Date: 10/4/2022
AMHERST – After a late-August vote by the Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA) approving its spatial allotment, the new Fort River Elementary School project has entered schematic design phase. New design features will include greater environmental sustainability, better educational practices and mental health benefits for students and faculty alike.
Of Amherst’s three elementary schools, the Fort River and Wildwood schools are the oldest, both built in the 1970s by the same designer. They are virtually identical inside and out. Town Councilor and Chair of the Elementary School Building Committee Cathy Schoen said that at the time of their conception, the schools were not built with regard for energy costs, sustainability, mental health or special education facilities.
Schoen described a wide variety of design flaws as the impetus for replacement. There is a dearth of natural light throughout the building; the library and the gym have no windows and many of the classrooms and corridors are dark because of insufficient windows. The lack of proper air circulation makes certain areas hard and costly to heat, while other areas hard to cool.
She added the plumbing and electrical wiring is outdated and some bathrooms are not up to code for wheelchairs. The buildings feature “giant” classrooms with no subdividers. Schoen said that these could fit “four kindergarten classes in one room,” which does not allow for personalized attention from teachers and leads to noise pollution.
The new Fort River Elementary School will be built with a high priority for climate action and preservation. Schoen said it will be the first project in Amherst that is truly “net-zero,” meaning it generates as much energy as it uses. Photovoltaic panels will be installed on the building or grounds to offset energy costs. No fossil fuels will be used to power the all-electric HVAC system.
Eversource has provided a $1.6 million incentive to provide ground source heat pumps, also known as geothermal pumps, to reduce emissions. This lowers the construction costs by the amount of the incentive. She added they have also promised several hundred thousand dollars in incentives if the school can hit its target EUI (energy use intensity) of 25 or lower after one year of operation. These incentives come in addition to the significant savings the school will enjoy over time due to reduced to energy bills, helped also by the improved insulation in the building’s walls.
Schoen and the Building Committee were also particularly proud of the project’s commitment to daylighting. She said the lack of windows and the accompanying lack of natural sunlight and warmth in classroom as well as overexposure to artificial light can have a detrimental impact on sleep, concentration, recovery from stressful experiences and eyesight. Conversely, she said exposure to healthy amounts of sunlight in school led to better quality of sleep, better recovery from stress, preservation of eyesight and reduction of myopia, and heightened concentration for longer periods of time. High proliferation windows coupled with the school’s north-south orientation will maximize healthy daylighting without harmful glare.
Schoen referenced a 2022 joint study by engineering consulting firm Thornton Tomasetti and architectural firm Dinisco Design presented to the Net Zero Subcommittee of the building committee, as well as a 2022 presentation at the American Institute of Architects convention in her explanation of daylighting. The studies also pointed out that varying access to daylight in the classroom is responsible for a 20 percent variation in student test scores. They also point to evidence that increased daylight and outdoor learning contribute to better cognitive mapping and synchronization with the larger world, a necessity in healthy social development.
Schoen said designated rooms will serve Amherst’s extensive special education program. Other classrooms will provide specialized resources for students needing assistance with particular subjects, i.e. writing or math. Title I assistance will also be available for eligible students via smaller classrooms designed for two to three students, ensuring individualized instruction for help with reading and cognitive skills.
The schools were built to accommodate 600 students, but enrollment is down in both; 380 students currently attend Fort River and 323 attend Wildwood, according to a statement from Superintendent Michael Morris at a recent School Committee meeting.
Schoen said this means that “the district has to pay for two of everything even though the room is only half full,” so it makes sense to consolidate the two schools into one. Initially this led to some concerns among parents over a “giant” 800-student school, which prompted the decision to move the town’s whole sixth grade into the Amherst Regional Middle School. The new elementary school will serve grades K-5 and accommodate 575 students.
The project was first discussed in 2018 when the current Town Council was elected. Schoen said the first iteration of the idea failed due to a lack of support from a public vote. After this failed attempt, the School Committee hosted several public listening sessions to ascertain exactly what Amherst residents wanted in a new elementary school. Once sufficient feedback was received, the School Committee drafted a new proposal and submitted it to the MSBA.
