AMHERST — Windows to provide natural light and walls to diminish noise, along with fresh air and full accessibility, exist in the art room at Fort River School.
But it’s a privilege that many children who are taught in the 1970s-era school only have when they are in Nicole Singer’s classroom.
“All Amherst students deserve more than the minimum all day long,” said Singer, speaking at a rally on the front steps of Town Hall Monday evening.
Much of the space, like that at Wildwood School, is a challenging environment to learn and teach because of the open-classroom layout.
“Our home is crumbling fast, and we can’t wait another 10 years to have our basic needs met,” Singer said.
Singer is among 147 teachers and staff from the three elementary schools in Amherst who signed a petition, presented to the Select Board Monday, that endorses the building of two new co-located schools at the Wildwood School site on Strong Street, at a cost of $67.2 million, as well as an accompanying reconfiguration plan. The Massachusetts School Building Authority has pledged to provide $34 million to support the project.
Town Meeting, which rejected the project in November, has an opportunity to reconsider the proposal Jan. 30 after another petition, with more than 200 certified signatures, was submitted to the Select Board last month.
About two hours after the rally, the Select Board, which previously agreed to put the article on a Town Meeting warrant, voted unanimously to recommend it.
Select Board member Andrew Steinberg said the existing two school buildings are not acceptable.
“We are providing good education there, but we are providing good education despite the buildings, not because of the buildings,” Steinberg said.
Parent and Town Meeting Precinct 7 member Rebekah Demling, who led the original petition drive, said Town Meeting should reconsider the project because there is clear information that the $34 million state grant will be lost if the plans are not approved by March 31. The design can’t be changed, he said.
“We owe our kids more than a promise that their schools will be accessible and acceptable,” Demling told the Select Board.
The Proposition 2½ debt exclusion for the project was approved by voters last fall, narrowly winning a majority, but Town Meeting in November, with 108 against and 106 in favor, fell 37 votes short of the two-thirds majority needed to authorize borrowing.
Demling and others who support the project believe that the legislative body was misled on teacher support, which has been rectified with the petition signed by 83 percent of Wildwood’s classroom teachers, paraprofessionals, specialists and administrative staff, and 88 percent of Fort River classroom teachers.
The teacher petition reads: “We, the undersigned, support the educational plan; we support the early childhood center as an effective way to help more children start school ready to learn; we believe the transition from 1st to 2nd grade will be manageable as all students do it together; we support the twinned, small, 2-6 schools; and most importantly, knowing now how long we will need to wait to build new schools based on the decision of the MSBA, we respectfully ask Town Meeting to reconsider Article 2.”
Joined by parents and children, Singer was one of three teachers who spoke at a rally in support of presenting the petition to the Select Board.
Linda Prothers, a Crocker Farm preschool teacher who has taught in Amherst for more than 28 years, said early childhood education would be further legitimized with the project.
“By creating an early education center, the district could add two new preschool classrooms, and we would be able to add up to 30 new students,” Prothers said.
Kristen Roeder, a sixth-grade teacher at Wildwood, said science labs and other similar spaces would be in the new, modern building.
“My colleagues and I are genuinely excited at the prospect of being able to teach all of our community’s children in this amazing new building,” Roeder said.
Should the project fail again, the Amherst’s proposal would be removed from MSBA funding and the school and town would have to begin applying for funding again with new statements of interest submitted for both Wildwood and Fort River elementary schools.
One Town Meeting member who will change his vote is Christopher Riddle of Precinct 2, who abstained in November. A retired architect, he said renovation is not practical.
“Please forget the idea that we can renovate these schools,” Riddle said.
Both Wildwood and Fort River need repairs, including a new boiler for Wildwood and a new roof for Fort River.
Critics of the project, though, say that the it is not worth losing the town’s traditional neighborhood schools and replacing them with a “mega school.”
Scott Merzbach can be reached at smerzbach@gazettenet.com.
