Somerville PK-8 school closed for rest of school year after concrete falls onto stairwell

SOMERVILLE, Mass — A Somerville PK-8 school will close its doors for the rest of the school year after a piece of concrete fell on a stairwell last week.

Winter Hill Community Innovation School students will take classes in an offsite location starting next week. According to a letter to families from Superintendent Jeff Curley, Somerville Mayor Katjana Ballantyne and Principal Courtney Gosselinm, the “tentative” plan is to relocate all AIM classrooms to the first floor of the Edgerly Building, and Prekindergarten and Kindergarten (General Ed.) classrooms to the Capuano for the rest of the school year.

“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,” said Curley and Ballantyne in a joint statement. “We’ve set up an incident command, and teams across both the schools and City have been busy at work readying a plan, and we will be providing further updates today and tomorrow.”

School officials first alerted parents and families to the falling concrete on Thursday. The school was closed Friday as officials inspected the building.

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