February 25, 2026 – School Committee – Video & Transcript

February 25, 2026 - School Committee

Autoscroll:

Welcome to the Law and Paying Committee meeting on February 25th, 2026. We are getting started with four of our five members. Christina Rodrigo is currently absent. She will be attending. We have our administration, and we are being recorded by WACAM. Do we have anyone here for public comment? All right. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to you, David, in one minute, right after I give some info. Oh, hi. Are you guys here for public comment or just here as you are? Okay. We will open for... Yes. Could I have you guys just step back for one minute? And you are welcome to come up for public comment. If it's just the two of you, I'll give you each three minutes. And I would just ask that you keep it respectful within the purview of the school committee. And whoever wants to go first, just come up. And if you can give us your name and address for the record. We don't want to take a lot of your time, and we're together. Oh, just one? Okay. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So, Jeannot Mendler de Suarez, 56th Orchard Lane. And we're actually, we're part of a large group. I think we're 60 or so people now who are very concerned and very interested in the deliberations about the development of the Orchard Lane holiday parcel. So, we're super interested. We're here to listen and to learn. But we also wanted to convey to the school committee that we would really appreciate being included. We'd like you to think of us as a resource. We had heard that one of the potential uses that was being explored might be something like Nature Center Outdoor Classroom. And a lot of people are very excited about that option and actually talking about reaching out to different entities in the town and different experts who might be able to support you if you like that idea. So, we just thought we'd like you to know that. That's it. Thank you so much, Janelle. No more public comment. We will close public comment. And we are lucky tonight to have the next step of our long-range facilities planning project for a second presentation to us as the committee that requested the work be performed. When did we start this? Probably November? We actually began this process, actually, Betsy, you were, it feels like quite a while ago. It was last summer. Last summer. It was last summer. We began last June, actually. We started this process. Just, I'll do like a very brief context setting because we want to get to our options. We did an RFP. We knew we wanted to do a pre-K-day long-term facilities plan. It was going to be an important part of our goals. And so, we did a thorough process. We were really clear on what we wanted. The school committee was clear as part of this that it was developing options for a long-range facilities plan and that it was really time, I mean, we talked about that around this table, for Wayland to have a real plan in terms of the future. And that begins with options, taking a look at our enrollment, taking a look at our existing facilities. Of course, you heard that at our last meeting, an update on our existing facilities. That was actually just four weeks ago. And then, we convened an advisory group consisting of, beginning with Betsy, we moved over to Kate on the school committee, Bill Whitney, who's here from the select board, a number of really committed and dedicated parents and community members, former school committee member, members of our central office team, to really, we met a number of times, including this past Monday night, to talk about the options. And this is an important step in moving forward, and also, there's really going to be a community engagement part of this. So, we just sent something out, actually, in the last hour, about a meeting next Wednesday night, March 4th, at Lecture Hall at the high school. We're also having way cam at this meeting live, so people can watch this presentation live. And I'm going to put that in the town newsletter, as well, that's coming out, because we really want, this is a community decision, really building for the future of the Wayland Public Schools. It's really important to get community feedback as we move forward. I should also say, you know, as we think about, you'll hear more about the Massachusetts School Building Authority, which is a funding mechanism, potential funding mechanism, that this process is very important to them, that communities really do a thorough review of their facilities, think about future enrollment, think about the needs of the community, all the steps land, where you look at grade configuration, the future of education, we had a visioning process, two meetings were very productive, as we thought about what's the future of education. Because, after all, when we think about when our facilities were built, in the 1950s, 60s, special education didn't exist, EL didn't exist, the concept of small group instruction, education was very different. So now we spend time thinking about what do we want for the future as we think about new school buildings, and also it's just our systems, as you talked about the last time, are really aging. So, with that, I know, Erin, there will be no decisions, you know, made tonight, of course. We'll have a thorough process, but tonight is the beginning of introducing some draft planning options that the advisory committee talked about on Monday night. James will have that part of the presentation as well. So, with that, I'll introduce Lori Coles and James Lieben, but first, Erin. I was just going to say, I just want to make it super, super clear. This is not a present once and the school committee is going to run with it and make any sort of decisions for the public, for everyone here, for anyone listening to me, which is probably not my kids. But that this is, like, first steps of seeing what's kind of pulling together best different phases of options that could work for us based on our enrollment, based on our needs, evolving programs, et cetera. So, I just want to make that really clear. And I don't foresee any sort of decision or direction being made in the super short near future either. So, with that, welcome. Thank you so much, and I'm really looking forward to hearing your presentation tonight. Okay.
Well, we'll jump right in. So, as David mentioned, this presentation is the same as the presentation we gave two days ago to the advisory group and ends with a slide with some of the feedback that we heard from them. So, you'll get that. We start with some assumptions, and all of these planning options use these assumptions. The first is that major school projects will all proceed with, and that's K-8, not necessarily pre-K, unless it's part of one of those other schools, will proceed with an MSBA, that's Massachusetts School Building Authority, funding. And that comes with impacts to schedule, because they have a process that can be longer, is longer than what could be done as a town-funded project, but, of course, it also comes with significant funding. Projects will proceed sequentially, meaning that a project will end before being accepted into the MSBA program for the second project and, again, with the third. That is our experiences to how the MSBA runs, tend to accept a school from a district while a project is still in concern. It also, acceptance, the third bullet is acceptance into the MSBA program will occur the year following completion of the preceding project. That is kind of a best-likely case scenario. It's not a guarantee. Sometimes districts apply, you know, a number of years before being accepted into a project. So, any schedule that we're showing, again, is sort of best-likely case. So, the new elementary school footprints are shown at two stories, with a couple of exceptions, those being options C1 and D1, and we'll get into what the different options are, on the Loker site, and that's because of the wetlands on the Loker site. There may be reason to go to three stories on other options, as well, simply to get more site, more usable site, and more amenities on site. Also, the middle school wing, the options for the middle school are shown at three stories. Holiday Road kind of stands in as an option for an unoccupied site that has the potential for school development. That is, town-owned and in the care and custody of the school department.
It's the best option we've identified as a place where this could happen. There may be other sites that are options. We know that Alpine Field is also school-owned. Sorry, it's town-owned. I have to edit that. It's town-owned and under the care and custody of the school department. And it's reasonably sized, but it's much further north, and you can see that on this. And so, for that reason, it would be that Holiday Road was a better option of those two. The initial costs are really just conceptual costs. They're based on recent projects, dollars per square foot, and then the size of the project described, and then escalated by 4% per year to the construction date proposed. All projects will require a feasibility study, and that's going to be a full civil design, civil engineering design, and then soil testing to make sure that the site can sustain the stormwater and wastewater management on site that would be required.
Geotechnical testing, as well as just building design. Right now, we're pricing a building at a particular size based on dollars per square foot. We don't have a design yet. All wetlands will require flagging and filing commission, and that will include negotiations with what can happen with English buffers and what are the classifications of some of the different wetlands. We've made some assumptions, but that all has to get. And then any project at the middle school site will require a wastewater treatment, and that is really because of the number of students on site at a middle school site. Any questions on assumptions? Just one question. I just want to clarify. So anything that we were to do with the middle school regardless of at the existing middle school site, whether that be leave the current school and modify it, whatever the option is, and no matter how many grades we were to have there, there will need to be an upgrade and an installation of a wastewater treatment plant. Any project to serve the middle school population at about 600 students that requires a new septic system or wastewater treatment system required to be a wastewater treatment plant. If the existing system is able to be maintained with a new addition, there would be something to determine whether or not it would be needed. I caught the same thing. Is it because the existing system is at end of life? The existing system is nearing end of life and is not currently, by current regulations, would not serve the current population. So the cost estimates that you put in there, does that include? The cost estimates, again, are very rough numbers, but... This falls into maybe one of those categories of the cost of doing nothing. Right. Good example. Regardless of what we do, it sounds like it will need to be addressed sooner rather than later. And a septic, revising the septic system is part within those earlier numbers that we talked about on the last. Okay. One other question on the assumptions. With respect to MSBA, and if this is out of scope, just tell me. You can talk about it offline, but I, or another meeting. Is it customary for districts to have this sort of sequential plan that they keep applying, or is it sort of one project will meet with potential favor and approval? And then, like, I just want to understand. I appreciate the assumption, and you're calling our attention to it. I just don't know how realistic it is with, like, a 40-year time horizon that we would actually get the MSBA to engage on three sequential... I mean, every community is different. In terms of this, like, David can... I both can speak very well to Newton, for instance. They have 21 school buildings. They made a plan that said, you help us with one, we're going to do one on our own. You help us with the next one, we're going to do it... So that they could just keep moving, because they have so many buildings. That's not your case. You don't have that many buildings. But in terms of MSBA, they are... There is no guarantees until it's guaranteed, right? You're not in the pipeline until you're in the pipeline. So that's why everything we're saying here is our best-case scenario, that if you finish one, and you've got the SOI in for what you want to do next, they'll look favorably on you and put you in the pipeline again to start the next one. And so this is that timeline. It's just that assumption straight across the board. So what will likely happen here is you probably will put in an SOI for all of it, have all of your buildings in there. And what MSBA usually turns around and says, what's your priority? And so depending on the game plan of phasing and the approach, you might say, clay pit's our priority. Because you know that to get things moving, that might be the first project you have to do. So I've been saying this a lot to David and Kirsten and everybody here, that this work is really important to strengthen your approach when you come to MSBA. So many communities don't do any preplanning, and they come in and go, what should I do, you know? And then they end up starting a feasibility study with MSBA with too many, like the list we're showing you today, that's where they would be at. And that's really sort of not helpful. I mean, you really want to do this legwork beforehand. So I think they appreciate that and see that. The MSBA also is likely to ask you to explore consolidations, which the study looks at. And so they said this, but when you get accepted, when an SOI gets accepted into the MSBA, that's for one school.
