Bursting at the Seams

Not many public schools have "For God and Country" engraved in stone above their entryways.

But since 1991, the Cambridgeport school has made its home in a building rented from the Blessed Sacrament Church.

As the school expanded throughout the decade, it outgrew that building.

Overcrowding has become so severe that teachers say it interferes with everyday learning and learning.

Teachers say they regularly wander the halls with their students looking for empty classrooms and often hold classes in the hallway.

"We're crowding a lot of children in this building," says Principal Lynn Stuart, who went on leave earlier this month to write a book on student achievement and the history of the Cambridgeport School.

The three floors of the Blessed Sacrament building are packed with 295 students, she says.

The issue of overcrowding at Cambridgeport is currently under discussion in a subcommittee of the Cambridge School Committee, but Stuart said she expects the committee to pass a resolution to the problem by early in 2001.

On Sept. 25, Cambridge Superintendent of Schools Bobbie J. D'Alessandro recommended moving the Cambridgeport to the Fletcher School building, which was vacated this fall when it merged with the Maynard School and moved into the Maynard School building.

D'Alessandro's recommendation calls the rented facility "significantly inadequate and sub-standard."

The move is part of a larger plan to consolidate facilities and improve efficiency.

Though Cambridgeport is crowded, the city of Cambridge has about 1,500 empty seats district-wide, so the district is currently paying for some partially empty facilities. Rent for Cambridgeport's current facility alone costs the district $113,000 a year.

But parents and students say they are devoted to the school's existing location, which is a neighborhood school for the Cambridgeport neighborhood.

The Cambridgeport School Council meets tonight to talk about the move. Next week, the council will hold an all-school meeting. And by the end of the month, D'Alessandro will meet with parents to answer lingering questions.

School officials say they believe the relocation will be smoother than previous efforts at finding the school a permanent home.

Three years ago, Cambridgeport and Maynard were set to be merged, but the process was hotly contentious. One of D'Alessandro's first actions when she became superintendent was to call off that merger.

Crowded Out

Jill Berg '90, a seventh- and eighth-grade teacher at Cambridgeport, walks toward the office after school.

She says she tried to use the school's library with her class for a research project in the morning but was booted by a teacher who needed to use the space for a math lesson.

"We had five minutes of research time," she says. "If that's not ridiculous, I don't know what is."

"We're going to the public library tomorrow," she adds. "They have room for us."

The library used to have flexible scheduling that allowed teachers to bring their classes and work on research projects, says seven-year librarian Laurie Cleveland.

"This year I had to change my policy," she says. "Last year, it became untenable."

She says she has never seen Fletcher's library but says it's "about time" the school got a permanent home.

Berg, who came to Cambridgeport in 1994 as the new fifth-grade teacher, says the library is not the only way overcrowding interferes with class.

"If a kid wants to sharpen a pencil often the whole row has to get up," she says. "The rows are so close together, when they back up they smash fingers."

"A Branch of Roses"

Overcrowding is particularly problematic to Cambridgeport becaus the school uses an alternative teaching style called developmental learning.

According to first- and second-grade teacher Nili Pearlmutter, that philosophy means recognizing that different children learn at different rates.

She says the approach is like "a branch of roses"--one bud may grow quickly, and another slower.

"If you pull it apart it will break," she says.

The Cambridgeport approach means students do projects throughout the year based on a curricular theme that teachers design.

This fall, for example, the theme is community. Students will interview members of the community and make quilt squares about them.

But overcrowding means there's no space to make and store the projects.

Pearlmutter says she does not know where she will have her class work on its next project, which is to build a large model of Cambridge.

Berg says these constraints have forced changes in the curriculum.

"The kids aren't getting the kind of hands-on education I'd like to teach them," Berg says.

Breaking Out

First- and second-grade teacher Bela Bhasin says Cambridgeport's mixed-grade classes are an important part of the school's educational philosophy. Each class contains a mix of two grades--first and second, third and fourth, etc.

But mixed grades means that when the grades split up for math and reading lessons, one teacher has to find a new room.

