AMHERST — Amherst school and town officials can move forward with planning for the construction of a new elementary school building to house 600 students following a decision by the Massachusetts School Building Authority Wednesday to accept the aging Fort River Elementary School into its eligibility period.
Amherst Schools Superintendent Michael Morris said the affirmative vote means that all children born now and in the coming months should have suitable buildings in Amherst in which to learn when they are enrolled in kindergarten.
“I am pleased the MSBA understood the significant challenges Amherst’s educators and students face on a daily basis,” Morris said.
The MSBA vote, at its meeting in Boston, came after both the Amherst School Committee and Town Council voted unanimously last spring to submit a statement of interest seeking to replace Fort River and Wildwood elementary schools with a building where children in kindergarten through fifth grade or kindergarten through sixth grade would be educated.
Amherst School Committee Chairwoman Anastasia Ordonez expressed appreciation to the MSBA.
“We are grateful that the MSBA has seen the incredible amount of work the district, the town and our community have put into building public understanding and support for our application since the last project,” Ordonez said.
Both 1970s-era buildings have significant issues, both from the standpoint of expensive repairs to mechanical systems, such as the need for a new boiler and a new roof and from an educational view, with an open classroom model in use that limits natural light in the learning spaces and creates added noise.
During the 270-day eligibility period, the MSBA will work with the district to determine the financial and community readiness to enter the next phase, the capital pipeline, in which funding would be provided based on another MSBA vote.
“The eligibility period is a critical step in the MSBA’s process of evaluating potential work on the Fort River Elementary School,” MSBA Executive Director Jack McCarthy said in a statement.
The next steps include forming a local school building committee, allocating funding for the feasibility study and gathering information from prior studies.
“The MSBA will work collaboratively with local officials to ensure the best outcome for the district’s students,” State Treasurer and MSBA Chairwoman Deborah B. Goldberg said in a statement.
Amherst was last accepted into the MSBA process in November 2013, also for just one elementary school. That led to a similar feasibility study and the eventual October 2015 recommendation from then-superintendent Maria Geryk to pursue two grades two through six schools at the site of Wildwood School, each with 375 students, and converting Crocker Farm into an early childhood education center.
But that $66.37 million plan, with a pledge of $34 million from MSBA, died in March 2017 when supporters failed to secure enough votes at town election to overturn two previous Town Meeting votes that rejected funding for the school. Voters in November 2016 had narrowly passed a Proposition 2 ½ debt-exclusion override to pay for the project, 6,627-6,604, sending it to Town Meeting, where representatives failed to muster the necessary two-thirds vote.
The previous project was controversial from the start, with a plan for a K-6, 670-student dual school receiving more support. Even so, the School Committee voted 4-1 to pursue the concept, with those in favor arguing that it would improve equity by ending the practice of busing some children from South Amherst neighborhoods to other schools to equalize the socioeconomic makeup, and at the same time giving more children access to preschool.
Opponents, though, organized as Save Amherst’s Small Schools, worried about losing neighborhood schools, as well as having families with young children split among multiple school buildings.
Town Council President Lynn Griesemer observed that recent listening sessions on four capital projects, which also include an expanded and renovated Jones Library and new Department of Public Works and fire facilities, indicated that educating children is a top priority for all members of the community.
Town Manager Paul Bockelman added that this gets underway a five- to seven-year process for financing and building a new school. There will be extensive community engagement and participation over that time, he said.
During the process of determining how to replace the two elementary schools, one decision that will have to be made is whether sixth graders will learn in the new building, or will move elsewhere, such as the Amherst Regional Middle School building.
The Grade Span Advisory Council has already begun looking at whether it is appropriate to have Grades 6-8 at the middle school. Only Amherst sixth graders would be expected to have classes there, though, with students from Shutesbury, Pelham and Leverett to continue to arrive at middle school in seventh grade.
Since its 2004 inception, the MSBA has made over 1,750 site visits to more than 250 school districts as part of its due diligence process and has provided $14.1 billion in reimbursements for school construction projects.
Scott Merzbach can be reached at smerzbach@gazettenet.com.