So you're in the pipeline for that school, but the next, they're not looking at your long streams and guaranteeing that they're going to. But if your communication was to them, let's just say, let's just say a scenario is to go from three to two, and they knew that, then they would basically say, okay, tell us how you want to do that. And they would rather participate in a larger building that serves more students because it's more efficient. So, I mean, they're not, I've never seen them say no. If anything, we've had clients and communities who are like, we just wanted to do this one little, and they said, no, no, no, you need to look at all of these. And they went, we do, you know, so it's, you know, you won't be surprised by people who are talking about it. So that's a big step. Thank you. I have a question that I wrote down. It might be a stupid question, so I apologize in advance. I don't necessarily know the answer to this. I heard you mention that in Newton, they worked with the MSBA on one, then they did one on their own. And I understand, now this is just from what I've heard, that you don't have to go through MSBA. Is that true? No. You don't have to go through MSBA, but if you don't, you don't get any of those dollars. You don't get any of those dollars, right? Understood. So I've also heard, again, rumor mill, I'm sure if this is true, with MSBA, the cost is X. If you go privately, the cost differential might be a lot tighter and smaller than one would perceive. That has not been, I mean, you jump in. I mean, Laurie and I have experience with this, and that has not been our experience in Newton. It was actually the schools that were non-MSBA, Aaron, were designed the same way as the MSBA schools. You can back me up on that. Yeah, I mean, the example of that is there's two parallel projects happening in Newton right now. We're doing the ones without MSBA, and then there's another one that's with MSBA. And, you know, pricing and everything really came in parallel as it was. I mean, it really did. And ours is better. I mean, the thing that is true with MSBA is it might be a longer process, because it just is a process. And so, you know, you'd like to be able to go in and say, you know, we have this feasibility phase, which usually takes eight months to a year. They're, hey, but look, I've got a plan. I know what I want to do. They're still going to make you go, okay, the voting plan for it. You know what I mean? Even though you've done a lot of work, they're still going to want certain things. And, again, to their approach is they want to make sure that you have done all of your due diligence so that when you come time for the vote, it's a successful vote, right? I mean, they want to back winners. They're putting you on the list. They're holding money for you as a community. They want to see you be successful. So they've got a process, and that's how they see it. So, again, I've been around long enough, and I remember a schematic design was three months, and you were on the ground in a year, you know? And it's just, that's just not how it operates anymore. So in the end, in your experience, the cost is the same. But if you use MSBA, they fund more, and it takes longer. It takes longer, and therefore the cost is. It rises because of inflation. Okay, understood. Okay. So I think the argument for why the two right now in Newton are the same is one started a little before us. Right. Right. So that's why we ended up being at the same place. Okay. So this is looking at your schools. You can see the three elementary schools in red, one, two, three, one in the south, two, you know, heading north, and then three further north. The middle school in the south, the high school kind of in the middle, and then, oh, no, sorry, and then the yellow six, which is where we're sitting right now, but that's the pre-K. And then you see seven, which is Holiday Road, kind of parallel with Clay Pit, and then the Alpine Hill site, again, much further north, which is why for now we're focused on Holiday Road for the options that look at this empty site as an amenity or opportunity.
This is a slide that you've seen before. You saw this towards the end of the presentation a month ago. So it spells out the four enrollment options, A, B, C, and D. Again, A is five schools, three elementary schools, all K through five, one middle school, and one pre-K separate from the rest like it is now. B is four schools. It's very similar to A. It's three elementary schools, but the pre-K has been folded into one of those elementary schools. So there's a pre-K and then two K through fives.
The C options are three schools, so now we're talking about two elementary schools, one pre-K to five, one K to five, and then the one middle school. And the D options are three elementary schools, again, similar to, similar, sorry, three school buildings, again, similar to C. Two elementary schools, one pre-K to two for all of the pre-K to two population. In the district, and one three to five for all of the pre-K, three to five population in the district, and then the middle school. Now each of these have different planning options based on sites. So, and the nomenclature for those is that they're .1, .2, .3, .4, so the A, .1, A, .2. So the .1s, all of the elementary schools are built on existing elementary school sites. The .2 sites use an empty site for a first project. In this case, like I've been saying, we're looking at the Holiday Road site as the stand-in for that option. The .3s, build an elementary school on the middle school site as a single project along with the elementary school. So it would be one, I mean with the middle school. So it would be one MSBA project to build two connected schools. They would share some resources, but they would also be kept separate through management and planning. The .4 options, and this one really, I'm only showing this in the D configurations, the pre-K to two, three to five configurations. But this uses both the Holiday Road site or an empty site and the middle school site.
And just to be clear, building a second building on the middle school site with the existing structure? Building, the first step will be, you'll see this within them, I did, I didn't quite understand it, but I can wait and get to it. No, no, no, it's good, it's phase construction. So the first phase would be to build a three-story. The academic wing for the middle school and get rid of all the landlocked rooms with no daylight and all the, what's happening on that portion of the building. Keeping your auditorium, keeping your gymnasium, you know, and making other improvements. So once you've built that, then you can move everybody out of the academic wings. Take down that old academic wing. And build a new, well, in this case, either a three through five. Or a K through five. Or a K through five. Got it. Okay, thank you. But they would need to be connected. For MSBA to consider a single project. For MSBA to consider it. So it's not two totally separate buildings. Got it. Yeah. Question on that. With that idea of keeping existing auditorium, gym, et cetera, would those get an upgrade in the process? Yeah. Okay. We would be doing the renovation of whatever was being kept. We would be renovating. And also in that, just because it was something we talked about, this planning option would assume that there would be a gymnasium for... The elementary. Exactly. So they're not shared spaces. Yeah, because clearly you're already using these spaces. I mean, that gym is well used, right? Right. For the six through eight, anyhow. Okay. And that, so basically we're seeing the overlap being around shared kitchen and resources and all of that kind of stuff to serve the building. You probably have like a central administration where you kind of go in two different directions and different things like that, that, you know, help to make sure efficiencies. And that would impact what the MSBA will participate in and whatnot. So if you're building a gym that's new for the elementary school, they're not going to participate funding in the renovation of the existing gymnasium or the auditorium. We're getting weeds now, but yes. I'm too weedy here. The auditorium would also not be a part of that. And that's because in their spreadsheet, middle schools don't get an auditorium. So that's why they wouldn't offer you a new one, which is why keeping them renovating what you have makes sense. I know we've got to move all the fences. I know. It's true. Can I just ask a question on that? It's a cool idea. So let me just start with that. What happens to Saturday soccer? Seriously. Like at the middle school. You know what? Did we not worry about that yet? We're going to build a new field at the old Route 20 landfill, and that's going to solve it. Well, but also just imagine one of the sites that we just... Vacated. You can build there. Oh, okay. So there's vacated, good word, sites. Many of these planning options... Saturday morning soccer is beloved here. Many of these planning options end with sites that are available. Repurposing currently occupied. Not to come available for other use. Okay. Before we get into the weeds, I think I know the answer to this, but I just want some clarity. None of these options have a two school, a PK through two, and a three through five, all on the same campus. That's... Because we talked a little bit about high reservations on Monday, but is it possible that we can have a bigger habit? Together but not together. Absolutely. Could we think about that in the way? You'll see once we get into this. But why aren't we thinking about that? Because I think I like that. And we might get you on the last slide when we get a recap. Yeah, so you'll see something. Okay. But good.
