school project*

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

January 15, 2013

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.

Crucial meetings on school project begin Wednesday

January 7, 2013

The School Building Committee this week kicks off a series of meetings to ratchet up communication between residents and the SBC about what the school project should look like—or whether it should go forward under the current scenario at all.

The SBC is trying to regroup after the project failed to garner a two-thirds majority at Town Meeting on November 3. Members are treading a fine line, trying to learn what changes in the project will garner enough resident support while also knowing that if the town comes back with a “different project” than what the Massachusetts School Building Authority previously approved, a promised $21 million MSBA grant is off the table and the town must start the process from the start. Still to be determined is the extent of resident-supported tweaks to the plan, if any, that the MSBA will accept without considering the project to be “different.”

The town has until February 28 to inform the MSBA of how it wants to proceed.

The SBC will host a “Guiding Principles and Evaluation Criteria Workshop” on Wednesday, January 9 from 7-10 p.m. in Reed Gym. “Two years ago, the SBC reached out to the community to develop a set of guiding principles and criteria that were used to develop the school building project. Are they still the right criteria? Are there others that should be added? We need as many people as possible to participate in the upcoming series of meetings. The workshop on January 9th is an opportunity to review the educational and other criteria that were used to develop the school building project,” the SBC said an email to Lincoln School parents and others.

The SBC email also included these details about the meetings:

Wednesday, January 9
7:30-10:30 p.m., Reed Gym
GUIDING PRINCIPLES AND EVALUATION CRITERIA WORKSHOP

Wednesday, January 16
7:30-10:30 p.m., Reed Gym
CONSIDERING SITE AND DESIGN CONCERNS AND IDEAS
The SBC is soliciting site and design ideas from the public. If members of the community have ideas that require presentation time, please contact the School Committee at schoolcomm@lincnet.org by January 11 (date extended). There will also be an opportunity for the public to generate ideas and to discuss ideas that have been raised.

Tuesday, January 22
7:30-10:30 p.m., Reed Gym
PLAN FOR COMMUNITY CHARRETTES
Using the guiding principles and evaluation criteria from the January 9 meeting, evaluate several scenarios. To reach as many citizens as possible, the same event will be offered at two different times.

Community charrettes—two identical sessions to evaluate several scenarios:

Sunday, January 27
1-4 p.m., Reed Gym
Thursday, January 31
7-10 p.m., Reed Gym

Information from the two events will be compiled by the SBC in order to determine its response to the MSBA.

Wednesday, February 6
7:30-10:30 p.m., Reed Gym
PLANNING THE RESPONSE TO THE MSBA

State gives town two months on school building project

December 20, 2012

By Alice Waugh

State officials have given Lincoln another two months to decide how to proceed with the school building project, but they appeared to offer little wiggle room as far as allowing changes to their approved plan.

The town has until February 28, 2013 to “assess community support and examine how best to proceed,” said the December 14 letter to Superintendent of Schools Becky McFall from Mary Pichetti, director of capital planning for the Massachusetts School Building Authority. McFall and School Committee Chair Jennifer Glass wrote on November 15 to ask for an extension to try to keep the project alive after it failed to get a two-thirds majority at the November 3 Town Meeting.

Selectmen won’t support town vote on ‘same’ school project

December 20, 2012

By Alice Waugh

The Board of Selectmen will not support the idea of bringing the “same exact” project to another Town Meeting, even if that was the only way to retain the state funding.

“It would be disrespectful of the Town Meeting process,” Selectman Renel Fredriksen said at the board’s December 17 meeting.

“I think it was very clear,” said Selectman Noah Eckhouse, referring to the November 3 Town Meeting vote at which the $49 million project failed to garner a two-thirds majority. “It may have been a majority [in favor], but it was a down vote. We don’t want to run the same project up the flagpole.”

Eckhouse added that he “might” support having a vote on a project that was “meaningfully different,” even though he knew there was “never a question” that the town would drop out of the pipeline for a promised state grant of $21 million for the project.

“There are many, many reasons people voted against it,” Braun said. “To just revisit it would be counterproductive for town culture and goodwill.”

When you consider the votes that would be necessary, “the numbers are daunting,” Braun said. The Town Meeting tally was 370 in favor of the project and 321 against (54 percent to 45 percent). If the same number of “no” votes were cast in a second Town Meeting, “another 270 people would have to show up and all vote yes” to achieve a two-third majority, he said.

Put another way, if the same group of 691 voters came to a second Town Meeting, 93 of them would have to switch their votes from “no” to “yes” for the measure to pass.

Town still awaiting word on extension request for school project

December 12, 2012

By Alice Waugh

School officials are still waiting for a response to their request from the state for more time to achieve enough “yes” votes to allow the school building project to go forward.

At a meeting of three town panels on December 5, Superintendent of Schools Becky McFall said she had spoken by phone to representatives of the Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA) and gotten “verbal approval of additional time to work with the community” until at least the end of February.

School hoping to buy time for building project

November 19, 2012

By Alice Waugh

The School Committee has asked for more time from the state and more money from the town in hopes of salvaging almost $21 million in state aid promised for the school building project, which earlier this month failed to garner enough voter support to move forward.

School Committee chairman Jennifer Glass and Superintendent of School Becky McFall sent a letter on November 15 to the Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA) to formally report on the failed town meeting vote on Nov. 3 and ask if the town could have more time to achieve resident buy-in before the state-funding window of opportunity closes. The MSBA had committed to providing $20.9 million of the $49 million that would be needed for major renovations and additions to the school if voters had approved the project by a two-thirds majority at town meeting and a simple majority at the polls on Election Day.

Glass and McFall asked the MSBA to give the town until the end of February 2013 to “determine whether we believe the project can garner sufficient support from he Town, and whether and to what extent revisions of the project will be necessary.”