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Date: 6/26/2023
HOLYOKE — The Massachusetts School Building Authority decision to agree to pay for a portion of the new middle school building in Holyoke was best summed up by Mayor Joshua Garcia: “It’s time for Holyoke.”
The mayor delivered the message and spoke more about the announcement during a June 22 press conference at City Hall where he was joined by Superintendent/Receiver Anthony Soto, City Treasurer Rory Casey, School Committee representative Erin Brunelle and Holyoke Public Schools Chief Financial and Strategy Officer Erin Linville.
The vote of approval came from the MSBA’s June 21 meeting where official confirmation was made from the state organization to move forward on the next phases of bringing a new middle school building to Holyoke. This was the final approval the city needed in order to build a new middle school on the site where the William R. Peck school currently stands. The city will now go out to bid for a construction team to tackle the next phase of the project.
The MSBA has agreed to reimburse $46 million of the cost, leaving the Paper City responsible for the remaining $40 million of the total $85,504,592 bill. Garcia talked about the importance of reaching this point.
“This has been a long process — probably about a decade or so — since our community has started this conversation about how do we best adequately meet the kids of our full school student body population,” Garcia said.
Garcia remembered when he first got involved with local politics was when he was elected as a School Committee member in ward 1, the discussion about a new school building was in its infancy. He added his twin children were born around that time and it was exciting for him to see a full circle moment in this process 11 years later.
“We can finally go forward and get these kids the schools that they deserve,” Garcia said.
The new school building is estimated to be open in 2025 between late August and December, and will serve approximately 550 students in grades 6 through 8.
Soto expressed gratitude for all the hard work in working together as a community in deciding on what is right for the needs of Holyoke students. He added the community’s buy in and the unanimous show of support from the City Council shows this is an issue everyone in Holyoke can get behind.
“It really just sends a message loud and clear to all our families and to all our students that the elected officials in this community and the leaders in this community really do care about you. Not just with words and not just with campaigns, but through funding a big investment for the city of Holyoke,” Soto said.
Soto said the project has been “near and dear to my heart” as he was a student at Peck Middle School while growing up in Holyoke. He added the district’s vision was only made possible in thanks to the community believing this was a need the students deserved.
“They worked tirelessly both individually and cooperatively to make this happen. Thank you, all,” Soto said.
According to Linville, students will officially vacate the existing Peck structure following the end of the school year. She added demolition of the building was the next step.
“The most significant next step in this project is to release a bid to hire a company to complete the demolition of the current Peck building, which we expect to begin in late summer or early fall,” Linville said. “Our consultant team will also develop the construction documents this summer and fall. We expect construction to begin in early 2024.”
The new school building aligns with the district’s rezoning efforts as starting next school year grades have been rezoned to establish six elementary schools serving kindergarten through fifth grade, and three middle school buildings with enrollment aligned to each building’s capacity. With the existing Peck building now set for eventual demolition, students who would normally go to school there will be assigned to go to either Holyoke STEM or Metcalf Middle School until the new building is complete.
Soto added during the press conference that Sullivan School will serve as one big middle school through the rezoning process with over 500 students attending.
In 2016, Holyoke Public Schools hired an outside consulting firm to analyze the condition of all of Holyoke’s school buildings. The consultant concluded that Peck School should no longer be used to educate students because of the buildings aging infrastructure and poor original design that does not meet the needs of today’s students.
The report became the driving force behind efforts the subsequent seven years to secure an alternative for students of Holyoke.
Back in 2019 voters rejected a ballot question asking for a debt-exclusion override for a proposal to build two new middle schools due to its tax implications, not because opponents were against the need for a new school building. From that point on, city leaders and the community have been engaged in the process of identifying students’ needs and the most cost-effective way of building a new school to meet those needs.
“Never at one moment did I take that as defeat, I took that instead as an opportunity to reconcile, continue to work with our community to understand how to best go forward with the shared desire which every member in every corner of the city did believe that we did need a new middle school,” Garcia said.
This time around there is no ballot question as the city is focused on bringing in one new school building to begin addressing needs in the district. The City Council unanimously voted in favor of the project, showcasing the alignment across city officials on the need for the new school building.
Brunelle said it has taken a long time but Holyoke is able to say they pulled off this project for the improvement of schools in the district.
“We’ve come a long way at Holyoke Public Schools. We’re putting a new emphasis on ensuring that students in the middle school population have all the tools they need to be successful not only for high school, but for a career in college and beyond,” Brunelle said.
As a realtor, Brunelle added education is the foundation of every community and a huge factor in deciding where to live.
“Without quality schools’ families aren’t going to live there, without quality schools you have increased crime rate, without quality schools you don’t have the core of job candidates to work in the local community,” Brunelle said. “Improving our schools will help drive those people to want to live here. I understand where the taxpayers were coming from [in 2019]. It was a tough decision for folks to lose that battle then, but to finally be in a position where we as a community are putting education first, it’s only going to be leaps and bounds for the city as a whole.”
The soon to be demolished Peck building was built in 1973 and has been described as aging and out-of-date to the point where a full demolition and construction of a new building is more efficient that renovating the existing buildings issues.
The firm selected by the Holyoke School Building Committee in January was the Mount Vernon Group who have designed several school building projects across the state, including the exact model the new Holyoke proposal would be based on. The MSBA selects model schools for districts and design firms to choose from as they have been built quickly, proven to be successful, are energy efficient and cost effective.
Garcia added that the public can expect a more conservative approach in budgeting for the near future as it is the city’s responsibility to closely monitor the school building process as they try and also tackle other needs in the city.
“It’s gonna take financial forecasting to be sure that we’re hitting our target objectives to take on the obligation of these annual payments to support the school,” Garcia said. “There’s a lot of work that we’re still doing internally, it’s just a matter of making sure that we’re strengthening internal controls and just doing basic management of our municipal resources to be able to be sure that we’re keeping up with our top priorities here, which includes building this middle school.”