Okay. So here you see the nomenclature, and this is on the seat in front of you. The nomenclature for all of the options, all of the letters and all of the numbers, and this will carry you through the rest of the presentation. This is appreciated. Thank you. Very much so. I wish I could have heard the game. How am I going to remember this? Well, I had to keep scrolling up and down. It's like the answer key. Just hold it up. And here you see all of the options and all of their sub-options, right? The enrollment options and the sub-options. So 8.1, I'm not going to go through all of them, don't worry. 8.1 is five schools and .1 is all on the existing elementary school sites. And that's how you can understand this. Okay. So before I go into the options, you've been asking questions all along the way, which is fantastic, but I'm going to stop before I go into option after option after option. Any questions here? One quick question, and then I promise I'm done before you go further. And you probably already answered this question, but I missed your last presentation to us, so I apologize. The numbers that you have for enrollment here, is that an average of like the next 10 years? It's based on the enrollment projections you all have recently completed. Okay. It's using, like you say, the 10-year average. Like a 10-year average or something? Okay. Thank you. Okay. So getting into the options, I'll start with the A options. Again, this is five schools, three elementary schools. Point one is all on the existing elementary school sites. So it starts with an elementary school project, in this case, on, no, necessarily, excuse me, on Claypit. And that is because Claypit is the only site of the elementary school sites that has enough space on it to build a new building and keep the existing building in operation. So that's what they would do. The first step is to build a new building on Claypit, completed in 2034, occupied construction, schools happening in the school building next door. And that will be approximately $101 million. Once that is complete, the students from the existing Claypit building move into the new building, and the existing building remains, because that becomes your swing space for these next two projects. Project two is on LOCR. So the project completes 2034. Before you apply to the MSBA, our assumption is a year later, you get accepted into the MSBA, you go through the process with the MSBA, you get to the point that you want to start construction. At that time, students move out of LOCR into the existing Claypit Hill School.
LOCR's empty. They can knock it down, build a new building on that existing footprint, completed in 2042, at about $135 million. Then students move back, the LOCR students move back into their new building. You go through the process again. You still have to keep that building because it's needed for project three. You apply to the MSBA, you go through design, you're about to start construction. Students move out of the Happy Hollow building into the existing Claypit building, which is now a swing space. They built the new building on top of Happy Hollow, $180 million completed in 2050. Really, the increase in costs that you're seeing here is all about escalation and time, right? That's completed. You can move, those students move back into their new building on Happy Hollow. And then project four is a demo project. So this is not an MSBA project. This is just removing the existing Claypit building now that you've used it up. It's 2051 demo, abatement, and associated site work. And at that time, the Claypit site is really complete. And I'm calling this a separate project as opposed to sort of the completion of project one because the MSBA is not going to be part of this, you know, 18 years later. Too much time has gone by. Too much time has gone by. And you need to be closed out with the MSBA so that they're accepting project two and project three. Does that make sense? Because basically, like, your other projects, they will participate in the cost to demolish the school when you're building on that same site. And they will do it all in one project base. But because to enable this, Claypit stays as your swing space for so long, MSBA is going to be like, it's too far away, too far removed. That's our assumption. Again, we haven't done this exactly with them before, but that's our assumption. And I think your point is a good one. It is about closing out one project to then start the next one if it's just open up all the time. So that's why we're guessing it's separate. If we're wrong, it's a worst-case scenario, and it does get the inverse. And we're all dead anyway, so.
And at least one of the buildings has crumbled to the ground because it's 40 years now. I think the MSBA ain't going to be around. I hope some of you young people are still here. Don't be telling me. You should add that to these assumptions. Honestly, I thought it was, like, square footage, and I'm like, it can't be square footage. That's the year. I'm like, oh, okay. So I feel silly going on, but it goes on. So Project 5 is the middle school. For real area. We're building, again, a three-story addition to the south of the gym and the auditorium and then removing the existing building. And let's just say this does not, which we brought up, does not include the dollars and cents you've spent for the 30 years to keep the middle school open. Open, yes, so understood. Right. We spend money every year on that. I mean, that mechanical system. Clay pit. That's all I can think of.
And we had a good question. I know I don't want to overshoot it. We had a good question from the group, the advisory group, which was like, well, you know, the middle school is a more expensive project because it's a bigger building and for all kinds of reasons. Why don't we do that first? And we said, well, we discussed this and said, your worst buildings right now are, in fact, your elementary. So that is the approach we took is to first tackle the elementaries. But, again, a legitimate question, but it was like, well, we had to make a decision. And we made it based on the conversations we've had with groups that said, we all acknowledge that of the buildings, the elementaries are the most aged, et cetera. And, you know, educational challenges and space and, you know, all the issues that it has. So, again, nothing is to say you couldn't flip that around on its ear and do the middle school first, but that is what drove our ordering of things that you see. And then Project 6, because these are the A options, it's a separate pre-K. This assumes renovation in place because where else are you going to put it?
2063, no reason you couldn't do this one at a different time. This is a totally town-run project. You could do this earlier. You could overlap it with another project. Like, these are the things we have to hear from you as to where you want to see this. But $44.5 million. Okay. And eight years, is that just standard? I mean, just trying to put, yeah. When we run out a typical project and a typical time frame, and in this case, you know, in all of these cases, they're, in fact, more or less a one-phase project. We are building it all in once. I mean, you know, I spent eight years on construction alone and designed with Arlington High School because they had to build it in five phases. So this is fast because you can actually do them, you know.
Of those eight years, because this applies to all of these options, how long are students typically displaced to another school? About two years. Only two years. Option A2, again, five schools. This time we're using Holiday Road for Project 1, again, as a stand-in for an empty site. So we've got an empty site. Project 1, you build an elementary school. Completed 2034, $101 million. There may be, there was a question from Bill about potential additional costs to bring services to this site. We are looking into it. So there's an asterisk behind that, 101, I think. Once that's built, that is built, you can move the population from Locher into that new building. Build Locher 2042, $135 million. Move them back into Locher. It's the same process, right? Once that's complete, Project 3 begins. You go through the design process. Once construction's about to begin, you move students out into the building at Holiday Road. Think of this first new unoccupied school as the swing space, right? I mean, that's what it's. You're building your swing space as opposed to, you know, using an existing building like we did in the first scenario. So it's that same rotation through. Keep going. Once it's done, you move students back into Happy Hollow, 2050, $180 million. At that time, you can move the clay pit population into the Holiday Road site, clay pit.
Then Project 4 is the middle school project, as we've discussed it. But it's $424 million. Project 5 is build a new pre-K somewhere. In this case, we've said clay pit, but it could be somewhere else. 2063 at $75 million. So maybe just a quick, as you brought it up, looking at the site diagram there, just to be clear. So the yellow is that new addition for mostly academics and support and all that. The hatched is more or less blanketing over your gymnasiums, your auditoriums, some spaces in between, cafeteria, things like that. And the dash that, the black dash you're seeing is the formerly known as school, the rest of the wings that would get demolished. So we're moving, sorry, Erin. So we're moving toward the fields? Correct. And are we expanding parking toward where the existing school was, or is parking not taken into account here? You could do parking. You could do another field where we get rid of it. I mean, in this diagram, you could put another field to the side. It just depends on priorities at that point. We've not particularly heard the need for more parking at the middle school. It doesn't mean there isn't any. I mean, right now, this doesn't touch the loop drive in the park. I mean, it's not in the way, so it could stay as is or it could be expanded because you're getting rid of that sort of quick-square wing that's sticking off here. So you have more. It's a much smaller footprint overall. So in theory, you have more land to do other things, small fields. Because it goes up. It's going to go up, yeah. I mean, the idea was, you know, a grade per floor type of thing. You'd need more parking if you do sort of a second-hour. Yeah, but this is just the middle school. Yes, correct. And in that case, you don't have more field space. Back to that Saturday morning. Soccer. Soccer, yeah. So what happens at Clayton Hill? Does it not get renovated? We move it into Holiday Inn. Even their population. In the end, after it's all completed, they eventually get to move into their new building at Holiday Road, 16 years after it was built. We already need a new school there. So but then what happens to Clayton Hill, the land? The idea that, as spelled out here, is that it would be, the building would be demolished and you'd build a new pre-K, that's Project 5, on that site. It wouldn't have to be that site. There may be another opportunity somewhere else. It's a fairly small building. And in which case, that site could be, you know, it's an opportunity for future development. Okay. Well, it's a good way for us to at least close out. You can see a number for renovation. You can see a number for new construction. Again, where it happens is certainly going to be debated long after all of us aren't here. And that Project 5 is renovation, not new construction. No, that, the idea there is that it would be a new building on that site. A small. The smaller one. Okay, gotcha. I'm not quite 100 yet.
