The Lilla G. Frederick Pilot Middle School on Columbia Road will begin to phase out its upper grades next year in advance of closing as a middle school, according to a letter sent to parents and the school community on Jan. 10 from BPS Region 3 Supt. Natalie Diaz Ake. The school, which opened in 2003, will likely be repurposed as a large elementary school under the city’s emerging plan for fewer school buildings that was outlined in a School Facilities Report released last week.

The transformation of the Frederick School will mark the end of middle school designations in the BPS system.

“This spring, the district will introduce a proposal to the School Committee to formally close the Frederick Middle School at the end of next school year, 2024-2025. Frederick students in Grade 7 will be given priority in the school assignment process for the 2025-2026 school year,” the letter stated.

Ake explained that there will be no sixth graders assigned to the school next year, leaving grade 7 to be phased out. Students who are 6th graders this year will attend a new school for eighth grade only, under the proposal.

Priority enrollment and assignments for the next academic year started this year on Jan. 4.

“Throughout the 2024-25 school year, the district will assign members from the Welcome Services team to work directly with Frederick families to help them identify a high-quality Grade 7-12 school that will meet their child’s individual needs,” the letter said, and also have Human Resources work to “connect staff to high quality opportunities within the district.” 

“The Frederick School plays a crucial role in the Grove Hall community,” wrote Ake. “We want to reassure the community that the district remains deeply committed to the Frederick building, with the Lilla G. Frederick name, continuing to serve as a BPS school in the Grove Hall community. We plan to do so in a way that honors the work and legacy of Lilla G. Frederick and the deep commitment of this community.”

Lilla Frederick was a Grove Hall resident and activist who was instrumental in siting and designing the school. The school was re-named for her after her death.

The School Facilities Report that was made public last week has been more than a year in the making and was described as a “roadmap” for reconfiguring the BPS footprint over the next decades. Though few specifics were given over its 80 pages, its emphasis was to have fewer small schools and more larger schools at the elementary and high school levels – with specialty schools still carving out a niche within the system.

“The Boston Public Schools of the future will have fewer total schools and more larger sized schools in its portfolio to align with the BPS community’s collective vision of a high-quality student experience and the physical spaces that support that vision,” the report asserted. “This work can be difficult. Each decision will be fully analyzed so that the impact on students and families, school communities, and the surrounding neighborhood is fully understood, and so that proposals can be designed to close opportunity and achievement gaps.”

School and city officials noted in the report that they would accomplish the smaller, more efficient, district by school mergers, school closures, reconfigurations, renovations, and new buildings.

“Shifting our physical footprint will be uncomfortable and will cause disruption. Mergers and closures are difficult, and new construction and renovation projects take longer than any of us would like,” wrote Mayor Wu, Supt. Mary Skipper, and School Committee Chair Jeri Robinson. “Demographic changes, financial realities, and other operational constraints must factor into our plans, but we will work through these challenges and refuse to settle for anything less than delivering high-quality student experiences throughout the entire district.”

Will Austin, director of the non-profit Boston Schools Fund, said the document does contain important statements, but also leaves out specifics like funding, and doesn’t update enrollment projections – which haven’t been renewed since 2017, he said.

“First, it doesn’t matter if a school is big or small, it’s whether it’s good or not,” he said. “It is important there is a public document that states what everyone knows and that is we have too many buildings and they are too old…It is a document that is exactly what they said they would produce, and the question is what happens next.” 

Some hints already exist for what happens next in Dorchester and Mattapan, where a significant portion (32) of the city’s schools are located and many are smaller elementary schools that don’t fit into the new ‘model small K-6’ school detailed in the report.

Last year, the School Committee approved a controversial merger of the Shaw and Taylor Schools amid an invite from the Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA) last month that allows the district to compete for funding to build a new, larger school nearby. 

Also recently announced is a merger of the UP Academy Boston (in South Boston) with the UP Academy Dorchester at the old John Marshall School on Westville Street, creating a new K-8.

The report stated that at the elementary level, there are 26,500 students in 86 buildings citywide. The plan indicates there should be between 37 and 75 schools instead – 75 schools in the small school model (356 student minimum) and 37 in the large school model (712 student minimum). For secondary schools now serving grades 7-12, there are 22,000 students in 33 buildings. While the three exam schools (Boston Latin School, Boston Latin Academy, and John D. O’Bryant School), Madison Park Technical Vocational School, and East Boston High housed larger enrollments of 1,000 to 2,400 students, other schools averaged only 499 students. The report suggested those smaller enrollment schools could be accommodated with 14 to 19 schools. However, the report said with the complexities within the system, a more realistic secondary number would be 19-24 schools.

A key piece of that will be looking at underutilized schools, or those who are below their maximum enrollment. With the ideal between 90-105 percent utilization, several Dorchester and Mattapan schools do not currently meet that mark – making them ripe for potential changes like mergers or closures. Elementary schools in the two neighborhoods labeled underutilized (35-90 percent of capacity) in the report include the Dever, Clap, Mason, Trotter, Martin Luther King K-8, UP Dorchester, Holmes, Lee K-8, PA Shaw, Mattahunt, Mildred Avenue K-8, and the Ellison Parks Early Learning Center (ELC). Local secondary schools labeled underutilized include the Jeremiah E. Burke, CASH, TechBoston Academy, and Boston International Newcomers Academy.

The 20-year-old Frederick building, one of the system’s newer facilities, will probably figure into those closures and mergers in some fashion, though that hasn’t been announced yet.

The report indicated that with the right planning, mergers, closures, and new buildings can be a positive as larger enrollments present more opportunities for science, arts, and music programming. “Many of our schools are small and don’t have the physical spaces needed to support a diversity of programming or the space for multiple classrooms at each grade level,” the report stated.

A comprehensive planning process will get underway in the spring for schools undergoing transitions, and Skipper is expected to present merger and/or closing plans to the School Committee in late April for the 2025-26 school year.