By Alice Waugh
As Lincoln girds for a second go-round on trying to get a school building project approved by voters, the School Committee is creating a School Building Project Citizen Advisory Committee (CAC) and is seeking volunteers for that new group.
[Read more…] about Citizen advisory committee to offer “pathways” for school project
Showing off their display on the science of musical instruments at the Science Share were (left to right), Hannah Bodnar, Josie Sullivan, Allie Schwartz, Meghan Hobbs, team parent Mia Katz, Noa Katz and Alexandre White.
Teams of students and their coaches had a great time showing off their work at the Lincoln School’s seventh annual Science Share for kids in grades K-4. Leading up to the April 8 event, which aims to ignite children’s interest in science, volunteers helped teams of kids learn about a science topic of their choice, doing research and building a display for the Science Share.
By Alice Waugh
Faced with the possibility that the Lincoln Extended-day After-school Program (LEAP) might be replaced, parents and others turned out in force to protest at last week’s meeting of the School Committee, which voted to delay the decision until the fall.
[Read more…] about Emotions run high at meeting on after-school program
Here’s a selection of interesting events coming up in town. Mark your calendars!
Saturday, April 20
1-3 p.m., Codman Community Farms
Kids of all ages will make a fairy gardens to take home. If you have a dinner-plate-size basket or bowl you’d like to use, please bring it with you. We’ll have some on hand if you don’t. Led by Susan Cummings.
Please RSVP to sustev@comcast.net. The cost is $5.
Dr. Michael Rich
Thursday, April 25
7-8:30 p.m., Brooks Auditorium
Ask the “media-trician” about kids and media! Lincoln PTO Parent Education presents Dr. Michael Rich, MD, MPH, of Children’s Hospital Boston (CHB), who will talk about the positive and negative effects of media exposure on our children. Hear the latest research about children’s use of media and implications for their health from Dr. Rich, director of the Center on Media and Child Health at CHB. This program is supported in part by a grant from the Lincoln Cultural Council, a local agency that is supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency. The Lincoln School PTO also provided funding.
Sunday, May 5
5 p.m., 53 South Great Rd., Lincoln
Enjoy a chamber concert at the home of Laura Bossert and Terry King (53 South Great Road) on Sunday, May 5 at 5 p.m. overlooking Farrar Pond and Pincushion Island to benefit Farrar Pond. Wine and hors d’oeuvres followed by a chamber music concert featuring Arensky’s Two Cello Quartet and Dvořák’s Piano Quintet in A Major. See the Lincoln Squirrel calendar listing for details on the musicians.
Seating is limited and tickets are $75. To purchase, send a check payable to “Massachusetts Audubon Society” (the fiscal agent for the pond) with “Farrar Pond Music Benefit” in the memo line. Mail to Ron McAdow, 59 South Great Road, Lincoln MA 01773. We will hold your tickets at the door. Please include an e-mail address for ticket confirmation. The full amount of your tickets/donation is tax deductible. The money held by Mass Audubon is used to fight invasive vegetation and to maintain the dam and the beaver deceivers.
“Farrar Pond is a unique place in Lincoln where creative zoning has resulted in conservation land and trails around a beautiful pond,” said Farrar Pond Associates president Will Winchell. “The Farrar Pond Associates, associated trusts and the Lincoln Land Conservation Trust work to maintain it in its natural state. There are a number of invasive plant species that need to be controlled to preserve the pond and we are dependent on donations to accomplish this often costly process. What better way to support Farrar Pond than a glorious evening of music, refreshments, and getting to know each other?”
(Editor’s note: The Lincoln Squirrel was on vacation during the last week in March but will post stories in the coming days about the March 23 Town Meeting.)
By Alice Waugh
Residents approved spending $17,700 from the town’s stabilization fund for architectural and engineering work in hopes of submitting a second school building project feasibility study to the state—though not after several residents argued that the town should pursue its own path toward a modernized school building.
[Read more…] about Town meeting approves funding for school project planning
For the first time, school officials have published an annual report with information on demographics, spending, MCAS scores, educational programs and more, as well as data comparing Lincoln schools to others in the area on various measures.
The report is available on the Lincoln Schools website in two forms: a series of slides with charts and graphs, and a three-page executive summary. The report by the School Committee and Lincoln Public Schools administration is the result of an initiative by the Finance Committee to provide the town with information about the operations and performance of town agencies.
[Read more…] about Schools offer data snapshots in first annual report
By Alice Waugh
Lincoln officials are reworking a document from the rejected school building project in preparation for resubmitting it to the state, and town residents will be asked for an as-yet-undetermined sum of money for project planning expenses at Town Meeting later this month.
The School Committee last week began going over the town’s original Statement of Interest (SOI) preparatory to making updates, and the Board of Selectman will do the same at their meetings on March 11 and March 18. The School Committee will schedule a one-hour community forum as part of its March 21 meeting to answer questions about the SOI and the warrant article to go before voters at Town Meeting on March 23.
