UPDATE – 11/18/2009 at 10:45 p.m. High School project passes both Special Election and Special Town Meeting Votes. New building project to move forward.
This article is part of a series on the new Wayland High School building project.
All the cards have been played. The fate of the new high school project rests in voters hands this week. Voters at the polls on Tuesday, November 17th and at Town Meeting Wednesday, November 18th will decide whether the proposed $70.8 million project will pass. The vote will also decide whether Wayland will be able to take advantage of the $25 million state grant that will help ease the cost on Wayland taxpayers.
Plans for the new high school can be viewed here >>
This road is all too familiar to the high school community; it’s a path WHS has walked before. In 2003, the town voted for preliminary design funding for a new high school after the results of a 2001 Feasibility Study were released. However, things started to fall apart shortly into the preliminary design process. In 2003, the state aid program that would have helped offset the cost of the project shut down. This threw a wrench into the new building project, which was subsequently shot down at a special election vote in January of 2005.
A study conducted shortly after the special election by the High School Building Committee revealed that while the majority of Wayland residents thought the current facilities were inadequate, close to 70% of voters thought that the proposed $57 million price tag was too steep. Without state aid, voters decided that they weren’t ready to shoulder the costs of a new building.
The timing of the current vote coincides with an important accreditation deadline. In December of 2005, the high school buildings barely scraped by the accreditation process, making it clear that the current facilities wouldn’t pass the next round of accreditation review. The accreditors from NEASC, the New England Association of Schools and Colleges, set a deadline of 2010 for Wayland to come up with a new building project or risk having the high school put on warning or probation. Wayland parent Betsey Brigham says she’s not worried about Wayland losing it’s accreditation. “I’m more concerned that we maintain our level of education,” said Brigham. “We might need to do some other work [on the high school], but I don’t believe it’s the kind of school they’re going to pull the accreditation on.”
In the interim, the HSBC went back to the drawing board and continued evaluating different options. When the state aid program started up again in 2007, the HSBC started the current push for the new campus.
The vote this week will cost Wayland taxpayers with either a YES or NO vote. Code violations in current teaching spaces will require attention in the very near future, and getting the current campus up-to-code will be costly. According to Yes4WHS, Wayland could pay as much as $46 million to address the violations, which include air quality, mold, lack of a sprinkler system, and more. “Wayland taxpayers will still need to fix a long list of problems with the high school in order to keep its accreditation,” said resident Lori Frieling. “Renovation has been estimated to cost more than this [new school] project and it would be disruptive to students and faculty.”
The current plan calls for a two-building design to be built on the current parking lots, with the field house to remain as the main athletic center. If the vote passes, construction will start in the spring of 2011, and students will continue using the current facilities through the projected completion date in 2012.
“I would love to see a new high school for my kids,” said Brigham. “If the vote doesn’t pass we’ll just have to keep plugging on, and make it a better facility for them piece by piece.”
More information about the project can be found at the High School Building Committee’s website.
