School board, aldermen hold summit on facilities plans
Mar. 5—Members of both the Board of Mayor and Aldermen and Board of School Committee came together Monday night at Memorial High School for a joint meeting to hear a presentation on the district's long-term school facilities plans.
The Board of Mayor and Aldermen voted in December to approve a $290 million bond to begin construction on facilities next fall. Phase I of the long-term facilities project includes closing Wilson Elementary School; building the new elementary school; transitioning Hillside and McLaughlin middle schools from grades 6-8 to grades 5-8; and renovating Parkside, Southside, McLaughlin and Hillside middle schools to host fifth-grade students.
In January city aldermen, by an 8-6 vote, approved a motion stating that "it is the position of the members of the Board of Mayor and Aldermen that the district must place all spending as it pertains to Phase I on hold until the new Board has had the opportunity to receive a full presentation on the project, and that all future decisions must go through the Joint School Buildings Committee as laid out in the Charter and per state statute RSA 199:3."
At the time, school officials said they were caught off guard by the vote, which was not on the posted agenda.
Monday night's summit was scheduled to give new members on both boards a chance to hear the details of the school facilities plan from staff with the architectural firm Symmes, Maini and McKee Associates (SMMA) — the firm overseeing the district's school facilities plan.
Members of both boards sat at a long table at the front of the auditorium at Memorial, alternating one alderman and one school board member, seated by ward.
"It's pretty cool to see all of us together, it shows that we're moving this forward," said school board member Jason Bonilla. "I know that we all want the best for our students, and I know we want the best for our community in Ward 5. We can do this with all of you — we need to collaborate together. We don't want to be battling back and forth."
Former mayor and newly elected Ward 9 school board member Bob Baines said teaching and learning "has changed dramatically" since most officials were in school.
"Teaching and learning has changed, our buildings have not," Baines said. "We have an opportunity, inch by inch and step by step, to move Manchester schools into a 21st Century learning environment.
"This is just the first step, but this is an important step for us to make."
Some aldermen have raised questions about the cost of the plan. At-Large school board member Peter Argeropoulos asked Superintendent of Schools Jennifer Gillis what the cost of "not doing anything" might be.
"I think the cost of not doing anything is seeing people vote with their feet," Gillis said. "We are hearing from the business community, very clearly, your schools need to step up and that means everything — the educational programming going on inside, the staffing that we provide and the physical spaces. ... We know our student outcomes aren't where we want them to be, we know attendance is not where we want it to be. We're seeing all those markers start to move.
"If we do nothing, it sends a message that we're going to hold with the status quo, which isn't the message we want."
Wilson Elementary School will close in the fall and a new Beech Street Elementary will be built at the Beech Street site. The new school will be built in the same ward as the former Wilson Elementary School, and parents, students and staff will still be able to walk there.
As the school closure occurs, Wilson students will be split between Beech and McDonough while the Beech Street Elementary School is being built. Other district students in fifth grade at Beech, Green Acres, McDonough, Smyth, Webster and Weston elementary schools would be moved to middle school.
To avoid overcrowding, modular classrooms will be installed at Beech, McDonough, Parkside, Southside, McLaughlin and Hillside while renovations and additions get started on Hillside and McLaughlin middle schools. Construction on Parkside and Southside middle schools will begin nine months later.
Phase I includes expansion work to make room for fifth graders in the city's middle schools. Hillside Middle School will expand by 38,000 square feet, McLaughlin Middle School by 35,850 square feet.
Southside Middle School gets a 20,850-square-foot addition, Parkside Middle School a 40,350-square-foot expansion.
The plan mentions consolidating the city's three public high schools into two, along with a magnet school for the arts. No decision has been made on a final location for these high schools.
SMMA has recommended Manchester Memorial High School as a site of one of the high schools, the area near Gill Stadium as a site for a new high school, and either Manchester High School West or Manchester High School Central housing the magnet school site.
The construction of the new comprehensive high school near Gill Stadium could be complete as early as 2030.
SMMA has tossed around two designs — the first suggests keeping the JFK Memorial Coliseum where it is and building the elementary school around it, with a four-story parking garage for the high school, elementary school and stadium overflow, while the second suggests rebuilding the ice rink somewhere else on the site and connecting the high school to the back of the stadium with an underground parking garage.
Estimated costs for work in "Priority One" of the plan is $278-306 million. These costs do not include the high school.