The committee will also vote on March 21 on whether to submit the revised SOI to the Massachusetts School Building Authority. That agency recently told the town that the “L-shaped proposal” would not qualify for preapproved funding and said the town would have to start over with the state approval and funding process for a school building project.
Warrant article 9 asks for money to “[conduct] architectural/engineering studies and designs to address facilities issues of the Lincoln School” without specifying an exact amount. If the MSBA had said yes to the L-shaped proposal, that request would have been $400,000 for design documents required before going out to bid on construction.
Now, however, residents will be asked in Article 10 for a different sum of money to proceed with planning—although the dollar amount of that request won’t be known until shortly before Town Meeting, said School Committee chairman Jennifer Glass. However, she emphasized that “by no stretch of the imagination” would the request be as high as $400,000 and would in fact be “a lot less.”
In the last round of approvals, funding and votes for the school project, the town submitted its SOI in 2008. Based on that, the MSBA invited the town in fall 2009 to submit a feasibility study, and Lincoln residents voted to fund that study in March 2010. The town vote on funding the project itself took place in November 2012 at a special Town Meeting, where the measure failed to garner the necessary two-thirds majority.
Glass noted that Lincoln took longer than expected to gets its construction funding request before residents. Also, the MSBA is likely to act more quickly this time around, since it has already acknowledged the need for a school building project of some sort. Given these variables, Lincoln could be looking at a fall 2013 acceptance of a new feasibility study and perhaps another town vote on construction funding in late 2015; if that vote is successful, the project could be put out to bid in January 2016, Glass said.
More spending ahead
Given the delay of approximately three years in starting a major renovation and addition project (if residents eventually do approve such a course), the school will have to “patch things up and make them continue,” Glass said. Even if the original project had gone ahead, the school would have needed a new main fire alarm panel immediately. That $36,000 expenditure appears in Article 9 of the Town Meeting warrant.
Other school-related expenditures in that warrant article include $105,000 to replace wooden window curtain walls and insulate masonry walls in the Hartwell building, and $40,000 for increased security measures in the wake of the Newtown, Conn., school shooting. Glass declined to specify what those measures might be, though she said they do not include armed guards.
Article 12 also asks for $75,000 for the annual classroom rehabilitation and preventive maintenance program. That amount would have been only $50,000 if the building project had been approved by the state, but the town’s Capital Planning Committee recently green-lighted the higher amount, Glass said.
“Even though it’s a big-ticket item and I totally understand people’s shock” at the project’s $49 million price tag ($28 million from by Lincoln residents and the other $21 million from the state), “I still believe in the long run that the right thing for the building, for [town] finances and for [minimizing] disruption for the kids is to do this as one project that’s carefully planned and thought through and not done in a piecemeal fashion,” Glass said.
Do you have a future or current Lincoln-Sudbury high schooler? The LSPO needs your auction donations to help fund students’ technology education needs.
At the “Spring Forward with Technology Gala” on March 23 at Nashawtuc Country Club, attendees can bid on donated items at a live auction. Proceeds from the event will help update the high school’s technology such as computers and networking equipment, much of which has not been updated since 2004, when the new building opened. Technology has changed dramatically in the last eight years, and unfortunately, the current budget isn’t able to address these needs.
To donate to the auction or advertise in the auction booklet, please click here. Examples of donations include sports tickets, vacation home stays, gift certificates, lesson packages, memberships, artwork, tickets to sports or performing arts events, and catered parties or wine tastings. Please help us by donating. All donations are tax-deductible and we will provide receipts. If you have any questions, please call Sarah Finsthwait at 617-290-6305 or email lspogaladonations@gmail.com.
State officials this week gave a thumbs-down to the “L-shaped proposal” for the Lincoln school project, saying it’s different than the one they approved earlier—and therefore it doesn’t qualify for a promised $21 million in state aid for the work.
In a February 27 conference call, Massachusetts School Building Authority officials told Superintendent of Schools Becky McFall and School Committee chairman Jennifer Glass that the L-shaped proposal is a different project because the “sizes, locations and adjacencies” of the rooms are different, meaning the project has a different scope of work from the previously approved project, and also because there is a change in the ratio between new construction and renovation, McFall and Glass wrote in a school district email on Thursday.
[Read more…] about State says no to L-shaped school proposal
The L-shaped proposal.
By Alice Waugh
School officials have formally asked the state to approve a new “L-shaped” design for the Lincoln School so the town can still receive $21 million in state aid that was promised as part of an earlier plan approved by the state but which didn’t garner enough resident support at Town Meeting.
The L-shaped proposal advocated by residents including Douglas Adams and Ken Bassett calls for retaining the 1994 portion of the Smith building and demolishing and rebuilding the older portion closer to Brooks, thereby reducing the size of the block of new construction just south of the current Brooks building. Proponents feel this option would retain more of the “campus green” feel by maintaining more physical separation between the younger and older groups of students and making fewer changes to the landscaping.
[Read more…] about Town asks state to consider “L-shaped” option for school