"Every day one of us has to leave the room," Bhasin says. "There's supposed to be breakout spaces."

Breakout spaces are places where teachers can go to work with small groups.

The city and the school department have funded several projects to increase breakout space in Cambridgeport--for instance, using plywood to create small conference rooms on the building's second floor.

Even with the improvements, breakout spaces are a rare commodity at Cambridgeport.

Teachers say they waste time wandering the hallways looking for breakout spaces and often teach in the landings.

"If you have a 45-minute class, at least 14 minutes is transit time, so you have a lot less learning time," Berg says.

Other teachers concur.

"There are times when I'll wander around the building needing a space," says first- and second-grade teacher Patrick Cunningham.

But Cunningham's assistant teacher says Cambridgeport isn't so crowded by comparison.

"I'm from Philadelphia, so I'm used to this," says Sarah Lawentmann, who says she did her student teaching on a three-floor building that housed 500 or 600 students.

Wall to Wall

Physical education teacher Chris Anderson unhooks a sheet and welcomes 20 kindergartners to the gym.

Cambridgeport's gym has only three walls. Sheets are all that separate the open side of the gym from the hallway--and these sheets are not enough to keep balls from bouncing into the corridor.

Anderson says the gym is a dangerous place for students to play games. The gym doubles as a storage facility and after school-wide events it holds hundreds of folding chairs.

"The floor's warped and creeky," Anderson says.

There's not enough room for everyone to play at once, so the students have to play in shifts.

Noise from the gym disrupts the entire building, including the kindergarten classrooms just down the hall.

"In the office, it's so loud you can't hear a phone call," says Acting Principal Mary S. Eirich.

Anderson says he didn't know about the condition of the gym when he was hired.

He says he also didn't figure on having to climb a ladder and swing himself over to the floor of his modest storage attic to get gym equipment.

"It's really difficult and dangerous," he says. "You're pulling yourself up and then you jump over."

Anderson says he is ready for a move to Fletcher.

"I've seen their gym," he says. "It's much nicer."

Saving Graces

Parents and students say they have mixed feelings about changing buildings.

Many see charm in the Blessed Sacrament facility, built in 1924 with high ceilings, many tall windows and rich wooden paneling.

Besides the building itself, they say, the current location is across the street from Dana Park, which has green space and playground equipment.

The closest park to Fletcher is several blocks away.

"I made so many friends in the park," says eighth-grader Julian E. Joslin.

In the elementary grades, he says, he stayed in the park with his friends after school and "waited for the ice cream truck."

For many students, Cambridgeport is a neighborhood school.

Seventh-grader Santi Belle says the school feels crowded but would be disappointed if it moved.

"I really like our school and I live two blocks away," says seventh-grader Santi Belle.

A Rocky Road

The recommendation that Cambridgeport move into the Fletcher is only the latest in a series of attempts to find the school a permanent home.

Cambridgeport started as a single kindergarten class in 1990, when enrollment across the district was increasing, and has grown by one grade level each year.

Initially Cambridgeport had room to grow. In 1991, only 40 students occupied the first floor of Blessed Sacrament. But the situation became critical three or four years ago.

About that time--in June 1997--the school committee voted to move Cambridgeport in with the Maynard school, though the two schools would maintain separate in identity and administration.

A report submitted by then-Superintendent Mary Lou McGrath called the rental facility "inadequate" and called for "effective collaboration" between Maynard and Cambridgeport.

There was no collaboration--only contention.

Deborah Epstein, the parent of an eighth-grader, says she remembers "great anger and bitterness" surrounding that process.

She says Maynard parents saw Cambridgeport parents as an affluent intrusion.

"Not much can be done about that if you're trying to mix races and socio-economic classes," Epstein says. "That became an argument for total segregation."

This year, school committee members say they hope for a quick and smooth process.

Committee member Nancy Walser says she sees no reason why the district's other space issues--like empty seats--should complicate Cambridgeport's moving.

"I think we should tackle the easier, bigger problems first," she says.