In December 2019 the MSBA accepted the submission’s initial request, and the School Building Committee was created in June of 2020. In August of 2021 a project manager was selected before the designer was brought on board October of 2021. The School Committee generated a list of more specific features of the school, such as extensive special education facilities and the number of students designated for each classroom. The Building Committee along with the designer and project manager generated a preliminary cost estimate in March of 2022. In June of 2022 Fort River was decided as the site location based on its “enormous” size, according to Schoen (the new school will be built right next to the old one, across the parking lot.)
The committee then submitted the next phase of application to the MSBA. This was basically the cost estimate, plus the projected square footage of the building and a breakdown of the intended usage of the square footage. The MSBA approved the submission in late August of 2022, which moved the project into the schematic design phase.
Schoen said schematic design is the time of fine tuning the details of the building plan.
“If you were building a house, you’ve told your architect ‘I want three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a living room and a dining room.’ Now the architect is saying ‘What’s the floor made out of? Are your bathrooms tiled all the way to the ceiling or halfway up?’…That’s where we are, making basic decisions about what the house looks like and feels like,” she said.
Some of these decisions include which external and internal materials to use, using a sloped roof or a flat roof, the number and layout of windows in the building, playground layout, grass fields, how to structure the driveways and bus loops to keep cars and buses separate and more.
Schoen said the Building Committee hopes to make these decisions by the end of 2022 to early January 2023. Once the details are firmed up a more accurate cost estimate will be generated. As long as the spatial allotment remains the same, the MSBA will approve this design plan and grant partial funding. The rising cost of construction and the demand for funding statewide has led the MSBA to cap its funding contribution for new projects at $360 per square foot.
Schoen stated that a modern school cannot be reliably built for less than at least $500-$600 per square foot, which means the town of Amherst will have to cover the rest of the cost. The town cannot afford to cover the entire remainder using its savings, so it will have to utilize a debt exclusion. A debt exclusion is an act which raises taxes for residents over the term of the construction bond to cover costs for a project. Once the project is sufficiently funded, taxes will revert to their previous rate. The town cannot levy such an increase without the approval of its taxpayers, and thus a townwide vote will be necessary sometime in the spring as to whether residents support such a debt exclusion and the tax hike that comes with it.
Should the people of Amherst vote to approve the debt exclusion, the project will move forward to the construction documents phase. Plans for the electrical wiring, plumbing and every other detail of the building will be created to inform prospective contractors of the nature of the job during the bidding process. The project would go to bid in summer of 2024, and once the contract is signed, 23 months has been allotted for construction, a window which Schoen described as “generous.”
The building is set to be completed in June of 2026. That summer will be spent moving in furniture, planting grass seed, paving the parking lot and driveways and any other required tasks. The school would be operational by September of 2026, and the project’s timeline is based around this deadline.
No plans exist for the Wildwood site yet. Schoen explained that once the new Fort River becomes operational and Wildwood shuts down the School Committee will decide whether to retain it or declare it as surplus, at which point it would become town property. A Town Council vote would then decide the property’s fate. However, Schoen said that any rumors of converting the current space into a senior center or any other public facility are simply not feasible; the current building is costly to heat, many of its systems are about to break, asbestos is present in the tiles and various other hazardous materials exist throughout the building and its grounds. In order to utilize the space, a full-scale replacement of the building would be necessary.
Schoen praised the MSBA for their involvement with the project, saying that they had been “extremely supportive” every step of the way. She added that they had been “very accessible” whenever committee members had questions. Though the MSBA did challenge some aspects of the early design, She said that “they had been good (and timely) about saying yes” once the mistakes had been corrected.
“I am totally excited about the project,” said Schoen. “My hope for the project is that we are able to build an exciting school that serves the needs of our children and families for decades to come, with daylight-filled classrooms that address climate concerns, and actually provides a model to study for the kids, so that they can be learning about climate while going to school…Our residents have long said that the school is a top priority, and I hope that we all dig deep to say ‘We’re going to stretch our budget to meet the needs of this generation of children, future generations, and the climate.’ The school has some wonderful features that will address all of these in one project.”