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Date: 9/29/2020
WEST SPRINGFIELD – Michael Bongiorni and Jesse Sayer, representatives from NV5, the Coburn School project’s operator’s project manager (OPM) presented the West Springfield School Committee with updated plans on the project at its Sept. 21 meeting.
The project design is nearly complete and has changed only slightly since it was last presented to the committee in March 2019. On the first floor, a service entry was moved for direct access to storage rooms. A secondary hallway was added next to the gymnasium for more convenient access to the playfields.
On the second floor, where classrooms are clustered by grade, a first-grade classroom and for alternative students were swapped to keep alternative students integrated into their grade levels. The change was made at the suggestion of the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE).
Limited changes were also made to the plans for the exterior of the building, including the use of synthetic turf on the multi–use field and the alteration of Lathrop Street to make it a two-way street near the school. Bongiorni explained that this change would allow parents dropping off and picking up their children to turn left out of the parking lot.
The design team is in the final stages, choosing materials and color schemes, which will incorporate Coburn’s royal blue school color.
The next stage in the project is the submission of primary and final bids, which are due Oct. 9 and Oct. 22, respectively. Construction will begin in November and will proceed in four phases. The first two consist of setup and the majority of construction. The new school will open in Sept. 2022, after the majority of the building is complete. The demolition of the existing school will happen over the summer of 2022 and the parent drop–off area will go in its place. The final work will be done to the site in December 2022 with planting in the spring when the ground thaws.
When asked about safety precautions surrounding an active shooter situation, Sayer explained that the entire first floor of the building has been designed with security in mind. The windows are made with laminated glass. Even after it’s broken, it will stay sealed into place. All ground-floor classroom windows also have shades to limit the view into rooms from the outside. The side of the building that houses the gymnasium and cafeteria were originally designed with a lot of glass. While the windows on the upper levels remain to allow for natural light, glass on the first floor was mostly eliminated for safety.
There are two sets of doors at the main entrance of the school that lead to a vestibule. Anyone entering the school will be visually checked by office staff through a window. An intruder can be trapped in that vestibule, the glass and walls of which are “ballistic-rated,” Sayer said. He called this the school’s “front line of defense.”
There are connecting doors between the rooms to allow for a means of escape when the main classroom doors are secured during a lockdown. There are also doors at the entrance to each grade cluster that automatically shut in the event of a fire–alarm and can be locked by those inside.
"I feel really good about the safety and security of this building,” said Superintendent Tim Connor.
School Committee Member Pat Garbacik asked Sayer if the ventilation had been reviewed in light of the COVID–19 pandemic.
“A number of elements that we would consider – that are being discussed right now as elements that you would add to a project to make it better for COVID are already incorporated in this project,” Sayer reported.
The displacement heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) system “exceeds industry standards,” and uses a slower, less forceful method of air circulation, Sayer said. The ventilation filters are rated MERV–13. The higher the minimum efficiency reporting value, the more particles a filter captures. MERV–13 filters capture 98 percent of incoming particles. Finally, there is an “air economizer cycle,” an energy feature that replaces up to 90 percent indoor air with outdoor air when the temperature allows.
The estimated cost of roughly $54.4 million for the project hasn’t increased since the 90 percent report to the Massachusetts School Building Authority in July.
During the superintendent’s report, Connor said that the district spent the first 11 days of the school year that Gov. Charlie Baker approved as professional development time were spent working on safety protocols and platform development. WSPS is using Talking Points, an remote–learning platform that translates communication into 103 languages, which Connor said was beneficial in a school district in which students speak more than 30 languages.
The school committee will vote on Oct. 26 on whether to keep schools remote or shift to a hybrid or fully in-person model. In the meantime, the school committee and town council will conduct a joint meeting on Sept. 28 to discuss the reopening so far and Connor and Mayor Will Reichelt will have a listening session to get community feedback.
Reichelt asked Connor what metrics the district will use to determine whether to recommend a switch to one of the other learning models. Connor informed him that they will be using the state’s color-coded COVID-19 risk map as well as factors such as how much personal protective equipment (PPE) is in stock. He told the school committee that the district is down four nurses, which he characterized as a hurdle in the move towards opening schools in–person. Connor said that he is searching for both nurses and CNAs to supervise any students in the schools’ isolation rooms.
Connor said that the goal is to get kids back into school in–person, but urged patience. “I have just as many concerns around learning gaps as you do,” he said to the community.
If the district changes to a hybrid model, Connor recommended a synchronous-learning format in which the students learning remotely are observing and participating in the same class, with the same teacher, as their in-person counterparts. In a hybrid or in-person learning model, students whose families decide to keep them fully remote, known as Cohort C, will be using a separate platform. At the secondary level, students will use the Edgenuity remote learning platform that was used in the spring. A platform for the elementary level has not yet been selected.
School Committee member Pat Garbacik said that many kindergarteners are struggling.
“The EC-2 population is a very big concern for all of us,” Connor told her. “I think we need to have a lot more conversation about that population. We need to do as much as we can, whatever we can, to alleviate [their challenges].”
A survey was sent out to parents and caregivers of all grade levels on Sept. 25 to determine what things are working and what are not.
Garbacik commented on a letter recently sent out by DESE calling on districts, in areas with a low-risk of COVID-19 transmission that are currently remote, including West Springfield, to return to in-person learning.
“They singled out just a handful of school districts when in actuality, when you check the site, there’s 114 school districts – either districts or small schools – that are fully remote, including Springfield, Holyoke, Greenfield, Northampton, most of Berkshire County, Worcester. So there are quite a few districts that are fully remote,” Garbacik said. She noted that every district is different. “Everybody’s goal is the safety of our children first, and we try our best for the education of our children.”
Connor said that he had spoken to DESE Commissioner Jeffrey Riley and was told that the districts singled out in the letter were those that had not scheduled a vote on whether to go in-person by Oct.19. Reichelt suggested that was an arbitrary date and told the committee they would have a chance for input before the responded to the letter.
Finally, Connor announced that a memorial “sitting rock” in honor of Kyle Thibodeau, a West Springfield High School student who died in 2019, will be placed on the hill overlooking Clark field.