A school in Somerville, Massachusetts, was forced to shut down last week after a chunk of concrete fell from the ceiling -- adding to a laundry list of other problems, according to frustrated parents -- and it will remain closed for the rest of the school year.
The sign on school grounds says call 311 to report problems, but parents at Winter Hill Community School say lately, they’ve been wanting to call 911.
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No one was inside the school when that concrete fell, but some furious parents say this is just one of the many issues they’ve been dealing with when it comes to structural damage and they don’t feel safe sending their kids to the Winter Hill school.
Gandy Aldana, who has a son in the third grade there, says there's been problem after problem -- from broken elevators to sinks, to bathrooms and now the concrete falling onto a stairwell Thursday. She's thankful no one was in the building because the night before it was an entirely different story when there was an open house for all families.
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"This school was full," she said.
Aldana says enough is enough, adding that parents have been begging the city to make the necessary repairs to the Pre-K to grade 8 school.
"Everybody don’t listen. We talk with the superintendent, we talked with the City Hall, every meeting we speak the same problems, but don’t happen nothing, and now it’s time," she said.
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The mayor and interim superintendent released a statement this weekend, saying, "Closing school as we did Friday or shifting locations for the remainder of the year is of course never what we want for our students, families, or staff, but out of an abundance of caution, we are all hands on deck finalizing contingency plans for the remainder of the school year. We’ve set up an incident command, and teams across both the schools and City have been busy at work readying a plan."
Further updates are expected soon.
Aldana says this is all very frustrating as many parents are scrambling to find someone to watch their kids Monday through Wednesday this week.
The PTA is asking all parents in Somerville to get on a Zoom call scheduled for 7:30 p.m. Monday to express their concerns and make the school building a priority on the finance committee's budget plan.