I mean, as I'm understanding, option A is capturing all the, you have five separate schools. We're repeating five separate schools, and here are the options of how that could look in a newly conceived state. To keep existing. We're going to see the options where we're not committed to five. I mean, you've already talked about one of the major negatives. Of that, and it takes a really long time. And a lot of money. Which you'll see at the end when we sum up all of these. Okay, option A3, five elementary schools, one combined with the middle school. The idea would be to run them as two schools on the same site. And that would be the project you'd start with. What elementary school one and middle school on the middle school site, a K-5 and a 6-8. At Reno, it's a two-phased construction, as we've kind of talked about, right? First, you build the wing to the south, three stories, middle school, decant the academic wings, knock them down, gives you the opportunity to build the elementary school to the east of the existing auditorium. Completed in two phases in 2035 and 2036. Kind of the beginning of 2035 and the middle of 2036, but that's in the weeds. 158,000 square feet new. 48,000 square feet Reno at $277 million. Once that's complete, you can move the Loecker population into the elementary school piece. Build Loecker, 2044, $146 million. Then Loecker moves back into their new building. Same thing happens at Clay Pit. You've seen this before. 2052, $196 million. And allows us to cut out yet another project, so this is the project four is the final project for A.3, and it's the pre-kindergarten somewhere, here shown on the Happy Hollow site. It's new construction, 2057, $55 million. Okay. And where's the swing space? Where does everybody go while we build, renovate? It's because you built that first school that didn't exist on the middle school site. If you think of it, that's your swing space, but it really is rotating through. All right, I got you. Thank you. Is it fair to say that that's a pretty intense geographic concentration to have three separate elementary buildings in a pretty relatively small quadrant of the town? Or not? Stay at Clay Pit. Because you're looking at one, two, and four, right? You end up with three elementary schools that are at nervous sites, one, two, and four. We'll still be looking at one, three, and four, right? Oh, I thought Clay Pit disappeared. No. Happy Hollow disappears. Happy Hollow disappears. Got it. Okay. And there is a subtle reason why we keep airing on, yeah, right, when we have a choice, Mocha versus Happy Hollow, just because of land and layout? Or does that come later? It's a little bit. Okay, well, it's fine. But there was thought process of which one stays and stuff. Yeah, I think we decided that there was. I was wondering if it was square footage. It took the bigger square footage earlier, cheaper than... Well, but what Lori's asking is why keep... The choice of local versus Happy Hollow, I think, is to do with the land and decoration and the wetlands... Now, it's wetlands are trickier, so they don't have to be tested. Just saying.
Any questions on A before we go to B? I'm going to go to B. B1 is now four schools, so it's very similar to A. You're going to see a lot of things that look familiar, but the pre-K is folded into one of the elementary schools.
B1 is building on all of the existing sites. Same scenario... Excuse me. Same scenario with Claypit Hill. Build on it occupied. Move into the new building. Use the existing building for swing space. So, Locher. And then, again, for Happy Hollow. Similar timelines. 2034 for Project 1 at $99 million. Project 2 on Locher. 2042 for $160 million. And Project 3 on Happy Hollow for $180 million. Once that's complete, you can take down the existing Claypit Hill and do the site work, and that is complete. And then Project 5 is the middle school site. Now, I don't think I said it very explicitly enough, but Project 2 includes the pre-K. So, it's a little bit bigger than what you saw in the A option. And in all cases, the pre-K program that was developed, which we provided as backup information that went out, is infinitely a smaller program when it's associated with a K-5 school, as opposed to standalone. So, that's also overall a savings in terms of square footage built. Does that make sense?
B.2 for schools, using the Holiday Road site. First step is build, first Project 1 is build Holiday Road for $99 million in 2034. Or, move the Locher students in, build Locher, move the Happy Hollow, build Happy Hollow, move them out. School site, Project 4, 2058 for $424 million. Here, the Claypit Hill site is left. It's available for future development opportunities. Because Claypit's population is over at Holiday Road. Okay, option B.3.
This is building the first elementary school with a middle school project on the middle school site. At Reno, $277 million, completed in 2035 and 2036. Then you can move Locher in, build Locher, move them back, move Claypit in, build Claypit, move them back, Happy Hollow in. Happy Hollow site is available for future development opportunities. Okay, I'm speeding up. Is that okay? Good. Okay. Any questions on B's?
No, but I would like to hear what the reasoning is between keeping Locher over Happy Hollow when we condense down? Like when we decide to do away with one of those under these options? Yeah, it had to do with land. It was just our best guess just looking at the two properties. Again, it's not in stone, but just which site had a little bit more space to put a new building on. And is that why the pre-K is consistently with the Locher site in option B's? No, the pre-K is... We didn't want to add it to the middle school site because we've already got enough going on, so then the next opportunity would be your second school to be done.
C, option C. The C's are three schools, two elementary schools, pre-K to five, and K to five, and the middle school. So what happens now is I start doing C one, and then you'll see D one, and then because they are very similar, their schedules are basically exactly the same. The only difference is in the grade configuration, the pre-K five and K five versus pre-K two and three five. So starting here, the point one, the point two stay together. So you'll see that. And the C and D merge. So option C, going to look familiar, build on clay pit, a K to five, so this is a bigger building.
Keep the existing clay pit as your swing space to build a new project on Locher. This is pre-K to five.
Then you've built your two schools. So then you can kind of redistrict between those two schools, do your demo and abatement site work on, that's project three on the clay pit site. Project four is the middle school, and Happy Hollow site remains, you know, is available for future development opportunities. D one is very, very similar. Again, the elementary school enrollment is different. So first, you build the pre-K two on the clay pit site. I thought the reason for that is you have to build on the clay pit site first, but in the point ones, but getting the pre-K built in phase one, the get out of this building early seems like a benefit. So build pre-K to two on the clay pit site, you can build Locher, you can empty the Locher site and build Locher, 2042, $221 million. Project three is make the clay pit hill site whole, demo and abatement. And then project four is the middle school, Happy Hollow site is available for future development. And to the point twos, C and D, this is putting a school on holiday road. So first you build the new school on holiday road, here showing pre-K to five, you can then decant out of Locher, build Locher, bring students back, and you've got your two schools. Then project three at the middle school, option C two allows you to do it in three projects. Both Happy Hollow and clay pit hill sites would be available for future development opportunities. Very similar. Again, build the pre-K two on, now it's a pre-K two, so it's a pre-K two for the whole district on the holiday road site, decant. And in this case, I think what you would do is you would keep Happy Hollow and clay pit open to serve the third through fifth grades. You would close the Locher school, you'd move all of your pre-K to second graders into your new building on holiday road, and then you'd build your new Locher, and at that time you could close Happy Hollow and clay pit. So you'd redistribute the swing space with the third through fifth, because you would have moved all of the K ones and twos. Exactly. Then project three is the middle school site, again, Happy Hollow and clay pit are available for future development.
