Minuteman HS project*

The Minuteman building site looking from Lincoln toward the school.

Site preparation work for the new Minuteman High School building in Lincoln is progressing smoothly, according to construction officials, though residents are hearing more noise than they would like.

Construction crews haven’t run into anything unexpected or unusual while clearing and excavating the site, said Walter Kincaid, a project executive for Gilbane Building Co. He and a representative from Skanska Building USA, Minuteman’s project manager, met with neighboring residents and the head of the Minute Man National Historical Park at a meeting in late August. They updated residents on site clearing, ledge blasting, rock crushing and dirt removal as well as efforts to minimize dust and the relocation of a massive 130-ton boulder to the west end of the property.

Builders have thus far kept their promise about keeping the trucks off Mill Street, which is frequently used by cyclists and walkers. “There are many blind turns on Mill Street, and it would be disastrous, given the narrowness of the street and the high number of recreational users, to have heavy trucks also using the street,” said Keith Hylton, who lives at 5 Oakdale Lane.

In addition to noise from truck backup horns starting at 7 a.m. during the week, “the blasting has also been louder and more intense than we thought. Our whole house shakes and it can be quite scary sometimes,” said Joe Genovese of 27 Mill St.

“We’re hoping that the concussions from blasting have not caused any hard-to-see damage in the foundations for homes or in water wells in the area,” Hylton said.  Workers have been giving advance notice of blasting to residents via email, he and Genovese added.

Kincaid said blasting of ledge would continue up to three times a week through the month of September. Crews are scheduled to start putting in the building’s foundation around September 18.

The $145 million project broke ground in June and is thus far on schedule to be completed within two years. “We’re going to put kids in the new school in the fall of 2019,” Kincaid said.

Some of the many officials who took turns with the ceremonial shovels at the Minuteman High School groundbreaking were (left to right) Minuteman School Committee chair Jeffrey Stulin, State Rep. Jay Kaufman (D-Lexington), MSBA Executive Director Jack McCarthy, Minuteman School Building Committee chair Ford Spalding, and Superintendent Edward Bouquillon (click to enlarge).

Almost a decade in the planning, a new Minuteman High School finally got underway at a well-attended groundbreaking ceremony on June 14. The event took place where the front door of the new building will go, at the western edge of the district-owned property in Lincoln, a few hundred yards from the existing school in Lexington.

The $145 million project cleared its last hurdle last September with a district-wide vote. The new school is expected to open in September 2019, after which the old building will be demolished and new athletic fields will be built.

“An investment in education pays the best interest,” said Jack McCarthy, executive director of the Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA), quoting Benjamin Franklin. The project has been in the MSBA planning process longer than almost any other project in the state, spanning the tenure of several state treasurers, he noted.

“This project is like Job—it went through every trial imaginable… and we were spit out of the whale on September 20″ when the project was approved last year in the district-wide vote, McCarthy remarked. The MSBA is contributing more than $44 million of the school’s cost. To secure project approval, the district also had to revise its governance structure and membership, scale back student enrollment, and change state regulations so non-members contribute to capital costs.

“This project nearly failed several times,” said Minuteman School Committee chair Jeffrey Stulin of Needham. Speaking directly to Minuteman students in reference to how he felt at the project’s beginnings, he said, ” I expect that some time in the future, you too will become involved in an idea of importance where you’re overwhelmed and in over your head… but you have no chance of success if you don’t even try. You have to have courage to accept that you may fail.”

Minuteman Superintendent Edward Bouquillon, a Lincoln resident, said he first realized that the existing building needed significant repair or replacement soon after he accepted the job as superintendent in 2007, thus starting the decade-long journey to win voter approval and state funding. At times emotional, he thanked an array of people and organization, including his wife Diana.

Bouquillon urged officials not to tinker with the existing model for career vocational-technical education. “Now is not the time to shave off the best aspects of high-quality career and vocational technical education and try to graft it onto a traditional high school schedule,” he said. “All that will do is weaken our system in Massachusetts.”

