The Wellesley School Committee meeting on Feb 11 at Town Hall covered updates on the Hardy, Hunnewell, Upham (HHU) project and a discussion on the schools redistricting, which is expected to take place in 2024 (see Wellesley Media’s recording of meeting below). There is still an ongoing feasibility study that will lead to a recommendation on building at either the Hardy or the Upham site. Based on the study results, the School Committee expects to make a recommendation to the School Building Committee by April 2 on whether a school should be built at either Hardy or Upham.
The School Committee supports a scenario in the HHU project in which two schools would be rebuilt (Hunnewell and either Hardy or Upham). The School Committee would retain ownership of the third school. The building would be put to use to educate students if enrollment, which is currently trending downwards, trends back upward to 2,350 students.
Superintendent David Lussier described cost savings of going to a six-school model. He put forth an estimated projected cost savings for FY2020 of $410,831 due to staffing reductions. Closing a school would mean that the salaries for a principal, secretary, librarian, and several other positions would be eliminated, resulting in the savings, which were also broken down through FY2025.
Not all are sold
This scenario is not popular with some residents, who would like to see all seven schools remain open. A non-binding referendum has been placed on the ballot for the March 17th annual Town election. The referendum was put together by a volunteer team which collected signatures of at least 10% of Wellesley’s registered voters.
The referendum reads:
Do you believe the Town of Wellesley should keep our current seven neighborhood elementary school model by rebuilding and/or renovating the Hardy, Hunnewell and Upham Elementary Schools, instead of closing one school and redistricting all of our elementary students into six schools? Please vote YES or NO.
A YES vote would advise the Town of Wellesley to retain our current neighborhood school model by renovating and/or rebuilding the Hardy, Hunnewell and Upham Elementary Schools.
A NO vote would advise the Town of Wellesley to close either Hardy Elementary School or Upham Elementary School, without voter input on which school to close, and to re-district all our town’s elementary school students into six schools.
Regarding the referendum question, School Committee member Sharon Gray said, “The School Committee has a position statement that has guided our work on the HHU project for building two schools at a 3-sections per grade level, and a third school when enrollment is at or trending above 2,350 students.”
The School Committee’s position statement leads with, “Foremost, the School Committee will advocate for facilities that will best serve the elementary students of Wellesley by meeting their educational programming needs, and will work to provide those facilities in the most fiscally responsible manner.”
You can see the entire position statement here.
From there, the meeting went over to the issue of redistricting.
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Redistricting puzzle
Wellesley Public Schools last month asked for input on elementary school redistricting maps. The maps were developed by the Redistricting Advisory Committee and shared with the community in January. After input from residents at two community forums, a survey (which 600 residents responded to), and other communications, the committee refined and updated map options.
School Committee Chair Melissa Martin said, “We are looking to come to two maps — one that would reflect a Hardy build, and one that would reflect an Upham build.”
David Lussier noted, “Implementation of redistricting won’t take place until 2024. Planning must take place now due to the schools construction project.”
The community feedback that was reflected in the survey, the forums, and through emails to the School Committee and the School Building Committee brought up concerns of a school closure; of safety, particularly Route 9 crossings; walkability; and specific neighborhood assignments.
During Citizen Speak, Kelly Friendly said that Route 9 was a reality in town and that “50% of Wellesley’s middle school and high school kids cross Route 9.”
Amy Gottschalk read a petition, which she then presented to the School Committee. The approximately 400-word document was signed by 125 residents, most of whom live in the area south of Lowell Road between Sprague Road and Cliff Road and are currently districted to attend Upham School. The petitioners would, under the the Hardy map scenario, be redistricted to Sprague School. Gottaschalk read, “we recognize the need to redistribute residents to the various elementary schools in order to maintain a minimum building usage capacity when redistricting from seven to six schools. However, requiring students who prefer to walk or bike to school to cross a busy highway such as Route 9 with vehicles traveling at speeds of 50 mph is short sighted…we support the safety of our children and we support a map that keeps the current Upham district attending an elementary school north of Route 9.”
Other parents spoke up to voice their concerns about students having to cross Route 9 to get to school. Kate Sullivan said, “We specifically moved to our neighborhood because of the walkability and because we did not have to cross Route 9.”