Okay, now we get into C three and D three. These are three schools, two elementary schools, the two different enrollments, first building on the middle school site, a project with an elementary school and a middle school. So project one is a K through five and a six through eight on the middle school site. We've talked about how you could phase that, $305 million, a little bit bigger than what we were looking at previously in the A and B options. Then the pre-K to five on the clay pit site, completed in 2044 for $217 million. This is a two project option. Happy Hollow and Locher sites are available for future development opportunities. D three, three schools, one pre-K, two and one three to five. Project one at the middle school site, third through fifth grade school and sixth through eighth grade school, similar phasing, similar sizes, $305 million. Then you build a pre-K to two on the clay pit site and Happy Hollow and Locher sites are available for future development. Can I ask a question? Do you mind to just go back to that schematic? Now, my brain's jumbled. I'm sure everybody else feels this way. Why couldn't we keep the middle school separate and put, maybe you'll get to this, all of the elementary schools on like that middle school property where we have K to two, kind of what you were saying earlier, K to two in one building and then three to five in the other. It's because of the auditorium and the gym at the middle school. Wait, all on one site? I don't know that your middle school could have three middle school sites. No, you'd have to move the middle school. You'd have to build a new middle school. I understand the middle school would go to the other site. Yep. Or whatever. There may be, there may be. So you have all the younger kids together and then all of the tweens and another. Well, that's what you were asking about. Yeah. I mean, I would argue that Claypit would be a better site option. Sure. But, yeah. I don't know. Could you have the two buildings at Claypit instead of the middle school? You build the middle school first on Claypit and then you use the middle school site for what you're describing. Like, something like that. Like the two building plot, could it be the younger students in elementary school? Versus blending elementary and middle. Yeah. I don't like the blend. I mean, I'll jump to the point. I hear you. I don't like that. Which I'm pretty sure. Tell us how you're really cool. But we could make the middle school, you know, do whatever at the middle school after we perhaps have a campus for elementary where there's a 3K routine and then discussed. That wasn't part of the original. That's not. No, but. Yeah. Like on Claypit, maybe you have both buildings. But they're all under fifth grade. Fifth grade and under. There may be a way to do that. Okay. There may be a way to do that. And we haven't explored that yet. Okay. I'm sorry. That's a great takeaway from this meeting. I think three options worry me with the amount of traffic on 27. Yeah. Because you have like one and a half elementary schools now plus a middle school. I think it would also create an elementary dynamic where, oh, if you go, you know, to one elementary, you're on this mega campus and you go to another one and it's a smaller campus. And, I mean, we have middle schoolers and elementary schoolers and I would like to keep them as well. Exactly. That too. Yeah. Possible. You're comparing the C3 and the D3. Because in D3 you have the younger elementary separate, but everybody goes to that school. But then you transition to your next elementary. Okay. You have kind of those two opposite ends of the spectrum. Yeah. I also just think if you have, you know, with the way we schedule our elementary and our middle and high school, busing will be challenging. If you have, you know, PK through two going to one school, but on the same bus schedule, and then three through five have to be bused at the same time to another school. It just feels good. Everybody's going to pop into a bubble in just like remote places. Obviously. We're just going to be. I am. In 2083. By 2063. I am. I am. I am. I am. I am. It will be like Doctor Who will be. Back to Zoom. It does make me wonder though. That's not funny. Don't talk about that. How do communities account for the costs of these transitions? Because right now we have neighborhood schools where I think at some schools maybe at least 50% are walkers and bikers. That was one of my questions. How do we bus everyone from Loker, which is a heavy walk, up to Claypit Hill? Right. How do communities and just the transition costs, how is that part of this number? How do communities handle that? So in terms of the actual physical transition, which is more of what we know about, in terms of the logistics of these constructions and the phasing and the moving, that all becomes part of the project. You know, it all needs to happen in there and MSBA actually has line items for that and you know, different things that you might need to make things happen. I mean, in some districts, they're literally building swing space just for swing space. You've seen them, the modulars and stuff like that. Talk about throwaway money because you're literally renting modulars. So, so far so good. We're avoiding that scenario entirely here, which is kind of amazing because when we first got here and saw how little land you had, I was really thinking, how are they going to do this? So, so that, that part's good. But in terms of getting into the annual cost differential, I'm glancing over that, right? You know, that, that is a big piece. But if, if ultimately you've made a decision that has comparatively saved the town millions and millions and millions and millions of dollars, the uptick of bussing over the years will take a long time to ever catch up to that. So, there is going to be a trade-off overall. I'll take that little piece of that, Kate. So, you know, if you think about transportation in your operating, you know, it's part of your operating budget, when you consolidate, I mean, districts have done these analysis, you do save some operational money in terms of efficiency. So, that's part of the analysis that's done. Not the environmental concerns. We're talking about the dollars. It's really year-to-year operating. Might you spend more on transportation? How much less when you operate one less building? So, you know, we have examples just around here. Within the last five years, both Wellesley and Natick have closed elementary schools. And they've had to look at kind of comparing the operational costs of running, you know, one less school and then thinking about other operational ads. So, that's kind of an analysis that needs to be done. That makes sense. I'm thinking about the transition time, where we're still operating three schools. And now we're busing every child to a different neighborhood. Yeah. And we're dealing with moving costs. That's, you know, is this in that big budget or is this something we all need to... Right. There's temporary. So, like, when you have swing space. Like, the swing space when we did the car school in Newton. Kids were being bused that weren't bused before for two years. And we do that multiple years. Yeah. That's part of the overall project budget that Lori was saying. Exactly. Exactly. And whether or not every single dollar is captured here. I mean, these are big round numbers. You know, that's... But it would be... We're not planning. Right. We need to. We think about buses a lot right now. They're really hard. So... Stressful. Um... So, D4 uses both the Holiday Road site and the middle school. Um... Start by building a Pre-K-2 on the Holiday Road site. Um... All of your Pre-K-2 in there in 2034. And then, um... A second project. Middle school. Three through five. And six through eight. On the middle school site. Um... At the end of this, all three. Happy Hollow. Clay Pit. And Loker. Our sites are available for future development. I'm assuming Holiday Road is not sizable enough to do the two-building campus for PK through two and then three through five. Is that right? Or is that something you didn't look at? Um... We haven't looked at it. We haven't looked. Uh... I don't know. Happy... Uh... Did you say... To keep the elementaries together? Holiday Road. Holiday Road is not big enough. That's what I thought. Okay. Okay. So, that's... We would look at that option at a claim. We can look... We can look closer, but I don't believe so. Okay. When you would move the PK to two Holiday Road, would the three through five stay at the three elementary? Or would you go to two? I think you would go to two. It would be a district decision, but you'd have space. You'd have space. It would be a lot. It would be a lot. It would be a lot. It would be a lot. On the middle school lot? Well, that's what he's saying in the transition, you'd have to... I was just thinking... Looking for cost-dating ventures for... You talked about it. Eight years in between. It's kind of... Would you... Would you run three buildings that have mast for eight years? No. And I think you'd want the future potential opportunity that the vacated premises would give the town. Okay. So, in this scenario, we'd have all three through eight on one campus? Correct. Correct. Can that plot of land withstand that many people? And the... Back to the parking. Like back to... I mean, there's space for it. We haven't done a traffic study, right? That would be part of that feasibility study that I mentioned in the assumptions. But there is space for it. I think with that lot, you'd have to open up another access point to it. Yeah. Which is what you need. You have to come in from the back side off of East Plain in there to have like an in and out or a, you know, elementary. Elementary entrance and a middle entrance. Yeah. In and out. Something to that effect. Um... That makes sense. I mean, it's 27 though. This isn't a clay pit where you have side roads going in and out. Like Adam Lane and... Yeah, you do. Backing up to the middle school. There's a lot. There's a lot. There's a couple of them. There's a lot. There's a lot. There's a lot. There's a lot. There's a lot. There's a lot of people pick that to go places in the morning. It backs up quite a bit. Right. But that's still... If you made that... You kept that the middle school and you offload other to the back side, that cuts out to School Street. Yeah. Yeah. Um... East Plain. You've got a lot of different ways that that connects in. It generates a lot more traffic. I can't imagine putting like one and a half more schools in that area. Yeah, but think about Loker's right there. I was gonna say you're removing the traffic from Happy Hollow and Loker, which are in that same vicinity, which is partly what's driving traffic. And they're still at alternate times. They would still. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I'm just saying... I think you get significantly fewer walkers and bikers. There would be more bikes and buses because it's not like so much of a neighborhood where condensing, so I think there would just be more car bus traffic. There would need to be... I don't know. Think about... You're in the Happy Hollow Zone. Yeah. You kind of track all the way up to middle school. I think you might... There's a lot of us over that can walk to that middle school. Oh, yeah. I mean, all that by Dudley Pond, that whole neighborhood. There are so many kids that come from that area. Already. And behind. That are Happy Hollow. 30 and Plain. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of that walk. A lot of concentration of houses. Yeah. There's a ton of us. But in 2044, who knows? Like I said, we're gonna be in a bubble. That's not that far away, though. Putting the pre-K... 2044 to 35. Is that considered one project or two? We're on the same side as we want. If it's all the same state and they're connected. They're built as a similar building. They're going to be planned. They're going to share these grandmamas by then. I mean, we sort of... If they're not at the lower and upper school at that point, you start thinking of them... I guess one of the... If we did that on Claypit, would it be a build and a reno and connect them? Or would it be a build, demolish, and build? They're going to be super old. Okay. Okay. Thank you for that, Candor. Let's be very clear. Yeah, but we've been talking about floors. Yeah. You know, in all instances. Because again, there's just not an abundance of empty... There's an abundance of land, but not an abundance of buildable land. Right. And these sites between wet and steepness and things like that. And, you know, there's room to build them. How much site amenities would be left? There'd be some, but you may not have a field. You may have... You'd certainly have play areas. But you'd have three sites, so you could make all three sites into sports fields, to your heart's content. Oh, my. Sorry. I know there's always a group that wants that. But the C and D options between having two, like 3K through 5, or the 3K through 2 of them, the 3 to 5, I imagine that those could be kind of, I don't know, interchangeable. So... So, not... You know, the district wanted, like, one and then the other. Not really. No. And the reason for that is that kindergarten classrooms are very distinct from, say, third grade classrooms. Okay. It's really the kindergarten classrooms that make it... Got it. Not... Not apples to apples. Okay. That's helpful. I mean, the planning schemes right now, they're interchangeable. Yeah. At some point, somebody needs to pull the plug and say, what's the grade configuration going forward, and there's going to be pros and cons to everything. I mean, in terms of, you know, equity, everybody has the same system all the way through if you do that other version. You know, but it's a change, and we all can appreciate changes. So, this diagram really speaks to what it takes to achieve each of these options and their sub-options, right? So, you can see we started at option A1. It had six projects. One of those projects was the demo project, project four in that row. And what this shows, really, I'm not going to go, you know, column by column, but what this shows is that, obviously, the fewer number of buildings you're doing, the fewer number of projects you're doing, and the more you can combine projects. So, for example, let's say C3, where your middle school and one of the elementary schools are both project one, and the elementary school two, and the pre-kindergarten are project two. The more you can combine projects or schools, the fewer projects, the fewer dollars, the less time. You can see that again on this slide. This is a summary of each of the options. You can see the number of, the grade configuration, the number of projects for each option, the total cost at the bottom for each option. I'm going to come back to this. This is where I'm going to leave the slides when we speak to, when I get questions. But I want to go through one more slide first. We did give this presentation to the advisory group two days ago, as we've talked about, and we got some feedback. You guys don't have it on your list we just put together since two days ago, so you don't have this slide. You do have it. We do. We have it. We have the updated one. I was on the old slide deck, which is why my question made no sense earlier. I'm sure it's changed. The feedback we got, there was a comment that it was clear that you should do everything you can to avoid double moves. An option C.3, C.4, and D.4 really minimize double moves. There's a little bit of, you know, in the redistricting to a north and south school, there's a little bit of potential for double moves, but those are the options that minimize it. The option selected should result in elementary schools in both the north and south side of town. On Monday we presented, I think there were two options that didn't do that. What you saw today, they all do. There was a small modification to A.3 and B.3 to make sure that that was achieved. There was general support for the C and D options for two elementary school solutions. Although there was a discussion of the challenge of gaining public support for change. And that includes going to two elementary schools as opposed to three. And it also includes going to a pre-K two, three, five model. It's a big change. And those are, you know, two changes. So, just something to think about and that was discussed. The .3 options, which are the ones that use the middle school, there was discussion of equity. You know, some particularly in the C.3 where one elementary school would be on the middle school site and one elementary school wouldn't. Question of equity, there was questions of crowding on the site as you've talked about. And questions of separation can really keep the younger kids away from the middle school kids within a single building. And again, that comes down somewhat to management and also to good building planning. And we've done it before. But there was also a discussion of sort of the political pluses, which, you know, come down to cost savings. Having a single project that meets a lot of people's, a lot of constituents needs sooner. And also reduces the number of projects. And each of the ABCD options, the .3 option removes a project and meets the needs sooner. And then there was a question about what about one elementary school, which is kind of what you're talking about, right? Yeah, exactly. So you're saying two schools, but what about one elementary school? Upper and lower schools. One on the north side of town and the middle school on the south side of town. Sorry, the elementary school on the north side of town, the middle school on the south side of town, and the high school kind of in between. So we looked at that today and yesterday. And so you see that below. The project one for a pre-K to five at Clayton Hill, completed in 2035 at $245 million. A project two, the middle school project on the middle school site for $245 million. That's coincidental, the fact that those numbers are the same, leading to a total, you know, completed by 2044 at a total cost of $490 million. I'm going to ask you to remember the $490 million because I didn't linger on the slide before, but you're going to want to compare that to what you're seeing here. I think like 517 was the other lowest. That's correct. Um, five, oh yeah, 517, there it is. Um, so I'm not going to go through all the numbers here. I'm going to leave this up for question and answer. I'm not having an elementary in the southern front of town. I mean, when I have to drive my kids up to Clayton, I mean, I have to drive to Boston afterwards. It's, I was lucky to get to work at 10 o'clock today, and I'm really happy. I'll see the way you're going to come. They can't hear you. Sorry. I really would not like to drive my kid up to Clayton when I, or North Wayland, and then drive to Boston. That's one of the reasons why I like living in the southern part of town. I think we also heard from our visioning group that we do value smaller. So I think the number, correct me if I'm wrong, was around 400, 500 in elementary. This would be larger. This would be a bit larger. I think we heard from another meeting that, um, there might be educational value to a PK through 2 and a 3 through 5, but I would like to hear a lot more about that. I, I don't like the idea of splitting those two grades into different locations. One in the north and one. I don't like that idea just for logistics. And I think in elementary schools, when you form those little communities, right, that's why we love our neighborhood schools. That might not, that's for debate later, but a very large elementary school might be challenging to create that community that we all value in those early years. It's true. I just don't, looking at the time it takes to maintain multiple, like, I don't think the buildings will last 40 more years while we get, like, to recreate a five school model with this timeline and cost doesn't seem realistic to me. So I think we're having to make trade-offs in some. I'm looking at this, seeing, like, we're going to have to make some trade-offs about existing experience and where we can realistically deliver new facilities. And in 50 years, what does that look like? By the time they're done, the facility needs to be done again. I mean, it's, yes, it's very stark. It's very helpful to see, but it's a very, like, it's a bucket of cold water. I'm like, okay. You know, there is one more thing I would like to mention. All of this assumes acceptance in, for project one, acceptance into the MSBA for the first project at the end of 2027, which would mean an application, you know, by April of 2027. Exactly. And in your experience, which one is most likely to be accepted most efficiently? Well, I think that generally because you'll be putting forward all the needs that you have, I think it's very possible that they would ask you if you said, like I said, pick one, any one of them, and they would be looking to understand what your game plan was. Because they would see, you know, that you have other buildings and what's happening with your enrollment and what the conditions are. And really, yes, it's about efficiency and cost and everything and being judicious with the state's money. But they also don't want you knocking on their door for the next, they want, they are much, they are much more supportive of feeling that they've solved a community as best they can and won't hear from the community for quite a while. So again, even if it ends up being the three building things, at least you've made moves towards not being five buildings, right? If you're three buildings instead of five, they would see that as efficiencies. But again, until you get into the process, it's really hard to know. I think, again, having done this work will put you on a much stronger footing to have those conversations with them. Sure. About what's right for the community and what your drivers are and why, you know, you might choose one thing over another. Because they might well be really excited about a 1,100 student, pre-K, five, done in any kind of breakdown that you want. But they would be like, great, took care of Wayland for a while, right? I mean, that, and very efficiently. And they may ask you to study that. They're not going to say you have to do that. No. But they may ask you to study. Exactly. I mean, the one thing I would add, having been through this several times, is, you know, there are two factors when you go to those MSBA meetings. It's conditions and then it's enrollment. Right. And the enrollment, I mean, I've had to answer, you know, these questions about enrollment. And one tricky part about enrollment is, you know, we're going to have an elementary school next year under 300 students. I don't know the last time the MSBA approved a project for under 300, but it's not. Well, yeah. Right. In your experience. That's gotten a little tricky. Enrollment is where we're now a little more vulnerable because our schools are not overcrowded. In the traditional sense. In the traditional sense. It's not overcrowded in terms of special education. You face needs, but not because of population. Yes. That distinction is what I was going to say. Can I ask a quick question? Oh, sorry. Go ahead. No, I mean, I think we are all sitting at this table looking at future generations of students that are using these schools. It's not our students, right? So that's tricky. Like, these are the things we value. I love my neighborhood schools. We're actually not in it and I miss it, but it's wonderful. But the next generation of parents and caregivers, what are they going to value? If it's not there when they move in, do they know the difference? I don't know. We don't know. Right? I think that's kind of the big unknown. And it's certainly not up to all of us at the table. This is a community-wide