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Date: 10/19/2022
LONGMEADOW – As the town approaches the Oct. 25 Special Town Meeting, Longmeadow Public Schools made the case for one or more new middle schools in hopes that voters will support the initiative with their wallets.
On Oct. 12, Superintendent M. Martin O’Shea was joined by Town Manager Lyn Simmons, Glenbrook Middle School Principal Nikcole Allen, Williams Middle School Principal Elizabeth Nelson and Facilities Manager Nicholas Georgantas to present residents with the condition in which students and teachers currently learn and work and possibilities for the future, while answering questions from the public.
This was the third in a series of four Longmeadow Middle School Forums. About 10 people attended. Simmons said the previous meetings had had a similar turnout.
Voters are being asked to fund the $1.6 million feasibility study as part of the Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA) pipeline, which allows municipalities to be reimbursed for a portion of eligible school building project costs. The study would consider current building conditions, requirements for learning in the 21st century, enrollment patterns, costs and a plethora of other considerations.
O’Shea began by laying out the district’s position, saying the town is “at this crossroads. Doing nothing is not an option.”
Conditions
According to a 2015 facilities assessment by JCJ Architects and another in 2021 by Colliers International, O’Shea said, the schools are at the “end of their useful life.” He emphasized that the condition of the schools was not a function of poor custodial care, but instead, a result of their age. Williams was built in 1959, followed by Glenbrook in 1967.
Georgantas explained that the middle schools both need extensive repairs to fix their “all-encompassing issues.” The windows and doors need replacing and there is asbestos in both schools. He summed up the process of repairing the schools as, “A lot of money, a lot of effort.”
Glenbrook has major challenges associated with the way the school was designed. The building’s layout was not made with modern security in mind, Allen said. When people walk into the building, rather than the front office acting as a barrier, classrooms can be directly accessed.
The building was designed with an open concept. This means that classrooms in the sixth grade wing are divided by collapsible walls and open to the hallway. The seventh and eighth grade classrooms are likewise separated, though there are walls blocking the classrooms from the hallway, there are no doors and none of the walls reach the ceiling. In addition to this being a safety issue, the heating, ventilation and air conditioning system is also not effective in controlling indoor air quality and temperature. On hot days, Allen said, the temperature in the building is “unbearable.”
The science rooms at Glenbrook only allow for 24 students at a time and are not up to code, said Allen. Glenbrook is not accessible and only portions of Williams allow for wheelchair access, the principals said.
Colliers International found it would cost $14.1 million to repair Williams and $16.1 to rectify the issues at Glenbrook, totaling $30.2 million, including $17.6 million in repairs to avoid what O’Shea described as “catastrophic” system failures. Those costs have increased due to inflation and supply chain difficulties in the period since the report was issued.
“At the end of the day, we’d still have old schools,” O’Shea commented.
The size of the middle schools and their enrollment numbers roughly correlate to the size and enrollment at a modern middle school, O’Shea said. Because there are just 330 students at Glenbrook and 285 at Williams, the facilities must share staff and programs. Educators must travel between the two buildings, making scheduling difficult, Allen said.
Nelson said that students are limited in when and how often they can receive foreign language or music instruction because those instructors must split their time between buildings. Allen said the music teachers lug expensive instruments two miles back and forth across town.
In other cases, some specialized programs, including the Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunities, also known as METCO, are offered in one building, but not another, leading some students to take classes at the other school.
If the district had a single, larger school, Nelson said, “We could get so much more creative with scheduling. Having staff under one roof” allows for “flexibility.” She added, “It helps foster interests at an age where [students] are so creative and finding their interests.” Allen said students want electives.
“It’s hard to create that choice with small cohorts,” O’Shea remarked.
Single school
The MSBA accepted only Glenbrook into the eligibility period, because only one school from a municipality is allowed into the program at a time. That said, O’Shea explained, the MSBA gave the district the option of considering merging the two schools into one.
“Having the option to look at both buildings and address it comprehensively is a great benefit to us,” O’Shea said. The benefits include lower overhead from heating, cooling, lighting and otherwise operating a single building, rather than two. He said there may also be the opportunity to expand programming. For example, O’Shea said that half a dozen students at each school interested in a subject would not be enough participation to offer the class in both places, a single class of 12 might be sufficient participation.
One resident at the forum commented that a single middle school was “a no-brainer.” Another asked if the outdoor sports fields would be improved as well as the buildings. Nelson explained that, unlike high schools, Massachusetts middle schools do not have sanctioned teams. Simmons commented, however, that two facilities require more maintenance of the grounds than one.
O’Shea acknowledged that there would be some downsides to a single middle school, including fewer students able to walk to school and, therefore, increased busing. Students living more than two miles from a school must be provided with a bus seat until the sixth grade. It is not mandated past that level.
The full benefits and drawbacks are the very thing that the feasibility study would determine, the superintendent said. A completed study could reveal that a newly constructed single school is the most economically and logistically reasonable choice. Other options could include a renovation and expansion of Glenbrook to house all the town’s middle schoolers or a rebuild of only Glenbrook, leaving Williams for a future project.
One thing is for certain, O’Shea said. If the town votes down the feasibility study, the project will fall out of the MSBA pipeline and progress on the project would end. The district would have to reapply to the program and begin the process again.
Voting and funding
Simmons explained that the $1.6 million estimate was based on comparable projects in similar towns. The first article on the Special Town Meeting warrant asks voters to approve the use of $800,000 in free cash and take out a short-term bond for the remaining $800,000 that will be built into the fiscal year 2024 budget.
This method of funding takes pressure off the town’s capital budget, which must schedule and prioritize all big-ticket town and school building projects on an annual allocation of $2 million.
“I don’t anticipate [the feasibility study funding] having a major impact on the tax rate,” Simmons said, adding that it would not require a debt exclusion.
She explained that the construction of the eventual project would be funded through a long-term bond worked into the town’s existing debt schedule so as not to spike property taxes.