the following podcast is produced or sponsored by a community member the content views and opinions expressed are those of the participants and do not reflect those of v m c or the town of dhamma b m c welcomes your comments call us at six one seven four eight four two four four three or email us at access at belmont media dot org hello everyone welcome to community conversations on the b m c podcast network i'm your host roger coulton well that the town about mont has obtained state approval to proceed with a new high school and one impact of that is the town has appointed a building committee that's going to spend the next nine or ten years of their wives overseeing this there are lots of issues that have to be resolved what grades go into the building whether there's a new building or renovation and those issues need to be resolved to reflect community priorities so as part of the process of letting the community know what's going on with the new high school i have a guest here today bill follow who is chair of the belmont high school building committee thanks for joining us this morning bill well thank you for having me bill before we really get started i heard myself even in that introduction talking about a new high school and yet that that probably isn't quite accurate or it it could or could not be accurate the decision of whether there's a completely new school or a renovation or a renovation in addition it has yet to be decided is that correct that's correct roger will refer to this project as a new school because ultimately things will be new but it could be newly renovated portions of the existing school combined with an addition of a varying size whether it's a major addition or minor addition or it could be an entirely new school depending on how all the studies work oh so well we're going to talk about a new school today as you said it everything will be will be newly newly renovated newly built but that includes a variety of options  belmont's known that our high schools had some challenges and they sent a statement of interest into this into the m s p a indicating that they would like to join the state grant program for a variety of reasons in that in that statement of interest which is online you can find that we have a very rapidly growing population bulging the high school walls out if i can say that properly with students in every cranny of the school challenging the excellent teaching and learning that goes on there in a variety of ways the doing fantastic work but they're very constrained at what they can do couple that with a building that was built almost fifty years ago and has been maintained in the best way they can but it hasn't seen a major renovation so we have systems that have exceeded their useful life we have types of spaces that don't conform to the way students and teachers do the teaching and of spaces just because of the size of an old garage area for example that's been reconverted into a band practice room so there's a variety of these types of spaces in there that really don't promote the science labs have been converted so they're no longer labs but they they've been converted into classrooms well thanks for saying that so the original model of the school had a lecture area separate from the lab area which isn't working anymore because they can't use two spaces to teach science they just need all that space so the science education happens in the lab at the same time that they're trying to do work at the lab desks which means that you have the learning desk interfering with the lab desk yes and couple with that the fact that there's so many students interested in this that they can't even all be at the lab desk at the same time so they have to face some sitting in their desks some at the lab with science one of the most promoted parts of learning these days is the hands on the hands on is just where the state is pushing that is really falling short in the facilities and they  just to see and we've offered tours and we continue to do that for people that are interested to see certainly with the state program that's one of their hallmarks of what ends up being in a school whether it's a new a renovated will be brand new science space that is state of the art almost collegiate level when you see it all the districts are getting the same type of science space and you talked about the you just talked about the the enrollment to what extent does the enrollment at the affect what's going on at the high school or your or does it maybe i'm assuming something that isn't always a matter of fact let's go to the elementary school because the elementary school influence is where the high  school be superintendent john filan does a very good job of this but we actually collaborative collaborated on this through the m s p a to identify in the very first steps of our program with last year the design roman populations for each grade level of the district that's something that's mandated by this must be a program you work to establish that through demographic studies that the state does with information that belmont provides we the bell belmont high school building committee along with the school department decided that we would like a second independent opinion so we retained our own independent demographer who also did a study so that we can see if we were getting convergence which we generally did which was interesting showing a line that continually grows up on the population at each grade level so the high school class sizes today or i would say grade level size is smaller than the elementary grade level size and you know where the elementary grade level size will eventually be yes so that's dictating the future of population in the high school but it's actually describing the impact in the entire district which is what the superintendent is working on concurrently with the high school project in other words what's the entire district solution which will allow me to go into another topic called configurations yes but tell you well let's if what you mean by configurations i did want to talk to me because i find this fascinating and i've changed my opinion to be honest after listening to superintendent failon and listening to you make presentations but they configurations as i understand it we valvular refer to what grades are what schools is that what you mean i have a story to tell you ok maybe we have a little time so so our first meetings with the m s p were very interesting once they accepted us to get into their grant program in two thousand and sixteen early two thousand and sixteen and we went there with starting with an opinion that our last run wi the wellington school didn't turn out so well because the day we opened it was full they were quick they actually came ready to know that we were going to bring that up and and their response was was reasonable they said that  r our algorithms were updated since then to better reflect how the population changes in a district and grade level school is different than a middle school and high school in regards to capacity versus design enrollment i'll quickly say that we work on a metric called design a roman that's not capacity because capacity is beyond design or almost sets the core classrooms but design rollman but say that one more it sets the core classrooms but capacity can fill the