page_title: Manchester Essex Regional Middle/High School
section_title: Regionalization
hierarchical_section_title: Manchester Essex Regional Middle/High School / History / Regionalization
caption_attribution_description: English: Old MERHS Ceilings
context_page_description: Manchester Essex Regional High School is the public middle and high school for the towns of Essex and Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts with an approximate enrollment of 490 students in 6th to 12th grades and a total of 65 faculty members. The average SAT score for the Class of 2012 was 584 in math, 569 for critical reading, and 562 for writing.
context_section_description: In 2000, Essex voters approved a plan to create a regional school district with Manchester-by-the-Sea. Pursuant to Chapter 71 of the General Laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the towns of Essex and Manchester-by-the-Sea signed the Regional School District Agreement, which was subsequently amended on October 14, 2003 and May 10, 2007. The agreement established the Manchester Essex Regional School District, with a regional school committee consisting of seven members, four of whom were to be residents of Manchester and three residents of Essex, and mandates that the District maintain at least one elementary school facility in each member town.
  Under the new consolidated school district, Essex Elementary became a pre-kindergarten to Grade 5 school, with students in Grades 6 through 8 now attending the regional middle school, and Manchester Junior-Senior High School went from graduating fewer than 50 students to more than 100 in less than five years. Already obsolete and decaying, the school suffered significant overcrowding.
  As part of regionalization both towns recognized that a new middle and high school would need to be built. In June 2003 the proposal for a $35.5 million middle and high school complex passed overwhelmingly in Manchester, but failed by 11 votes later that month in Essex. The Essex selectmen agreed to hold a new election, but it was voted down again on July 22, 2003.
  In early 2006, the voters of both Essex and Manchester approved a project to build a new $49 million regional middle and high school on Hyland Field, behind the existing school. In both cases the project was approved at Town Meeting and then again at the ballot box for a debt-exclusion that permitted the towns to raise funds in excess of the 2.5% property tax cap mandated by Prop. 2.5.
caption: Ceiling in the old high school
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