Other parents said that redistricting would pull them away from their community and that such an action would have a negative effect on their ability to really get to know their neighbors. Another parent pointed out that Linden Street was also not a safe street.
The next School Committee meeting will be Tue., Feb 25, at Town Hall. The expectation is that the maps will be voted on at that meeting.
The School Committee acknowledged that none of the maps is perfect and the goal was to balance enrollment, walkability, and respect for natural neighborhood boundaries.
Speaking as a School Committee member, Jim Roberti noted that people want their children to stay in their neighborhoods: “We’re going to have a problem with the voters.”
The School Committee’s Gray asked for clarification from Roberti: “Are you suggesting we close Hunnewell? Is that what I’m hearing from you?”
“I would certainly look at it after seeing these maps,” said Roberti, who also serves on the Planning Board.
Supt. Lussier said, “If Hunnewell doesn’t exist, we’d be pushing through the worst chokepoints in town to go to other schools. Hunnewell may not be the ideal site. We have to have a school somewhere in this area to serve that geographic area. Without a school there, it would wreak havoc on the other districts.”
You can see the redistricting maps here.
More: Wellesley citizen petitions: Keeping Town Meeting lively, current, worldly
Thank you Swellesley for covering these important issues. I hope everyone reads your website because it’s the only way to get both sides of the story.
Us parents care deeply but, between jobs during the day and small children at night, realistically we couldn’t possibly attend the meetings. So we feel in the dark and without a voice.
Consolidation doesn’t work for Wellesley. The children are not distributed evenly enough to balance the schools. This message has been relayed to our School Committee since 2015.
We are being told we must have 19 section schools based on the Superintendent’s Ed Plan but yet we are only filling Hunnewell to 15 classrooms per the redistricting maps. A 70% utilization for a new school is not acceptable.
As a community we need to insist that if consolidation is the plan, because we NEED two big schools, then we will need to fill them. We should not be building large schools hoping students just show up in its district. We need to move people.
If our School Committee is not willing to disrupt the whole town by redistricting for their plan, because people will then not support it, then it is time to re-evaluate the plan. Supporters are vital to make these plans work.
We either keep schools where the kids are or we bus kids all over town. The School Committee should have started this project with a push for true neighborhood schools instead of 75K GSF buildings to compete with surrounding towns. Wellesley families value much more than big shiny buildings,
A failed debt exclusion will push us much further away from new schools vs shifting to a plan which can be supported and garner consensus to build new schools.
Vote Yes on 3/17 so we can find a plan that residents can support.
We can keep our elementary districts if we don’t build a high Hunnewell.
Why not keep all 7? Parents love the schools and move here for them.
The superintendent’s nonsense about operating costs is laughable, compared to the $60 million dollar tax hike he wants to charge us to build Hunnewell only.
Also, those aren’t “costs.” Those numbers are people he wants to fire, people who take care of small children. Why can’t we cut costs in administration? Not the people who take care of kids.
None of the parents who spoke Tuesday seemed to want to go to the new schools. No matter how fancy they build them. The parents said they wanted to stay put. Why won’t the superintendent listen to the parents?
I think there should be a small school at Hunnewell, but only if we keep all 7.
I am voting YES on St. Patrick’s Day because redistricting is wrong for the little children and Hunnewell is just too big and too expensive.
The Superintendent is stating a cost savings from staff reductions; without mentioning that the two huge new schools would cost $60M-$70M each. Weston recently built a new elementary school that cost $31.5M (about $36M inflation adjusted to 2020 costs) for roughly the same student capacity.
The recent Mass. School Building Authority review says the new schools are larger than necessary. The proposed new Hunnewell would be more than twice the size of the existing school, and would have about 25% more sq.ft. per student than Bates or Sprague, and nearly 50% more than Schofield.
MSBA statistics also show that school renovation / addition scenarios cost less per sq.ft. than new builds. Smaller, less expensive schools are the answer – not the Superintendent’s staff cuts.
The new Hunnewell as proposed will not only be twice the size of the current school, in a district with declining enrollment, it will also be the MOST EXPENSIVE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL per square foot in the Commonwealth. The project is causing needless disruption to the entire town because it is shoehorning extremely large, extremely expensive schools into locations that simply don’t support such buildings. The parents have been clear that they value retainingWellesley’s walkable smaller school community over large extremely expensive state of the art schools that look more like a Google HQ then a neighborhood school.