Letter to the editor: Minuteman building needs are driving debate

Editor’s note: Antia is Lincoln’s representative on the Minuteman School Committee.

To the editor:

On February 23, Lincoln will be holding a Special Town Meeting and we will be asked to take two votes. We will be asked to vote on amendments to the Minuteman High School district regional agreement, and we will also be asked to vote on whether we want to remain in the district. This is the second in a series of letters from me about Minuteman, the first of which was published on January 4.

Sorry to be complex, but this is a complicated issue. To be clear, the vote on whether or not to fund the school will come later. I am starting with the building because this project is driving the questions we are being asked to vote on and is therefore a critical part of the conversation.

The Minuteman School Committee, the Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA) and (I believe) the selectmen of the 16 Minuteman towns are in agreement that Minuteman High School needs to be replaced. At a minimum, the school, built in 1971, is in need of major repairs. In 2012 the Commission on Public Schools Committee on Technical Career Institutions placed Minuteman on “warning” status. In their report, the committee was clear the only reason for the warning status is the state of the facility. Among the list of required repairs are a new roof and new electrical and new HVAC system. These three items alone are estimated to at least $45 million. The estimate for all repairs is over $100 million.

The School Committee has been working on this project for several years. At this point, the MSBA has accepted the Minuteman building project into the funding pipeline and the School Committee is waiting to hear if the schematic design, which was submitted December 1, 2015, has been approved.

Once the schematic design is approved, the next step in the process is funding. This will require approval from all 16 Minuteman towns. Actually, either all 16 towns must approve funding at Town Meeting or the Minuteman School Committee will likely call for a district-wide vote. A district-wide vote will mean that on a set day in the spring, residents of all 16 towns will be asked to vote on funding the school building. Every person in the 16 towns will have an equal vote and the collective result of the vote by the members of all the towns will determine if the school will be funded. If this happens, all 16 towns will be required to abide by that vote. Lest it not be obvious, be aware that if this happens, larger towns, or at least towns with the greatest turnout, will have the most clout.

If, through either of these methods, the project is funded, the MSBA will reimburse approximately 33 percent of the $145 million cost for a new school, bringing the cost down to just under $100 million. Under recently passed legislation, Minuteman will be able to charge out-of district-towns sending students for capital costs.

If we do not fund the new school, we will be forced to make significant repairs to the old school. These repairs have been put off in the expectation of building a new school, and you will recall that repairs only are expected to be at least $100 million—roughly the same price as a new school but resulting in no new school, disrupted education as construction takes place, piecemeal work, and piecemeal funding. In addition, with this process, we will not be allowed to charge capital costs to out-of-district students.

Sincerely,

Sharon Antia
165 South Great Rd.

Letters to the editor must be signed with the writer’s name and street address and sent via email to lincolnsquirrelnews@gmail.com. Letters must be about a Lincoln-specific topic, will be edited for punctuation, spelling, style, etc., and will be published at the discretion of the editor. Letters containing personal attacks, errors of fact or other inappropriate material will not be published.