The Winter Hill Community Innovation School, which during the 2022-2023 school year served 442 students in pre-kindergarten to 8th grade, is the only Innovation School in the Somerville Public Schools (Somerville, Massachusetts, a densely-populated neighbor of Boston and Cambridge). Innovation School status accords WHCIS limited self-governance and a deliberate and innovative approach to addressing student needs.

Winter Hill is a Title 1 school, which means a larger proportion of our student population comes from situations with fewer financial resources. Following the general demographics in our city, and also as a result of the two special programs we host, our school also has a larger proportion of students who may have additional challenges in accessing academic learning due to lack of English fluency in the student's household or disability requiring an IEP.

Our school community is a warm, welcoming, nurturing environment where students of any race, country of origin, first language, socioeconomic status, or neurodivergency status are supported in their development into thoughtful, caring, and engaged young adults. The school recognizes the unique identity, personality, and talent of each individual student and educators are committed to educating the whole child, while striving to ensure that all students make continuous academic gains, develop socially and emotionally, take ownership of and responsibility for their learning, and thrive in a community that actively promotes inclusion, diversity, human rights, global responsibility and local action.

Our school hosts one pre-K classroom, two classrooms each for grades K to 8, and two unique "substantially-separate" all-district programs: AIM ("Adapt, Include, Motivate") for autistic students and Newcomer Academy for students in grades 5-8 who need Sheltered English Immersion (SEI). Some of our Newcomer students have experienced "interrupted formal education" and may need extra support after an extended time in their lives during which they did not attend school. Students enrolled in these two programs come to WHCIS from throughout Somerville as the school provides higher levels of support than may be available at neighborhood schools.