decision. But it's just, it's unclear what the future holds. Sorry, Betsy. I think you were about to say that. No, no. I mean, I think that's a very fair point. That if you fast forward 15 years and you moved into Weyland, that the school can, that's just what the schools are in Weyland. Right. I think that's a critical district and it has two larger schools that service the pre-K through 8 population. My question was more around this tricky notion of projecting enrollment and making sure we're accurate. Because even though we have something going out 10 years, we've talked a lot in other capacities about the low district like growth and expansion rate. And we've been looking at, if we're freeing up three potential municipal control parcels for potential other development, including housing, like what enrollment growth rate did we assume? And was that a historic Weyland growth rate? Because if we move to consolidated schools and suddenly there is developable land that the town could decide to develop for housing, you are going to have an enrollment impact. Well, one of the first steps you have with MSBA in the feasibility, before you get to feasibility study, is, I use the word negotiating very literally, enrollment and coming to an agreed upon enrollment. So, to what you just said, if there's going to be a plan in any of these, that something is going to be turned over and it has this potential to be housing of some sort. That kind of analysis would go into projection. You know, they look at, you know, birth rates and turnover of land, you know, sales of houses, they look at potential new developments, and they will be, so yes, right now we use the numbers you have, that's what you're seeing right now. But when you actually embark on a project with MSBA, you will be coming to a new agreement of what that number is. Okay. And we'll warn you, bigger is not always better, more is not always better, because more cost more, and because it's harder to pass. And I also would say, I mean, I can't help getting the reason, this is all you do for a living, you know, another piece of the MSBA feasibility process is, in fact, to show where the design that we're drawing could be added on to. Oh, wow. Okay. And I will tell you that, it probably only happened once in my career, added on to Thompson Elementary School in Arlington. That little dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, that maybe you could do this. Within three years they were out of room, they did not get the enrollment they wanted, so they were all on them. And we put that addition on, exactly where we said we were going to. So I've never had to do that before. I hope I don't have to do it again. But that is an interesting and very important part of the study process, is to make sure that you have a little elbow room should something drastically change, and you need to. I mean, just as an example, we've seen some high schools that have been rebuilt and run out of space. Immediately, yeah. I think Needham High School really had that issue. They had to, you know, they rebuilt it in school and they had to. And I will say, I mean, Laura, you would know this because you were involved in Wayland High School when you were doing the projections and all back then when MSBA. That has been pretty accurate in terms of space. I mean, you would know better. Which is great. But it is very true. There's a factor that no one can put a percentage on is if you build it, they will come. So sometimes, especially, it's really more of a thing that happens at the upper grades, but where parents are, I don't want to go to high school. I'm going to go here, I'm going to go there, and they're going to all the other private or other options. And then they get a brand new site, oh geez, I'm going to go to high school. Right? So, there is a little bit of that. It's more driven in the upper grades where parents are sending kids elsewhere and they decide to stay in the district. Okay. But, yeah. I mean, I can't think of, I mean, Hanover. I mean, every school I've ever done has been completely full and they, August, everything, full. It's kind of crazy. I'd be hard pressed to say that all of this land that would potentially be freed up, that would still be under school control would just be unabashedly. Oh, 100%. I don't know. But I'm talking about over 20, 30, 40 years. Right. I just curious how you factor that in. Yeah. You know. But if you're building them for 2044, what does it look like in 2064? Right. I mean, I think it's probably legit if we end up building and taking away fields somewhere else. They're going to have to. They're going to want fields to be replaced. Yeah. It's like a. At least in some. We don't have them to take away. No. Trust. Do you have any experience with how districts have weathered this kind of change? I mean, I think the concerns discussed at the table around this sort of societal or just community shift from smaller buildings, the work of the visioning group that sort of landed in this sweet spot of 400 to 500, that we would have to, you know, go to 150% of that if we moved to a C or a D option. Like, how have districts reported back after, like, five years after the fact? Do you know? Well, I feel like, I feel like we're sort of always in the beginning part of it. And then when they've decided what they're doing part of it. And so we don't necessarily, like, we're not going to be with you pulling your hand for the last two years to decide what you're doing, then we're going to be right in front of you. You know? So it's kind of a funny little gap that we don't necessarily see every step of. I think it's 100% all about communication. 100% showing your homework. You've done this work. Getting the feedback. Hearing what people are thinking and saying and everything like that. I think it's a commitment for the community when they decide they're going to go for an SLI with the state. I mean, that's a big step. You're saying, we're ready to do something. Maybe we haven't finalized it exactly, but we know we need to do something. And so, you know, the greater community needs to be as volatile as much as they can. I mean, I can't tell you how many, pretty much every project I've ever worked on. The construction trail shows up and someone says, I didn't know you were doing a project. Been out there for two years talking about the project. If so, even a small town like Wayland, you might get some people that will be like, you know, five years from now when you start something, they'll be like, what? They're doing something? I think they were doing something. But you've got to do your best. I mean, that's the steps. And I think, you know, like we talked about the other night, you know, how many changes are going to be digestible and approvable. And that's the question mark. And certainly, Betsy, your question is a good one. There are communities to look at that, I mean, there's different. Talk about Westwood. Yep. I mean, they've certainly shrunk the number of elementary schools in Westwood. And we do have communities, I would say, the last five to ten years that have reduced the number of elementary schools. That has happened just because two reasons. I would say number one is the demographics and the birth rate decline and immigration decline. Number two is affordability, saying how many schools can we actually rebuild. So in Wellesley, you know, they just made the decision to consolidate. And they took an elementary school and they split it, you know, two ways and the kids are going to schools. There was a lot of community meetings. It was not easy. That's true in Natick as well. We've done that here. I mean, we have history of, you know, closing down, opening back up. So, Children's Way has moved more than once. Right. You know, so it's not like it's unprecedented here. I think also, to someone's point, like, I know when I moved into my community, that was the way the schools are. Like, instead of K-1 and 2-3, like, that's just the way they were. I mean, it wasn't always like that. But I moved to knowing, you know, that's what it was. That's what it was. That's what it was. Yeah. Because don't you have, sorry. Yeah. But you're in Hoppington, right? Yeah. Don't you have an elementary, the middle, and the high school all kind of at one site? And they're building now another one right there. That's what I thought. All the schools are all in the center of town. Yeah. So, you would think traffic would be a problem, but it's not. I mean. And there aren't, like, that's a major artery, and like, that's it. Yeah, it's 85. Yeah, that's it. And it's the high school and the middle school are right next to each other, and they're on the same schedule. And then there's an elementary school right next to that, and then an elementary school right across the street. And now they're building another elementary school right next to it. And the elementary schools start at 9, and the middle and high school starts at 8. And, I mean, my kids are all, like, now it's 8th and 10th grade, so I've gone through it all. So, yeah, I've sleep. 8 and 9, that's, yeah, brilliant. Yeah. And now, so you're on a bus, like, so it's a middle school, high school bus, so 7th, 6th, 7th. Which we have anyway. Right. And then you have the K to, and then the preschool's at the, it's a pre-K to 1 building. There's a 2-3 building and a 4-5, and now they're moving 6th to the 4-5 because they're out of room in the middle school. Oh, wow. But it's a true, like, campus. It's all of your schools are in. Well, like, the middle school and high school is a true campus. They're not connected, but they pretty much are. You share the field. Yeah. Everything is, they're right next to each other. And then Hopkins is right behind the middle school, so it's the same driveway. Yeah. And then Marathon is just down, like, across the street. Oh, okay. And then Elmwood's across, gonna be right behind Marathon. Right. Who's in Hopkins now? That's ours. Oh, what? It's 4-5? 4-5. It wasn't. It was the, I think it was just an elementary school. Yeah, it was 4-5. That was a long time ago. As you were talking, I'm like, yeah. That's two, maybe three floors. I mean, that's high. But they're adding, I think they're moving six, I think. Again, community not listening, because my kids are. Something's happening over there. Something's happening over there, but I don't know. That's okay. That's okay. That's okay. It's focused here, you know. I can start in the school. It would be helpful, I think, as maybe something to bridge the gap on a lot of these options and where the timeline and money is at to kind of keep the status quo of comfort. Getting some feedback from, like, Medfield has a pre-K-2 or K-2 and then a 3-5 and Hopkington. Like, it would be, yeah, to get in touch with those districts and get some of their feedback on, you know, growing pains. Frozen cons, how it's going. Yeah. I mean, I don't know that some of them are that new, but we should be able to get some sort of feedback. I mean, if Hopkington's doing another expansion, they should be able to give us something based on, you know, where they're at, where they came from, what the community feeling was. I have to think that there's going to be significant community support for something that's 490 million and done in 20 years, less than 20 years, versus 690 and done when I'm turning. Or 890. Or 900 is 919. Yeah. You know? So, like... Right. Things on here that definitely can be excluded. Yeah. Can we make assumptions? Are there any assumptions that we make? Sure. Of course. Like, pre-K should just go because... Somewhere. Somewhere. It's gotta go somewhere. We gotta fold it in. Knock that option out, so when we present it... This building probably is gonna get torn down. But, like, assumptions so that when we present this to the community, you guys have done such a great job pulling so much information together. It's so much information. Right. So what can we highlight or