PITTSFIELD — “You don’t need to hold back,” interim Pittsfield School Superintendent Latifah Phillips told the parents and community members who gathered at Morningside Community School to discuss its potential closure. “We need to hear.”

The group, gathered Monday in the school’s low-ceilinged cafeteria, didn’t let loose with fiery accusations or emotional pleas to save the 52-year-old school on Burbank Street, now targeted for a potential closure in June. But they asked the kind of need-to-know questions you’d expect.

Pittsfield interim School Superintendent Latifah Phillips told Morningside Community School families on Monday that despite the best efforts of teachers and staff, the school's open plan classrooms have made educating students more difficult.

Where will our children go to school if Morningside closes? How will they get there? What about the before- and after-school care 18 Degrees provides on site?

Will their teachers and specialists from Morningside be waiting for them when they arrive at their new building? And perhaps most crucially of all: Will they feel welcome in a new-to-them building where fewer kids look like them, or come from households with more means?

They also expressed how much they love the Morningside school community, the school and the staff — and how much it would be missed.

Morningside Community School was built in 1974 and replaced smaller, antiquated schools including Mercer, currently the school district's administration building.

Phillips told a crowd of about 35 people a final decision hasn’t been made, and that the School Committee would hold a formal public hearing if the plan moves forward.

If Morningside were to close, Phillips said the students would be sent to one of four city elementary schools that currently have room for additional classes: Allendale, Capeless, Egremont and Williams.

Morningside finds itself squeezed between a $4 million budget crunch and student outcomes hindered by the building's open floor plan, in which classes are easily disrupted by student misbehavior. The School Committee has asked Phillips to consider closing the building and sending its students to other schools as an alternative use of resources.

If Morningside does not close, Phillips said, the alternative is a budget proposal that would pour $5 million into the building in fiscal 2027 to help make up for its lack of walled classrooms.

The Morningside Community School’s library is an example of the aging building's open-floor plan that can make the learning experience difficult for some students.

But even so, “The question is, even with all the resources ... is that going to be the game-changer for the students in this building?” she asked. “If we weren’t seeing this data we probably wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

She also warned that with the district’s enrollment declining, closing Morningside is less a matter of if and more a matter of when.

Parents, in addition to concerns about access to the 18 Degrees before- and after-school programs, are sad that they could lose the sense of community Morningside has provided.

When the oldest of Meagan Powell’s four children came to Morningside, “it was literally the same teacher her father and her aunt had,” Powell said. “That teacher went on to have two of my other children. There’s a level of connection we have with these teachers. They’re normally lifelong teachers here and they support these kids, and they know how to deal with them.”

Vicki Corl, a Morningside alum, agreed with Powell, and also spoke of the support her son has received through a challenging year.

“It’s a community, and I worry these kids getting dispersed in schools in better income areas there isn’t that diversity that these kids are so used to,” Corl said. “These teachers are amazing at what they do ... I worry for the teachers.”

Student Kayden Lussier makes a book at Morningside Community School, which is the second-largest elementary school in the district. If the building closes, students will be moved to four other district elementary schools.

“If we’re transferring kids with behavioral and emotional issues that come from home ... this is an area that has lower income and less resources,” Corl said. “They’re transferring to an environment where teachers are not necessarily used to that. What training are we going to provide?”

Phillips agreed that such training is important and worth a closer look. She also said that the district’s schools are more diverse than many expect — but that the level of economic diversity is not as well represented from building to building.

The data Phillips shared with the meeting included the following:

• Morningside, at 374 students pre-K through Grade 5, is the second-largest elementary school in the district, behind Conte (380). Its population is 88.2 percent “high needs” as described by the state, 80.5 percent low income, 26.7 percent first language not English, 24.3 percent English language learners and 19.8 percent with disabilities. All but one of those percentages (students with disabilities) are higher than the average across the district.

• The state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education accountability ratings set Morningside in the 7th percentile of elementary schools in 2025 — meaning 93 percent of elementary schools are scoring better. Those ratings, based on MCAS scores, school attendance and other factors, scored Morningside in the 6th percentile in 2024 and the 8th percentile in 2023.

• The district’s winter testing of reading skills and school readiness shows “an urgent readiness-to-learn gap,” particularly among kindergarten and fifth-grade students.

Morningside’s staff met earlier Monday with Phillips, and building Principal Heather Gancarz said the staff were “thoughtful” and “trying to be very intentional” in their reaction to the potential closure. She said the staff varies from 25-year veterans to those who joined in September.

“I had teachers sad about leaving what they call their home away from home. But I had teachers crying that these kids were going to get walls,” Gancarz said. “That if we close, these students would be going into classrooms where they have walls and doors and have opportunities for later success.”

Pittsfield School Committee member Sarah Muil, a Morningside Community School graduate, listens to interim Superintendent Latifah Phillips during a meeting on the school's future.

Gancarz was also moved by the number of community members who showed up to express how important the school is to the neighborhood.

“I appreciate families coming to bat for our staff, wanting to make sure our teachers have jobs, wanting to make sure their students feel welcomed and accepted,” she said.