PITTSFIELD — The Pittsfield School Committee has voted to close Morningside Community School at the end of the 2025-26 school year.

The 6-0 vote Wednesday night, with member Ciara Batory absent, means Morningside students grades K-4 will attend one of four remaining elementary schools next year: Allendale, Capeless, Egremont and Williams. The school's would-be fifth graders are set to attend Herberg Middle School as part of the district’s middle school restructuring project.

Interim Superintendent Latifah Phillips told The Eagle work will begin promptly on communicating with Morningside families and developing a transition plan. A consultant will help draw new enrollment boundaries, and it’s hoped that school assignments will be ready in June, allowing students to visit their new schools and help students with behavior issues ease into the transition.

Phillips said the district will follow up and study the data from next year to make sure that the change is working for Morningside students. And Mayor and committee Chair Peter Marchetti pledged that the building would continue to host programs and resources to a neighborhood with economic need.

“It will stay a community hub," he said, echoing comments made during public comment by Ward 2 City Councilor Cam Cunningham. "We know the gym, we know the cafeteria, and we know the community rec room that is there for meetings can be separated from whatever we want to do with the schools we go forward.”

Morningside, which serves a high-needs population with a significant number of English language learners, has struggled to improve on low state accountability scores despite its teachers' best efforts. Like Conte Community School, Morningside was built with an open floor plan, which also has proven a significant hurdle for educators.

Under the district's initial fair student formula budget, Morningside was to receive more than $5 million to bring it up to a level playing field. While closing the school would save $2.5 million, nearly $1.5 million of that has been earmarked for teachers, specialists and training to ease the transition.

It’s the city’s first public school closure since Pomeroy Elementary School was closed in 1985 and its students were sent to what became Crosby Elementary School.

The district expects it will be able to accommodate bus transportation for Morningside students to their new schools, Phillips said. Many Morningside students are eligible to walk to school, though relatively few do; most are dropped off.

The discussion was emotional, as School Committee members explained the difficulty in deciding to close the 52-year-old school on Burbank Street. Committee member Sarah Muil, a Morningside graduate, struggled to made the motion to close the school through tears. And committee member Daniel Elias said he still hadn't made a decision until last night, and retained concerns about whether the move would work.

Ahead of the committee's discussion, Phillips stressed that it was educational quality and equity concerns, not saving money in a challenging budget year, that drove her thinking in recommending closure.

It’s expected that many of the teachers, administrators and paraprofessionals will follow the children to their new destinations to help meet their educational needs.

Phillips also questioned whether the needed gains that could be made for those students, in classrooms with walls and with proper support, could be made fast enough to make up for existing learning gaps.

"This is about accelerated growth, and in some cases, when there are gaps, we need to get a year and a half of growth in one year," she said. "When there are two consecutive years of academic gaps it gets harder and harder to close the gaps each year."

We are committed to collaborating with staff, with families, with community partners," Phillips said, adding that there will be follow-through. "We are committed to a thoughtful approach, which includes ongoing monitoring of data."

Committee member Heather McNeice, who visited Morningside on Tuesday along with Muil, said she saw why the community loves the school's dedicated teachers and staff.

"I have to say that I think maybe some of the best educators that we have in Pittsfield are at Morningside because the work that they are doing is incredible," McNeice said.

But both members — who also are experienced educators — also saw and heard why the open floor plan has proven such a difficult hurdle.

"The teachers and students at Morningside are working so much harder than they should have to work to teach and to learn," McNeice said. "This is a really hard job in the best circumstances, and this school is not providing the structure and the support that these students need to thrive."

Morningside supporters, speaking during the public comment period, asked that the district go back to its first plan: providing additional resources to the school, and Conte Community School to help them up to a level playing field with the other elementary schools.

Marchetti, who also attended Morningside and lived in the neighborhood for 47 years, said the change will provide better opportunity for students who have been ill-served by the open floor plan that has hindered teaching and learning. He credited Phillips for her work on the proposal, saying the difficult choice to close a school had been long discussed but never progressed beyond the conceptual stage.

"I don't care if you belong to a millionaire or the poorest family in this community, how do we get you on a level playing field? That's what this conversation should be about,” Marchetti said.

“I'm looking at this that I might give them a fighting chance on a level playing field to be more than what they could be today,” he said.

A number of Morningside educators and supporters were in the audience and spoke in favor of keeping the school open. When a break was called after the vote, those supporters embraced each other, some in tears.

Morningside teacher Olivia Oberle, shown speaking  during a recent public hearing on the potential closure, expressed confidence Wednesday that the transition would work out for the best. "I have faith,” she said. “I think it will be OK.”

But Morningside educator Olivia Oberle, who spoke at last Thursday's public meeting and again Wednesday night, expressed confidence that Phillips and Marchetti would keep their commitments.

“I am grateful. I have faith,” she said. “I think it will be OK.”