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Date: 2/15/2021
EAST LONGMEADOW – After six years of applying for funding from the Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA), the East Longmeadow High School was granted favorable action to enter into the MSBA’s eligibility period for a potential comprehensive project at the school.
“It feels fantastic. It took a lot of work and thankfully we’re in the eligibility period,” Superintendent Gordon Smith happily expressed. “The Mass School Building Authority staff are excellent. They are top-notch and they give you support all the way through. The challenge is the MSBA process is competitive, they have criteria that they have to follow and they try to always take in the most urgent districts into that eligibility period.”
The Massachusetts School Building Authority is an organization that has been set up to help districts deal specifically with the cost of renovating and building new schools. Their main function is to help districts across the commonwealth deal with aging schools. MSBA has an accelerated repair program for projects with a roof replacement, windows and door replacement and possible replacement of a boiler – as well as their comprehensive program, which East Longmeadow is in, for the high school.
The East Longmeadow High School started putting in a Statement of Interest for this comprehensive project in the spring of 2014. Smith explained if a school is not invited into the eligibility period, they have to resubmit a statement of interest.
The school was selected to enter the 270-day eligibility period which was set to begin June 1, 2020. Due to COVID-19, Smith revealed that the pandemic delayed them and asked for an extension for their start date. The MSBA offered their eligibility period to be moved out to Oct. 1 2020 and it will end on June 28, 2021.
The school will go through the eligibility period. Then, there will be a feasibility study the MSBA does where they start to look at what the real numbers are and the engineering that the high school would require with the comprehensive project.
In that time, Smith said there are eight requirements that need to be completed before the deadline. The most recent requirement he finished is the enrollment projection. The enrollment projection module for the MSBA – among other details – asked for a projection of enrollment for the next eight years. It asked for documented births in East Longmeadow for the past 10 years, and it asked for housing sales and building permits for the past few years. They also provided data on numbers of students who live in East Longmeadow, but attend a parochial or private school. All of this data should allow them to project how many students a new building will serve.
The last requirement is for the Town of East Longmeadow to vote to appropriate the funding for the Feasibility Study. When the Town votes to appropriate the funding, the MSBA would then enter into an agreement with the MSBA regarding the study and set the reimbursement rate. The current reimbursement rate for their MSBA Accelerated Repair project at Meadow Brook School is 55 percent of all eligible costs.
“The next two items that I’ll be working on is the educational profile questionnaire which looks at how the high school is being used, and what do we foresee the use of the building is becoming as we move into the 2020s,” Smith said.
He continued, “Then we’ll also provide them with our capital planning for the school system and more specifically what is our maintenance and preventative maintenance program looks like and what projects have we accomplished over the last five years in maintaining the building. That will be something that we deliver hopefully to the MSBA in March.”
Eventually, Smith said they will be working with the Town Council to discuss and appropriate the money for the feasibility study which provides a road map to what might be the best direction. He said they will be focusing on what it looks like to have a new building at East Longmeadow High School – what will that entail, where would it go, what would be the cost to make that happen and can it be accomplished in a comprehensive renovation.
Once the Town Council and the School Committee commit to appropriating the money, the school will enter into an agreement with the MSBA around paying for that feasibility study. The feasibility study would be completed by an outside architectural and engineering firm. The study can take up to a year to complete. It would provide the specifics on what a comprehensive renovation project or a new building would entail.
“What the town has to do is appropriate the full amount of what that study may cost and as we make payments Mass School Building Authority will reimburse or pay along with us. I think we’re at right now about 53 percent of reimbursement on all eligible costs, but we’ll have to designate a percentage as to what we would receive,” Smith told Reminder Publishing.
“That's the value of getting into the MSBA process, because they do have funding and they determine what the reimbursement rate will be for any given project for a specific municipality. Then as you go forward, they’re paying with you so you’re not bearing the full cost. In this case if we get 53 -55 percent, that will be fantastic,” he added.
In the meantime, the ELHS will finish the eligibility requirements by June 28. Smith hopes as they get closer into 2021, the school is entering into a funding agreement with the MSBA regarding a feasibility study.
“That would be really moving us then forward. Now we’re looking at what specifics are we going to need in terms of the planning,” Smith concluded. “Once we have that study, we’ll answer a lot of those questions. Then, we would use the feasibility study to move into a potential comprehensive project or new building project at East Longmeadow High School, which is really exciting for the town and for East Longmeadow Public Schools.”