questions about the ability of the neighborhood to welcome families into its fabric — and then sustain them.

Margaret M. Kelly, a Gardner parent, painted a picture of instability in her educational planning after multiple school changes in the area.

“What’s so sad is that we had families come from the Jackson-Mann to the Gardener, and then they were told — after transitioning to the Gardener — that their kiddos couldn’t progress on to the seventh or eighth grade. They’re gonna have to find another school,” she said.

The steep decrease in local public school options for seventh and eighth grade have forced families to look outside of the neighborhood.

Transient Families

The school closures come on top of an already-brewing crisis for families in a neighborhood where single-bedroom housing prevails and rent prices favor the childless and the professional.

John J. Woods, executive director of the Allston-Brighton Community Development Corporation, said that many of his colleagues were forced to move out of the area after having children due to a lack of available housing for families and the neighborhood’s scarce public school offerings.

“We’ve had board members that volunteered here and their lives started to change because they were getting kids and so they were squeezed out of some of the living arrangements,” Woods said. He added that “concerns about the educational system” similarly drove new parents out of the neighborhood.

But transportation costs and logistics present a challenge to families in the area who cannot afford to drive their children to non-local schools, Stegemann said.

“So many people that live in this area are not drivers,” she said. “They can’t afford to have a car and pay the rent, so taking away local schools is preventing them from getting to places.”

Kelly, Stegemann, and Elaine McCauley Meehan — all longtime Allston residents — each referenced the high turnover of renters who live in the neighborhood. Each has seen their neighbors leave for the suburbs or to move out-of-state because housing costs have “gone through the roof.”

A regional housing crisis, while particularly stark in a rapidly transforming Allston, has caused similar problems in residential neighborhoods across the city. But longer-time residents of Allston-Brighton say the recent chain of school downsizing and shutterings have brought the threat to local families to new heights.

“It’s been really hard to maintain family friendships for our kids in Allston-Brighton, because no one can stay with all of the schools closing,” Stegemann said.

‘This used to be a very strong community,” she added. “Now, you don't know your neighbors anymore.”

The dual problems, parents said, produce “a vicious cycle”: fewer local children leave fewer students to enroll in the neighborhood’s schools, prompting the under-enrollment that BPS has cited as a key factor in their determinations for closure. But the closures have impacts beyond local education.

Less Housing, Fewer Services

Public schools broadly serve as an important anchor for a neighborhood’s community. Outside of educating local children, the buildings often house out-of-school childcare programs, sports and other extracurricular opportunities, and public meetings, acting as a hub for youth, family, and civic life.

In Allston-Brighton, a neighborhood whose land is disproportionately owned by private interests including Harvard, Boston University, and Boston College, the land occupied by public schools also comprises much of the neighborhood’s little publicly-held land.

And the contraction of government-run services has reached beyond the area’s schools. Allston-Brighton’s sole community center is now operating at severely limited capacity as it awaits its final demolition, ultimately presenting what may amount to a crisis of public institutions in Allston-Brighton.

The Jackson-Mann Community Center’s state of disrepair has forced many of its childcare, adult education, and other social services to cease — and the city’s lack of a plan to renovate the building for many reinforces the neighborhood’s deteriorating community institutions.

The fate of the center has been a source of anger among residents who feel broadly short-changed by City Hall. The neighborhood’s libraries appear to be some of the few public services that have remained stable in the last half decade.

For families trying to stay in the neighborhood, a shortage of public services has also met a shortage of housing that can accommodate a couple with children: Allston in particular has few units with more than one bedroom.

When Dana Greene moved to Brighton, just finding an apartment with enough room for her and her daughter proved a challenge.

“I never looked really anywhere else, because I knew I couldn’t afford to live outside of Brighton-Allston. All I needed — and it sounds ridiculous, right? — all I needed was a two bedroom. The fact was, that was such a struggle for me,” Greene said.

Jo-Ann Barbour, executive director of the Charlesview, an affordable housing developer in Allston, agreed that the majority of housing units in Allston are not suitable for families.

“The majority of the units are small units. They’re studios, they’re one bedrooms. They might be one bedroom in a den, so they’re not family friendly, right? So people aren’t going to stay that long, especially if they like the area and they’re living and working in the area, but they want to have a family,” Barbour said.

Barbour attributed the lack of housing that has pushed out families to the ever-unreliable school system in Allston.

“And you can relate that to the school closings, right? The school closures. If we don’t have kids, we’re not going to have schools,” she said.

‘The Only Chance For More Affordability’

But given that most land in Allston is privately owned, opportunities for building out new public institutions appear limited.

“There’s very little city-owned property,” Barbour said. Developers “are able to spend a whole lot more money than nonprofits are to acquire lands and buildings to be able to build affordable housing,” she added.

Among the few private projects currently under construction amid a climate of higher construction costs, the only current one in Allston with room for affordable housing is Harvard’s Enterprise Research Campus, according to Barbour.

With most land in the neighborhood in private hands, the more reliable source of subsidized housing — the city — is highly constrained in its options. Harvard, with its enormous wealth and land holdings that encompass a third of the entire neighborhood, is one of the best routes to investing in both affordable housing and more public institutions.

“The only chance for more affordability is with the Enterprise Research Campus,” Barbour said.

Harvard has successfully established community institutions for the area in the past — in 2008, it opened the Harvard Ed Portal, a public space like the Jackson Mann where Allston residents can receive free afterschool programming from Harvard undergraduates.

That hope for support from Harvard may come in part to fruition in the final version of Harvard’s ten-year Institutional Master Plan for its Allston campus, which is set for a vote by Boston’s planning department on Thursday.

The IMP must contain a set of community benefits to offset the impacts of Harvard’s expansion into Allston, and the task force of residents appointed to represent local demands for such benefits has requested funding for the Jackson Mann Community Center, affordable housing, and expanded partnership with their public schools.

“By prioritizing these projects, Harvard can deepen its partnership with the community, ensuring that the promises of economic revitalization and enriched public spaces are brought to life,” members of the Harvard Allston Task Force wrote in a public comment to city officials in January.

“For the city and its residents,” the HATF continued, the investment in public spaces “isn’t just about buildings — it’s about a brighter future.”

—Staff writer Angelina J. Parker can be reached at angelina.parker@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @angelinajparker.

—Staff writer Emily T. Schwartz can be reached at emily.schwartz@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @EmilySchwartz37.