The Carroll School is proposing a major expansion of its campus on Waltham Street to give the campus the capacity for five times the number of students it now serves.
The private school for students with dyslexia and other learning disabilities has an upper school serving grades 8 and 9 in Wayland, a middle school on Baker Bridge Road in Lincoln, and a lower school for grades 1–5 on Trapelo Road in Waltham.
The Wayland site now serves about 50 students but will be able to eventualy accommodate 250 students and 80 staff, according to documents filed with the Wayland Planning Department. The school’s total enrollment is 454 students in nine grades.
The Planning Board will hold a public hearing on the application on Wednesday, Oct. 15 at 8:10 p.m. Proposed site plans can be viewed at the Wayland Building Department.
The plan is not to operate the enlarged campus at its full 250-student capacity as soon as construction is completed. Instead, it will serve grades 7-9, with the added space giving flexibility for more enrollment or grade realignment as necessary, said Chris Renyi, assistant head of school for operations and strategy in Wayland.
“This is an early stage in long-term planning to look 10 to 15 years down the road [to see] where and how we can serve as many students as possible,” Renyi said, while also acknowledging that for middle school students, “we are at physical capacity at our locations right now.”
The school proposes to replace two of its smaller buildings (a 1,777-square-foot pool house and a 792-square-foot garage) with a two-story academic building on a footprint of approximately 27,056 square feet and 47,506 square feet in total. Due to the increase in traffic, a school zone with a 20mph speed limit would be created along a stretch of the road. The plan also calls for expanding parking to 118 spaces, new landscaping, stormwater infrastructure, and circulation upgrades.
All three Carroll campuses are located in residential zones. Under the state’s Dover amendment, municipalities must allow educational or religious uses of the properties. As required, the proposed expansion conforms to local zoning regulations on building bulk and height of structures, yard size, lot area, setbacks, open space, and parking and building coverage. The only zoning waiver they’re requesting is so they may provide three bicycle racks rather than the required 12.
The Carroll School was founded in Newton in the 1960s and moved in 1971 to Baker Bridge Road in Lincoln. That property was formerly owned by the Storrow family, which gifted it to Massachusetts General Hospital for use as an extended care facility for convalescing patients, according to an account of the school’s history on its website. The Wayland site was purchased and approved in 2016 to accommodate athletic fields and some of its students.
