BELCHERTOWN — The Cold Spring School campus is smaller than Theodore Nadeau remembers.
The Pathfinder Regional Vocational Technical High School student from Belchertown can vividly picture his former Cold Spring Elementary School classroom. He points around the area, recalling the layout of tables and benches, the nap corner and the administrative area he never dared to wander.
Now that he has returned to the same room for his health assistant vocational classes almost a decade later, none of his memories map to the current setup. A fresh coat of white paint replaced the wood and cork paneling, the small tables are now long black desks and the “musty, moldy” smell that accumulated since 1954 is gone. The playground in the back, however, remains a space for Nadeau and classmates to let off some steam.
“You should see us on the swings. We’re so happy,” said Yamareliz Feliz, a health assistant student.
The health assistant class is just one of the five vocational training programs that moved their shops to Pathfinder Tech’s new Cold Spring campus on Sept. 1, expanding the school’s home base beyond Palmer. About 100 students from Belchertown, Granby, Hardwick, Monson, New Braintree, Oakham, Palmer, Ware and Warren now occupy the halls to train in medical assisting, health assisting, electronics technology, computer-aided design and hospitality management.
Pathfinder Tech commemorated the expansion into Belchertown last Friday with a ribbon-cutting and reception. The vocational school only had eight weeks and $3.5 million to ready the building to accommodate the five programs and their much taller students than the elementary children who once roamed the halls before Belchertown Public Schools closed it after last school year. Despite the tight deadline, Pathfinder Tech managed to finish renovations, opening 150 new seats for students and ensuring a closed school building would not sit vacant.
“The fact that this innovative solution came from a visionary superintendent that said we could do something different, I will say to everybody that is the magic of our commonwealth,” Department of Elementary and Secondary Education Commissioner Pedro Martinez said at Friday’s ribbon-cutting.
The opening of Pathfinder’s satellite school came down to the wire, quite literally, wires were hanging from the ceiling a week before the first day of school. In only 33 working days, vocational teachers and 26 student workers rolled up their sleeves to replace the plumbing and electrical systems, install new flooring and drop ceilings, and add a fresh coat of paint. Other students were moving furniture and painting the large mural in the cafeteria.
“It would almost bring a tear to your eye on how many of them [staff] canceled their vacations, stopped everything they were doing, brought their own children here to play on the playground while they were working,” Pathfinder Tech Superintendent Eric Duda said.
Belchertown closed Cold Spring School due to declining enrollment and the high operating cost of the district’s oldest building. It is the most recent loss in a regional pattern of shrinking student bodies and budgetary constraints. Both Palmer and Granby have closed schools in the last decade, and Duda has seen a 23% decline in K-12 enrollment over the last 12 years across the nine towns that make up Pathfinder.
Only a month after the district announced its closure, Pathfinder Tech inquired about occupying the building. The vocational school had been looking for a way to expand without constructing a new building, which Duda estimates could have cost between $400 million and $500 million.
“This is the blueprint,” state Rep. Aaron Saunders, D-Belchertown, said. “This is how we make projects that elsewhere cost tens and hundreds of millions of dollars done with millions. It’s how we stretch that public dollar at a time where it’s very difficult to find the next.”
Brenda Turner, a Pathfinder Tech school counselor who contributed to the design work, said the renovations kept the original charm of the building by preserving the brick walls and layout, but modernized the facility. The paint colors and signs matched Pathfinder’s main campus to ensure students did not feel they received less than their peers when learning their vocations at the older building.
By the time of the ribbon-cutting, students had not only settled into the building but were running the show. Student ambassadors and the Pathfinder Tech SkillsUSA chapter mingled with visitors, talking about their programs and passions while hospitality students served refreshments in the cafeteria.
“These students, whether they’re aware of their blue, their red, or their black, their programs are the future,” said state Sen. Jake Oliveira, D-Ludlow.
Health assistant students Ellisyn Gelinas, Elizabeth Mazza, Michelle Larronde and Yamareliz Feliz said they personalized their classroom with vision boards and anatomy posters. Previously, they were cramped into a small room split between vocational and academic education. Now, they have their own separate space.
Hospitality students Brooke Swiszak, Haven Jerome, Asher Laprade and Sarah Breault added that the campus’s quiet, intimate atmosphere is more conducive to vocational learning. There are fewer people, no core academics and no bells.
“We learn more without the chaos,” Swiszak said.
