By Alice Waugh
After 17 meetings spanning six months, the School Building Advisory Committee had concluded that the school really needs everything that was outlined in Lincoln’s earlier request to the state—but that those needs can be met with an L-shaped building.
“The L-shaped configuration can accommodate the educational objectives, preserve the current campus feel, and maintain the center field and the current landscape,” said SBAC chair Steven Perlmutter as he presented the SBAC final report to the School Committee on November 21. Many residents who voted against the proposal last year objected to the submitted plan because it would have concentrated the school buildings on the north side of the campus and required removal of numerous trees and other changes to the campus.
The project that failed to win the required two-thirds majority last year was estimated to cost $49 million. With $21 million provided by the Massachusetts School Building Authority, the price for Lincoln taxpayers would have been $28 million. Concern over the cost combined with dislike of the design of the new campus spelled defeat for the plan.
Officials asked the MSBA to approve the modified “L-shaped” proposal, but the MSBA said no, sending Lincoln back to the drawing board. In April, school officials submitted a new SOI—an outline of repair and improvement needs for which state funding is being sought.
During the course of its work since June, the SBAC met with school officials and combed through the SOI. “Painfully at times, we went work item by work item and tried to understand if it was really needed and really important or not,” Perlmutter said.
The group rejected the “repair-only” option because they found it would wind up costing residents almost as much as the original proposal without adding any new educational value. This is because many of the basic repairs that all agree are necessary would trigger requirements for further upgrades in order to meet the latest building codes, “and all of a sudden that’s a very big chunk of change,” said SBAC member Vincent Cannistraro.
The SBAC also agreed with the educational reasons for major elements of the rejected plan.
“This committee was persuaded that there is a need for flexible educational space in the 21st century,” Perlmutter said. This flexible space could be achieved with two cafeterias included in the L-shaped alternative that could also be used as “magnet classrooms” for grade-wide activities and other purposes requiring more space than a regular classroom but less than an auditorium, for example.
The SBAC concluded that all the major space, facility, and maintenance/repair features included in the original plan are in fact necessary—but it’s still unclear whether having them in an L-shaped configuration will be less expensive that the design outlined in the original plan.
“Many people in this town are looking for numbers, but you’re not going to find an answer in this report,” Perlmutter said. Since the SBAC did its work without any funding it could not hire cost estimators or other experts, “and it would be a terrible disservice to town if we did guessing, even ballpark guessing,” he said.
The SBAC’s report outlined two possible pathways—one assuming that the town will be successful in its new request for MSBA funding, and one that assumes state assistance will not be forthcoming but that most or all of the original plan’s work must still be done.
If Lincoln does not get financial assistance from the state, pathway #2 is “not as fleshed out as we were hoping we could have done,” said SBAC member Maggy Pietropaolo. “After all of these meetings, I feel like our conclusion was [that] we just have to find the money because there is no other alternative—there is nothing significant you can cut out of option 1.”
The next step, SBAC members said, is to convince town voters.
“We have to make every person in the town understand what the 10-12 of us now understand— that there is real need for every single thing,” Pietropaolo said. “It’s not just fluff because we have this opportunity to get state money so let’s think of all the wonderful things we could buy with it… we genuinely need these things.
“We live in Lincoln, many of us, so that we don’t have to cough up 25 grand to send our kids to private school,” Pietropaolo continued. “People aren’t going to want to move to our town and pay our prices for a school that is mediocre. It’s our responsibility to support the kids who grow up in this town and it’s in our own best interests to keep our property values up.”
However, Cannistraro urged fiscal restraint, saying that Lincoln already has one of the highest per-student spending rates in Massachusetts and that its high property tax rate “scares people off and keeps property values down.”
“It needs to be a holistic effort,” he said. “When people buy a house, they look at many things, and it tends not to be the age of the school buildings as much as other things.”
“It’s really important to get a feeling for what the town is willing to support and [then] tailor the plan to that,” said resident Harriet Todd.
The biggest uncertainty is whether the town will get another pledge of funding from the MSBA, and if so, how much and when. The panel’s board of directors met on November 20 but the Lincoln School was not invited into the 270-day eligibility period. The next bimonthly meeting of the MSBA board is scheduled for January 29, 2014.
What if the town doesn’t get state funding approval for a long-term project and the town has to pay the entire bill? “We wrestled with that question and frankly had a hard time coming up with an answer,” Perlmutter said. “It would be hard to decide which of those components should drop out. The financial pressure on the town and its residents would be significant.”
If the answer from the MSBA is no, that still doesn’t provide clarity, officials noted. “If we get a no, it’s not a ‘no, not ever’—it’s just a no,” Selectman Peter Braun said.
State officials aren’t likely to offer guidance on how Lincoln should proceed if the town isn’t invited back into the funding pipeline in the near future. “You can’t expect an answer from the MSBA on whether it’s worth waiting for a year,” said Superintendent of Schools Becky McFall.
On the other hand, if the town does get invited to proceed with the MSBA process, it must eventually come up with a single plan to present to Lincoln voters and the state to obtain funding. “It’s not like we can come up with a high, medium and low plan,” said School Committee vice chair Tom Sander.