whole place so there's a factor there but in an elementary school your students are in the classroom in that sit in a middle school and high school they have the core classrooms and then all their support spaces that are co ops operated so so we have a difference there and i like to keep talking about that because as i talk to you about design in rome and that's not capacity however we got quickly into talking about design in project on the campus that would maybe pull some student population the elementary schools and maybe start to relieve some of the entire district and the must be a said you can but it needs to be part of the high school which was a model that the superintendent wasn't right to pursue for belmont so then he asked another question which is can we consider an elementary school on the campus and they said you can but it will not be part of this project meaning it won't be part of funding and yet it's completely separate that would have if there was another elementary school constructed it would relieve the elementary school maybe would also relieve the middle school bus or we partake in a grade level up so then we went the other way and said could it could a high school include an eighth grade which in some districts in the state it does and they said yes you can do that and you said bingo the light went off and we said why we're on that what if we had seventh and eighth grade as part of that and they said you can explore that as well models in this in the state as well as other states in the country have that so that was what program was established with the s b a the belmont will study three great configurations as part of this project now the solution must be educationally appropriate not driven by population but there are there are programs out there there are districts that are finding great opportunities with the with the different great configurations so the school department and the school committee are exploring those right now and that's three be with a seven through twelve it could be seven and a and then a nine through twelve or maybe seven eight nine ten eleven twelve the state is very interested in how those those careful separations would occur as well as the opportunities for wonderful collaboration's that could be born out of this type of arrangement and do i dear ask if there is a leading is there one that is and i want to say more likely a bit is there that you think makes more sense at this point and then my other two i think i can say that all all three are being equally evaluated now if a nine through twelve is is what's chosen there are still solutions in the rest of the district that the school department and the superintendent are working on with a separate consultant not part of the high school project that will need to take place if you look at the growth and would likely take place without state funding grant funding so those pieces are being considered and all three are being studied on the site certainly the seven through twelve is a larger school that impacts the site in a greater  kids there you need a big bigger school and there's going to be more traffic and more and more of everything that's what i just heard you say yes while force while our school remains active and safe so we have a high school that's not going to move while this project is going on we only have one site that we've determined that could be the high school site which is the current site that's there today so all of this has to happen in me make this clear the the i must be a dozen will tell you they don't make a decision ok but they require you to validate the decision that they support meaning that it's up to belmont to make a decision on a configuration but we need to demonstrate why that configuration is the most appropriate for belmont to the state so that they can review and concur same with the design selection of the school the ultimate decisions for us but they are requiring us to document in in demonstrate the legitimacy of the decisions that the community makes just like every other city in town and  projects that are renovation renovation addition or new construction and they do that their source of funding is a penny on the state sales tax dollars so that's where they get their funding and and their projects are sort of allocated based on their revenue stream got it we're talking today with bill of alla bill is the chair of the belmont high school building committee and authorize the formation of a building committee of the jews to do just that and the moderator appointed those committee members fifteen in total to serve that purpose and can we take a moment and and talk about the building committee who goes on the building committee and what do they do my i don't want you to get a big head here my impression is there are a group of folks who when they get appointed to the building committee they agree to spend ten years of their lives overseen when our new high school is going to be like is that fair to say i'll say that it could be a ten year commit for those that stay on for the duration yeah that doesn't mean that it takes ten years to have the school completed just of course means that the the m s b a process is includes eight modules number eight there last one is project close out which could take a couple years after the project is complete to wrap up the financing and come to a final agreement so you have that together with where we start in two thousand and sixteen and it very well could be a ten year duration for the committee and i don't want you to list fifteen people because that would take too much time that can you give a notion of who sits on the building committee is there a way to generalize well i'll say that the m s b a dictates to some degree who who they like to see for representation on the building  and certainly a representative a parent of the school that that's being done so you put that together and you quickly find that you have about twelve to fifteen people on the committee and we have a fantastic committee and you meet weekly monthly you can be monthly it started out when we first started monthly and obviously we're we're now in a phase if you've been following where we're working on pulmonary design so now we're meeting  twice a week i would say some say twice a month at least and it may turn out to be sometimes we have to meet week after a couple of weeks in a row just because of what's going on so it's driven by the middle process driven by what work is going on and it's certainly we it's not done by any one individual's done by committee so we have to continue to engage that to move things along i'd like to come back to the physical  structure of the new school for a minute or so to see if i can wrap my hands around what we're looking at the new high school again recognize in what i talked about earlier that new school may be new renovated so on it's basically on the same footprint and as the existing high school it won't get that let me leave it at that let me let me explain ok so we have a school today i want to get in numbers that has a set footprint it's two stories and it serves the current population but by all the valuations that have done so far it's it doesn't even meet the program needs with the prop with the square footage that's there so even if we put the nine through twelve as the solution