Even in Woburn, where city officials are sitting of more than $42 million in reserve funding and enjoy somewhere around $21 million in excess tax levy capacity, it’s a big, big ask.
Earlier this fall, members of a 16-member Building Capital and Planning Committee (BCPC) forwarded an ambitious $324 million school capital investment plan that calls for simultaneously constructing a new middle school and elementary school with an attached early childhood education center.
Though keenly aware of the need to erect a new elementary school to house students who reside in North Woburn and further appraised in December of 2023 about the antiquated conditions in both of Woburn’s middle schools, the ask still caught many School Committee members off-guard.
“If we had buckets of gold sitting at City Hall, I’d be jumping for joy [about the idea of moving ahead with both projects at once]. But we have to realize there are other needs in the city,” responded veteran School Committee member Patricia Chisholm after listening to the recommendation during a meeting late last fall.
Initially opting to take some time to digest the BCPC report, the local education board last month agreed to table those deliberations indefinitely so that related redistricting and pre-school program decisions can be made.
Appointed last April by the School Committee with the full backing of Woburn Mayor Michael Concannon and the City Council, the BCPC over an approximate five-month period walked through each of Woburn’s school buildings, reviewed in detail a districtwide capital needs analysis compiled and released last fall by a Boston architect, and met with various school administrators and local officials to hear their opinions about the district’s most pressing infrastructure needs.
In a three-part recommendation voted upon in
October, the advisory panel – which included broad representation from elected officials, key City Hall and school department personnel, and the general public - is calling for the following:
• That the City of Woburn move ahead without state assistance on a tentative $95 to $112 million school construction project in North Woburn that would combine the Linscott and Altavesta School populations into a brand new educational facility to be erected adjacent to the existing Altavesta School;
• That the new North Woburn schoolhouse also include a separate wing to house the district’s growing early childhood education program (ECP);
• That the City of Woburn apply for Mass. School Building Authority (MSBA) funding to help defray the estimated $168-to-$212 million bill associated with constructing another new school with room for both the Kennedy and Joyce Middle School populations.
“I can’t emphasize how much the committee [believes] that these projects should happen simultaneously,” School Committee member and BCPC Vice-Chair Ellen Crowley stated while outlining the group’s recommendation last fall. “I would urge the School Committee, the City Council, and the mayor to take these recommendations very seriously and give them much weight during their own deliberations.”
A long-term vision
Technically, at least part of the BCPC’s findings - related to constructing a new facility to replace Woburn’s Linscott and Altavesta School buildings - line up perfectly with an 18-year-old “school parity” report released by a similarly comprised task force.
Specifically, at the start of the late Mayor Thomas McLaughlin’s first term in office back in 2007, the former chief executive established a School Building Task Force to examine deficiencies within six of the communities oldest elementary schools and charged that group with identifying a financially viable way to address those issues.
Emerging with a school consolidation plan that would achieve “educational parity” by giving each and every child in Woburn access to new schools equipped with amenities and technology required for “21st Century learning”, the task force suggested merging together Woburn’s Clapp and Goodyear School populations within a new Goodyear School, while the city’s old Hurld and Wyman Schools in the center of the community would be shuttered and folded into a new school at a to-be-determined location. Lastly, the group suggested the Altavesta and Linscott Schools be combined into a new school that would preferably be erected on the larger Altavesta School property off Main Street in North Woburn.
With two of those projects completed with assistance from the Mass. School Building Authority (MSBA) over the ensuing decade, city leaders turned their attention to the last project - which would provide new opportunities for students in North Woburn.
However, while local officials were laying out plans for getting back into the MSBA funding queue, since retired School Committee veteran Dr. John Wells began to question whether the city should instead be steering some of that funding back into other maintenance needs and building priorities.
At the time, Wells and several of his colleagues pointed out that some of Woburn’s “new” school buildings had actually opened nearly 20 years earlier. For example, Woburn’s oldest “new” school, the Reeves Elementary School in the city’s West Side, had been in operation since 2000, while the Shamrock School in East Woburn opened in 2002. Even the city’s flagship high school, a facility that cost $70 million to erect, has now been standing for 18 years.
Meanwhile, Superintendent Dr. Matthew Crowley and other school administrators were also calling increasing attention to space constraints in local schools that were being caused by surging enrollment figures in Woburn’s preschool, English-language learners, and special education programs.
In the summer of 2021, former Mayor Scott Galvin, agreeing the community needed to take a holistic look at the district’s infrastructure and student enrollment needs, announced his plans to commission a $600,000 feasibility study.
However, due to complications around the COVID-19 pandemic and other factors, that analysis, conducted by Boston architectural firm DiNisco Design Partnership, would not be finished until October of 2023.
Though several city and school staffers had the chance to review the document, that comprehensive report was not publicly released until Dec. of 2024. At the time, new Mayor-elect Michael Concannon, whose campaign platform included a promise to invest more in the city’s educational programs, convened a public forum to unveil that 766-page report.
As expected, DiNisco’s consulting team identified some $45.7 million in “critical deficiencies” within both the Altavesta and Linscott Schools that would need to be addressed order to meet modern-day educational needs.
However, in findings that took many by surprise, the Boston architects and engineers reportedly identified another $99 million worth of “critical deficiencies” within the rest of Woburn’s school buildings. And in order to make sure each facility is equipped with the latest technology and program spaces, DiNisco also recommended an extra $85.9 million in investments also be made.
Implementing those improvement plans through a combination of new building projects and renovations could prove even more expensive. For example, under several scenarios studied by DiNisco to solve early education program space constraints and the Altavesta/Linscott issues, the district can reportedly expect to pay anywhere from $80 million to $110 million.
Meanwhile, in order to handle a host of pressing needs at the district’s two middle schools, DiNisco officials studied a series of renovation and new building projects that ranged anywhere from $137.5 million to $212 million. At a minimum, the design team concluded, Woburn will need to invest a minimum of $78.3 million into both middle schools in the coming years in order to bring those facilities into good working order and present-day building code standards.