Use this search box to find articles that have run in our newspapers over the last several years.

New school project in a good place

Date: 4/13/2009

By Courtney Llewellyn

Reminder Assistant Editor



WILBRAHAM The Hampden-Wilbraham Regional School District has reached a tentative agreement with the Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA) as to the future of Minnechaug Regional High School -- what s next?

"The Boards of Selectmen from both Hampden and Wilbraham have to determine whether or not to call town meetings to approve the [borrowing of] $500,000 to move forward," School Committee Chair Scott Chapman explained. "If they don t call town meetings within 30 days, then it s approved -- and we re hoping they ll do that."

The $500,000 would be used for schematics, Chapman said. Even though the school district has been approved to move forward with the model school program, using the basic blueprints from the Ashland High School, some of the space needs to be redesigned to "make it Minnechaug."

"I believe the Ashland school has a very involved culinary arts program -- we don't," Chapman said. "Their music program was smaller, and ours is very big. We d also need a much bigger auditorium, since Wilbraham hosts its town meetings there."

The MSBA's Board of Directors will be formally voting in July whether or not to allow the new Minnechaug project to move forward, and Chapman believes the two towns will vote for the project at the Special Town Meetings normally scheduled for October.

"We could see shovel in the ground by spring 2010," Chapman told Reminder Publications. "With the model school plans, the school could be done in two years."

The new school would be built first; the current high school would be demolished afterward.

Chapman noted that taxpayers will not see any changes in their tax bills until 2013 at the earliest to help pay for this project. The MSBA is covering 63 percent of the project, and the other 37 percent will be paid by the taxpayers in Hampden and Wilbraham.

That percentage will be split the same way other school bills are split, based on the student population from each town -- most likely 75/25 from Wilbraham and Hampden, respectively.

The cost for the demolition of the current school will be included in the overall cost of the project.

"Both towns have always been supportive of educational capital projects, Chapman said. "There's a lot of hard work ahead of us, but the School Building Committee, the School Committee and the superintendent have all worked hard to get us to where we are now."

Chapman added that he hasn't heard of any other schools in Western Massachusetts that are as far down the MSBA pipeline as Minnechaug.

"We're in a good place right now," he said.