in place the school season is too small so it needs in addition now the addition could be vertical with a dish and could be horizontal but it would it would be more square footage if we just added on to the building  studies also include phasing or new construction where if you think about a building that's occupied building on top is not a very easy thing to do and it's certainly not going to happen over the two months of summer so oftentimes for schools you look at when if you do need addition you build laterally and that allows that work to proceed why the school is operating and then you do the connections carefully maybe during the summer breaks and and that could be a simple solution that's that would be a small addition major renovation to the school and then you're working on phasing that renovation to the school through moving students around and it gets very challenging and it gets very long so that's one solution another solution may be a major addition retaining a minor portion of the building where you build adjacent to the school a bigger portion you can finish that you may be able to move all or a large portion of the population there and then do what you need to do the new building while it's vacant or more so mostly vacant so that's another scenario and then the third scenario would be to build all new finish it move the students over and then out of the old building and recondition that space for parking and fields and whatever else is needed clearly if we're working on one site and we have an active school and with the site today is completely utilized with playing fields and parking some of those some of those elements will have to be temporarily yeah decommissioned while the project is going on and then when it's done all of that will be back in place the parking in the fields and and so forth so there will be a time when those spaces are not available and again to try to step back but one of the implications of what i think you just said is that people unbound lot have sort of gotten used to the notion of putting modulars somewhere while a new school is being built like the wellington that that's not on the table well how many modules can i fit in your house yet we don't have space but keep in mind if we do find a space to go modulars the cost of the modulars that you spend you're building it then you have to spend money to remove him and there's no capital investment when you're done with it yeah and so that's a that's a very big cost and it's not there's no reimbursement rate that's awfully borne by the district so we are looking at solutions that minimizes may not be completely eliminates but minimizes the use of temporary m classrooms let's talk about timing for a minute because you mentioned early on that now much been talking about a new high school for as long as i remember at least the last ten or twelve years looking forward is well what can folks expect to see and when is that an answerable question it's certainly is because once you're in the m s b a pipeline as i said to you before they they look at their revenue stream and they set projects and they make them stay on schedule because otherwise it messes up their entire revenue stream of bringing money inside of money out so so they have timelines for every module and we are now module three and we have to finish that which is a feasibility schematic design phase and then we have to finish that by may of two thousand and nineteen that includes so coming here less than two years and but that includes coming up with the funding source for the design that's ultimately chosen ok and i'm sure we'll get to that but if we back up there's a there's a step by step submittal process because as we move along the board the m s b a board of directors who only meets every other month needs to approve critical points critical submissions along the way before you can move on to your next phase of that work that we're doing in design so we have to be in sync with them or one of the first things we did once we established a team was get on their docket for their board meetings and we've established those critical board dates so now we're me we're working toward submissions for those board dates so it's moving very quickly in the world of design  keep pushing along we have a an architectural design team and an owner's project management team that can't keep pace with that they're seasoned and they have the resources to do that and we have a building committee and school committee know that schedule and are keeping pace with it with their dialogue review and and ultimately decisions that have to be made and you mention funding one part of that process of course is that at some point in the near future the town will vote whether to fund a new high school yes all right we have an agreement with the state for funding of eligible costs so that's already in place with a percentage that we know which ultimately will be finalized prior to belmont citizens voting for the fund the project so they'll know how much the state is contributing and how much the taxpayers have to and they'll know the total project cost and the schedule and all the details associated with it i don't have that information because we're building up to it i can tell you that the state has granted us thirty six point eight nine be presented with a debt exclusion for the rest the source of funding will as you say may likely very much likely be that but that's the the decision of the selectmen there's really no there's really no other way to fund it a lot and when we say percentage thirty six point eight nine the numbers that we were just talking about it's really the eligible costs and roger not one hundred percent of the project falls into the definition of eligible costs as i said earlier things like modular classrooms excluded there's a cap on site costs hazardous abatement materials you know that are regulated fall outside of that so there's a host of things that have to go in there on the ledger of what's eligible and not eligible when you put that together no no different than what we did with the wellington or any other well there's all sorts of things we haven't talked about but that we're at a time the i assume if i can that over the course of the next couple of years  will have the opportunity to speak with you again and again hopefully to keep their community informed about what's going on and what decisions are being made decisions need to be made well i would i thank you first of all i would encourage you to to reach out to me and i'd say not years and years because i'd say within the next year we should certainly there's a lot going on and let's try to have this discussion again that's great bill it's been great fun we have been talking with bill of allah today bill is the chair of the belmont high school building committee and i appreciate him taking time out of his schedule to come speak with us you can listen to community conversations into this app a set of community conversations by streaming it on demand online at the b m c podcast network at belmont media dot org and you can also find our  podcast on i tunes by searching for the b a m c podcast network i want to thank bill again for coming over i'd like to thank you the listeners for tuning in i'm your community conversations host roger  talk with you again in two weeks