He also urged the state legislature to increase funding for similar projects. “MSBA needs another penny of the sales tax to get all the vocational technical schools rebuilt and to build new ones to fill the skills gap,” he said. Currently, MSBA is funded by 16 percent (one penny) of the state’s 6.25 percent sales tax.

Guests at the groundbreaking included a host of officials from the state and district towns as well as education officials, members of Minuteman’s business-led program advisory committees, and a representative from the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center.

There were no Lincoln officials in attendance, however. The town’s residents voted to withdraw from the Minuteman district in early 2016, a move that takes effect on July 1. At that point, the district will go from 16 towns to 10: Acton, Arlington, Belmont, Bolton, Concord, Dover, Lancaster, Lexington, Needham, and Stow.

The new school is designed for 628 students who will spend their Minuteman “careers” in one of two “career academies”: a Life Sciences and Services Academy, and an Engineering, Construction and Trades Academy. The curriculum’s 16 career and technical education programs will include two new ones: Multimedia Engineering (Technical Theatre) and Advanced Manufacturing.

Gilbane Building Co. is the construction manager for the project and Kaestle Boos Associates is the architect. Skanska USA Building serves as Minuteman’s project manager.

A grateful and relieved Edward Bouquillon, superintendent/director of Minuteman High School, looked ahead Wednesday morning to something he and others have been working toward for eight years: breaking ground on a new school building.

The final vote tally in Tuesday’s 16-town special election was 12,158–5,320 (69%–30%) in favor of funding the $145 million project. Four towns said no: Carlisle (46%–53%), Sudbury (45%–55%), Wayland (48%–52%) and Belmont (28%–72%). However, Belmont was the only one of those four that will still be a member of the Minuteman school district after the new school is finished, so it will be on the hook for a share of the construction costs. Boxborough, Carlisle, Lincoln, Sudbury, Wayland and Weston voted earlier this year to withdraw from the district as of July 2017. Belmont’s earlier “no” vote at Town Meeting last spring (which happened after the deadline for expedited withdrawal from the district had passed) was what led to this week’s 16-town vote.

“The fact that [Belmont is] such an outlier in this whole process should probably send some sort of signal to Belmont residents and perhaps their elected officials,” Bouquillon said. “Whether they’re just not getting it or choosing not to, I don’t know, but I’m more concerned with the kids.”

Bouquillon thanked Lincoln residents on Wednesday for their approval margin of 88%–12%. Last year, Lincoln officials lobbied other district towns for an intermunicipal agreement that would have provided some form of compensation for the fact that the new school building will be located within Lincoln, but the idea never gained traction during negotiations over the revised Minuteman regional agreement.

Workers should be able to start construction in spring 2017 on a 20-month building project resulting in occupancy in time for the start of the 2020-21 school year, Bouquillon said. That would complete a project that began almost exactly eight years ago, when he filled out a statement of interest for funding from the Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA).

“It’s the longest-running feasibility study in the history of the MSBA,” he said, adding that the agency itself had been established only a year before Minuteman submitted its statement of interest.

The future of the current building site

Along with construction details, Bouquillon and others must also now turn their attention to the question of what to do with the old building it’s replacing and the Lexington acreage it sits on.

“I cannot think that all I’m doing here is building a new high school and moving on,” he said. “This campus is perfectly positioned to become an institution of learning for K-through-life that continues to support workforce development as well as the economic vitality of the region.” 

The school district owns the 66 acres of land and plans to explore educational and public-private partnerships with ideas that will be in keeping with the site’s educational mission. Bouquillon said he has already had informal conversations with organizations including post-secondary educational institutions, as well as public and private groups involved in education, recreation (the old building’s swimming pool might be replaced in some fashion, for example), engineering and life sciences. Such companies could offer on-campus work co-op programs for Minuteman students, he noted.

The Minuteman School Committee will eventually issue a request for letters of interest to potential partners with proposed new uses for the site and then develop an overall vision for the campus before inviting developers into the process, Bouquillon said.

Right now, Bouquillon is simply thankful that the long process is of getting the new building funded is over. “Now I can focus on my kids, teachers and building,” he said. “I feel like I’ve been freed to be an educator.”