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Date: 3/27/2019
EAST LONGMEADOW – For the past five years the Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA) denied the proposal for a new East Longmeadow High School, however the School Committee is not giving up yet. At the March 25 School Committee meeting, members voted unanimously to approve a draft of the statement of interest to be sent to the MSBA, pending no significant revisions.
When the Committee announced to the public that East Longmeadow was once again denied funding for the project, Superintendent Gordon Smith explained that the “core program” run by the MSBA looks at high schools and their potential for a new building following a statement of interest that is submitted by the Superintendent and School Committee.
“Each year, you log in and begin to answer their questions around roof, boiler system, HVAC, plumbing, all the different systems you have making up a building in addition to basic facts. What year the building was built, how many students,” Smith explained to the audience at the Jan. 7 meeting. “For the last five years, each year we’ve submitted a statement of interest for a core project at the high school. Unfortunately, in the last five years, somewhere in late December we’ve learned that they have not invited us into the eligibility period.”
At the March 25 meeting, Smith provided the School Committee with an updated version of the most current draft of the Statement of interest. He noted there were changes in putting the statement together this year and that they had assistance in doing so, including help from architecture firm SMMA, who had helped put together a facility study for the school in 2013 – 2014.
“We’ve tried to come at many of the sections [of the Statement of Interest] with more of the great things that are happening in East Longmeadow High School and showing how the building is constraining us from taking things to another level,” Smith explained.
In addition, the Committee noted that on the Statement of Interest it was projected that enrollment for the school district is projected to go up over the next 10 years. Smith shared that they had reconnected with the group that completed an enrollment projection in 2013, and the same organization has conducted one for 2018 through 2028. According to their projections, enrollment will be growing slightly over the next few years.
School Committee Chair Richard Freccero noted that he was struck by what he saw in writing regarding how long the school could be out of commission should electrical failure occurred.
“I knew this – I’ve heard this – but to see it in writing, ‘if critical failure were to occur electrically, the school would be shut down for possibly two to four weeks,’ – wow,” Freccero said.
Smith explained that with their current electrical system and transformer running at a higher temperature than it was originally designed for, the worry by the electrical inspector and Department of Public Works superintendent is that if the system were to go down, it would take that amount of time to get the parts to fix the system since the equipment was originally designed in 1960. Smith noted that there has been replacement panels to the electrical system, however getting the parts, again, could take time.
The Committee moved to approve the draft for the Statement of Interest for East Longmeadow High School pending that there are no substantial revisions by April 1. The Committee will be reviewing the draft. Should there be significant revisions, the Committee agreed they would find a time to meet prior to the regularly scheduled April 8 School Committee meeting.