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Date: 12/21/2021
BELCHERTOWN - With the deadline approaching to approve the feasibility study with the Massachusetts School Building Association (MSBA) for a new school or remodeling of the Jabish Brook Middle School, the Belchertown School Committee received a presentation about the merits of the study during its Dec. 14 meeting.
Due to the larger scope of the project, Superintendent Brian Cameron said two schools would be included in the potential feasibility study.
“Because in our proposal we are talking about Jabish Brook Middle School and realigning grades where we would close Cold Springs, they are doing the feasibility study on both. Basically, they are going to generate some recommendations and establish some design parameters to go off and evaluate preliminary and final options,” he said.
Cameron said that remodeling or building a new school were possible recommendations from the feasibility study, if approved by Town Meeting.
Overall, Cameron said the feasibility study would cost just under $1 million.
“We estimated that we would be requesting $990,000 to complete the feasibility study. The MSBA will reimburse at a rate of 59.21 percent, or $586,000. We used the estimates of a 120,000 square foot school, which is the max at $550 per square foot, which gave us the total of $990,000,” he said.
Based on the information prior to the feasibility study, Cameron said a new school could cost between $45 million and $66 million.
While the project is not set in stone, Cameron detailed what a potential grade realignment would look like.
“We would get rid of Cold Spring School, Swift River would become Pre-K to 2, Chestnut Hill would be 3, 4 and 5, the new Jabish Brook would be 6, 7 and 8, and then we would have the high school be 9 to 12,” he said.
Without a favorable town meeting vote, Cameron said the project would end immediately.
Part of the reasoning behind updating the middle school is to bring the school to 21st Century standards, since Cameron said Cold Spring was built in 1954 and Jabish Brook was built in 1964.
Belchertown’ Director of Buildings and Grounds Eric Lebeau said repairs at Jabish Brook would cost a significant amount of money if the district does not move forward with MSBA.
“These are projects that we feel need to be addressed in the next five to 10 years and what they are estimated to cost us. There is over $5 million just in these repairs, as you know we have no plan in place to fund any of the capital improvement projects on this list. For projects like this we need to go to the town to ask for money,” he said. “The roof replacement is a big one, it is about $2.5 million, the window replacement we estimate to be about $2 million.”
Lebeau said one issue at Cold Spring is a lack of facilities you would expect to see in a school that are combined into one room.
“This is the all-purpose room, we have done quite a bit of upgrades to this room. This is the main entrance to the building, we redid the ceiling and the floors to make it more presentable. The building does not have a gym or an auditorium, this is their all-purpose room. It is a gym, cafeteria, library, whatever it needs to be,” he said.
Lebeau added the building is not American Disability Act Compliant (ADA) because there is no elevator, making one of the floors inaccessible.
“We cannot get handicapped persons to the lower floor, we have no elevator in the building. There is really no good place for anyone to add an elevator to the building,” he said.
The total cost for capital improvement projects for Cold Spring totaled $970,000, but LeBeau said it is the building that costs the most to heat per square foot in the district.
On top of all the issues with the two buildings, Lebeau said neither is equipped with a fire sprinkler system.
The presentation did not require any action but will be brought back before the committee once the Town Meeting is closer.
The Belchertown School Committee next meets on Jan. 11 and coverage of that meeting will appear in the Jan. 20 edition of The Reminder.