Residents ask for more financial, community use considerations in school project

By Alice Waugh

Heeding the School Building Committee’s call for more public input on what the school building project should look like, dozens attended a January 9 SBC workshop and asked for a building that considered the needs of the broader community and was closely connected to its surrounding natural environment.

The workshop’s goal was to reexamine the guiding principles and evaluation criteria that were used in developing the school project. Residents broke into groups and contributed ideas that were then written on poster paper hung on the walls of Reed Gym.

The SBC will decide on a final consolidated set of criteria at its January 22 meeting.

As a result of the discussion, the SBC expanded the original three “guiding principles” to five and added a “financial” category to the four groups criteria for the project design (educational, building, site and community). The guiding principles now seek a building and site plan that will:

1. ensure a flexible educational environment that fosters the core values of collaboration, differentiation, purposeful and authentic learning, inclusion, and integration of technology.
2. are safe, sustainable, energy-efficient, connected to its environment, and integrated into the site; designed as a “50-year solution.”
3. foster community use, including multigenerational use and interaction.
4. [represent] a financially responsible solution that is balanced with additional town needs.
5. reflect the values embodied in the town’s mission statement.

Principles 1, 3 and 5 were new, while the other two were amended versions of the originals. The schools’ “core values” have been the subject of recent discussions among administrators, staff and parents.

About 60 people—including seven school administrators, four School Committee members, and seven other SBC members—discussed more than 80 original and new criteria and then voted on which they thought were most important. Each attendee was given three colored stickers to stick next to the most important criteria within each of the five categories on the wall posters, plus six stickers that could be put anywhere they chose. The original and amended principles and criteria are available here.

In the new financial category, residents came up with the following criteria (numbers in parentheses are the number of stickers, indicating overall popularity among the meeting’s attendees):

• maximize state funding (53)
• balance capital expenditure with other town needs (32)
• maximize value for cost (25)
• maximize use of existing structure (15)
• ensure that building design respects citizens’ ability to pay for it (13)
• maximize value to community as a whole by facilitating use during non-school hours (12)
• minimize total life cycle costs, including maintenance (9)
• balance of operational budget of school (6)
• balance capital expenditures vs. investment in teachers (5)
• line item review by capital committee (1)
• maximize building life by providing modular, cost-effective expansion or “re-purposing” (0)

Other popular new design criteria in the original four categories included:

• Retain current site organization, “sense of place” and scale of buildings; make changes only when they are unavoidable (49)
• Enhance community use of spaces (24)
• [Promote] educational values that reflect town values/mission statement  (24) and have a design that maintains town values; walkability, history, design quality, open space, “warm” spaces (23)
• Preserve as much of the building as possible (21)
• Act with “deliberate speed” (19)

Next up:

• The SBC will meet on Wednesday, January 16 (7:30-10:30 p.m., Reed Gym) to hear site and design concerns and ideas suggested by residents.
• The Finance Committee and Capital Planning Committee will meet on Thursday, January 17 at 7:30 p.m. in the Hartwell multipurpose room to discuss:
  • Various approaches to fund the Lincoln School’s building needs
  • Tax implications of various approaches
  • Impact on future Town projects

• At its January 22 meeting (7:30 p.m, Reed Gym), the SBC will plan for a pair of identical community charrettes scheduled as follows:

• Sunday, January 27:  1-4 p.m., Reed Gym
• Thursday, January 31:  7-10 p.m., Reed Gym
• On Wednesday, February 6, the SBC will meet at 7:30 p.m. in Reed Gym to plan its response to the Massachusetts School Building Authority, which gave the town until February 28 to decide how it wants to proceed. The MSBA told town officials in a December 14 letter that the project could retain the promised $21 million in state funding only if the school district “determines as a result of its community outreach that the same project as proposed and approved by the MSBA is the preferred direction.”