Last week marked the official start of the school project, and the SBC Outreach Team organized a socially distanced groundbreaking photo on the ballfield immediately after the Town Meeting. The picture (a drone photo taken by Lincoln resident Tyler Ory) photo will become part of a virtual groundbreaking ceremony that will try to capture the community’s involvement in the project. One of the people in the photo is SBC member Peter Sugar, who sported the shovel and hard hat he wore at the last Lincoln School project groundbreaking almost exactly 26 years ago. (Click image to enlarge.)
Donations from eighth-graders, a Lincoln couple, and the estate of Harriet Todd will allow the School Building Committee to add back some of the items that were cut earlier this spring but not restored by the recent Town Meeting vote.
Robert and Jacquelin Apsler have donated $32,328 to pay for concrete walkways behind the refurbished school’s learning commons as well as interior benches in the Reed/Brooks connector and the dining commons. Those features didn’t make the list of items that voters restored with an $828,945 appropriation on June 13. However, they were part of an earlier list for which that the SBC was planning to request $2.02 million back in March (itself a subset of the $3.5 million in cuts that the committee made in February after bids came in over budget).
“I want to publicly thank the Apslers for their incredible generosity, SBC chair Chris Fasciano said at the June 17 SBC meeting. “It was a very pleasant surprise when we heard that news and it’s very much appreciated.”
As its class gift to the Lincoln School, the graduating eighth-grade class of 2020 created a school project tree fund and started it off with a $500 donation. That amount got a boost of $20,000 from the estate of Harriet Todd, a former Selectman who died in 2018 and left the town $500,000 in her will. Her family agreed that $275,000 of that bequest could be spent on auditorium seating, carpeting, and stage paneling (the rest will endow a scholarship for Lincoln students). However, the auditorium work will cost only about $255,000, so the Todds agreed that the $20,000 balance could go into the tree fund.
An amount of $56,084 was originally budgeted for 52 new trees but was one of the items cut in February. After the School Committee votes to establish the gift fund, residents will be able to make additional donations for trees.
“It’s just lovely on their part, and it obviously gives a big boost,” Fasciano said of the Todds.