take off as an assumption of, okay, we don't need to worry about building here because it's going to go in an elementary. Or, yeah, we need to go from three elementaries to two or to one. And fewer options so we can talk through the pros and cons. Agreed. And getting the insight from. Yeah. This slide is very necessary and a lot for just someone to consume. Yep. And, like, even the calculation of total years. Like, we're all sitting here just doing math in our head, and that's okay. But just maybe spell out the total years and completion date. Add that as an option. Does it say that? Yeah. I see date of completion. So the completion date is there, but not the total number of years. Yeah. So we're all... We're doing the math, right? Yeah. I have to say, though... No doubt. Sorry. No? I just want to say thank you because we did ask for a lot of options that didn't make any assumptions that one thing was better for us than another. So I really appreciate all of the effort and all of the time that you guys spent to put A, B, C, D, .1 through .4 together for us. And this is an amazing amount of information for us to leverage to move forward. And we're really... I think I can speak for the entire community. Like, we're really excited to partner with you and that you've really put together a great product to move forward with. So when we think about talking to the public next week, who are not going to have the benefit of having a slideshow before. Like, we're going to talk pretty closely on Friday, so if you have any intel or thoughts to say to David and Betsy and Christine to sort of figure out how to make this more digestible for people who aren't going to have the benefit of it beforehand. And, you know, is there a way to do that? And I don't have an answer. I mean, if you all were able to say, we really think option A should be out, we wouldn't have to overly present it. We could say it was presented multiple times and there's really no good reason to exclude the preschool from the... So therefore, we don't have to go over all of those. I mean, I'm just... I'd say that would be my initial... My initial suggestion to you would be, I think we're all aware of the need, especially with what the program has done and where it's going, that it needs to be rolled into a school with the elementary. Where that should be, what that elementary school consists of from a grade perspective, I'm not sure. But I think you could get rid of that option, especially because I don't think it makes sense for us to be doing any sort of renovations on this site in our own level. And it doesn't, let's be blunt, it doesn't make sense to plan something that's going to go out for the next 40 years and cost almost a billion dollars. No. So that's, it's got multiple strikes as far as that. Yeah. Um, and I think that's kind of what we have now. Right? It's going to go out. And that, but that's the reason to have done it. I mean, we... Right. We knew when we were doing it, it wasn't really the direction people were going to want to go because of all these reasons. But everyone wants to... Show it. Exactly. Show it why. Show why. Um, because a knee-jerk response from anyone and everyone is status quo. Right. I don't want things to change. I'm used to it. It works. You know, all of those things. I just sort of see what that translates to. It's hard to say what, what you just said. No. You know. It doesn't make sense. I do think it'll be important to reiterate to the community why renovating existing is a non-starter. Yeah. Because this assumes, the five-building option assumes new construction, largely for all five. I think you have to first get over that hurdle of why you can't renovate rather than replace. Um, because that's such a big cost and time driver. The other piece for me is I look at the options, which I'll echo what Erin said are amazing to think of all. I'm having a hard time connecting the dots for the educational visioning work that was done and the first presentation that was so rich for us about where we needed to go and what, and these options. And so I think, like, I'm looking at this and I'm having a hard time getting from this, how I apply those learnings and figure out which of these options delivers higher value on those principles and those qualitative goals and ideals, that's feeling a little separate. And so if there's any way to try to think about ways in which the educational objectives and where we think we're visioning towards and that work, because that was reflective of our educators and our community and what they wanted out of their schools, which of these options deliver these. Yeah. Right. And, you know, just to connect, part of the visioning process, you know, in terms of the K to 2, 3 to 5, there's certainly pros and cons of that. The pros were around some of the visioning for special education, students not having to move, rich programs in every school, same with Spanish immersion. So there were certainly downsides, but the visioning part was kind of a piece of that conversation. But you're right, Betsy, maybe just setting that stage. I think leaving that in to these options and why they're here, I think, could go a long way for the public. Yeah. But I think to your point, I don't know that I would reduce what you're showing, because it shows truly that you've done due diligence and nothing was unturned. I mean, to me. You held my attention. What I'm realizing, though, based on what I'm hearing from you, is that we need to present. We're going longer instead of shorter. We need to present what we present to you last time. That's right. Yeah. You have to give that context. And I don't think you can give it in two one-hour presentations. And, you know, you have to weave it together kind of methodically. Yeah. Something that says we visited every school. We did an analysis of our engineers. Here's the cost to rental only. We had ad visioning. The outcomes of the ad visionings were these different enrollment configurations because... Well, right. Here are the benefits to service our community in the ways and meet the needs of our changing education landscape, in conjunction with the enrollment that we are projecting over the next 10 to 20 years. You know? Yeah. And this pre-K to 2 model, 3 to 5 model, meets these needs because it does X, Y, and Z. And so, you know... I think I appreciate that all this is good stuff. I do think we need to figure out a way to edit it down. Yeah. Well, because I... We're going to get that. We're going to get that. We're going to get that. Yeah. Because the community is not going to sit there for two hours while we try to get through it all. No, I think it's more the visioning and how a watered down version of these proposed buckets meet those needs to show kind of like what the best option would be to meet X need and then Y need. Mm-hmm. And, you know, you could do this and just stay status quo. Here's what it looks like from a timeline and money perspective. Mm-hmm. But if we evolve, we can do it in which better meets our needs. Mm-hmm. We can do it in a more cost-efficient and time-efficient manner. So that option A, which is the status quo, is the least likely to pass the MSBA. Right. Yeah. And the most expensive and time-consuming. Yeah. I synthesize this by, like, option C and option D are pretty much the same, but the numbers are all the same. Like, option... If you add a school, an elementary school, into option C, you get option B. Right. So you can add... Right. Like, everything is just $200 million more plus eight years more. Right? No, but, like, that's what it is. You got it. There's a lot of redundancy on this. It's very helpful to see it, but it can be further synthesized. So, you know, you could have your three elementary schools, but it's going to cost you eight more years and $200 million. I don't think that's a good idea, personally, but it's helpful to have the reference of it. And to have known somebody considered it, thought it, studied it, and eliminated it because... Right. Like, that's what the cost is doing it. Correct. It's helpful to have it as a reference. Correct. If it's there, community, you tell us you want us to eliminate it. Or remove it. Right. Exactly. Because you don't want to pay an extra $200 million and... Wait eight years for everybody to have it. You know? Wait for your grandchildren to enroll. My great grandkids might be popping up at that point. You know? Like, I just... I think there's a way to... You can water that. You probably need an option E when you're editing down, which is the elementary campus that we were talking about. Yeah. With maybe a PK through two and a three through five together on... Right. Like, that needs to be its own separate option. You didn't have it. And I don't think anybody is advocating for option B at this moment for the reasons that we just talked about. So... You mean A? No, I mean... No, she's down on the post schools too. I'm not advocating for E. No, I don't think anybody is right now advocating for that. I got you. I got you, Kate. But we don't need to spend... You know, we're spending equal time on all of the options. I don't think we need to do that. Yeah. Because it's... I don't think anybody... There's a lot of... No, but you needed to do that now. Yeah. Right. We had to get there. There is about a $50 million difference between B and C and nobody. Do you think... And option E is an elementary school for 1,150 students. But if you put it on a site like Claypit and it was two buildings. You call it buildings. Yeah. You run it as two schools. Right. It's a building. You absolutely would. It's a building for what we talked about before. Equity of services. Having, you know, all the staff there. Yeah. It might be a very hard pill to swallow. But what are the benefits? And that's where we need the visioning to really tie into this is the benefit. And other districts are doing it. Playgrounds. Updoor spaces. No, we should have done more courses. Your kids are going to be out of college by then. It's going to be fun. I went to an elementary school, I forgot how it was, 40 years ago. That was north and south. And it was pre-K. And it was all one. It was pre-K to six. But it was all one. And that's probably why I think it's so much. That's in the back of my mind. North and south. Sorry. Is there no world where we could do P-K to five in one building that was like a floor grade? Yeah. I mean, what you would do, we know this well. Well, pre-K wouldn't even need its whole floor. You would do something like, what we've done before is a two-story lower school of P-K and K, one and two, and then three, four, five on the other school. So the big kids matriculate up, you know, yeah. That doesn't have the pre-K piece to it. Yeah, pre-K piece. But we get that. And do those share like an auditorium, a gym, a cafeteria? Yeah. And we've done it. We've done it where, when you get the bigger building, you can beg, borrow, and steal and get like a multi-purpose alternative P-E space for that secondary because one is really not enough. MSBA's guidelines can be a little boggling. It doesn't matter how many kids you have in elementary school. One gym, 6,000 square feet. That can be discussed in terms of programming and scheduling and the meat. And in terms of the, what was the second part? So the auditorium, well, that's going to be a separate animal altogether. What we've also done is sort of a lower school cap and an upper school cap with a shared kitchen. That's right. Right. So you get the bigger thing over here, the little over there. Yep. With condensed services. And then you're, yeah. Because I do worry about lunch schedule with 1,100. Exactly. Exactly. So all of that. This school planned for a staggered lunch. You can also make an auditorium or a cafeteria. I'm not sold on this. I think we just need to see all of these options. They would serve the upper school. I think it was, they'd serve the lower school lunch and then halfway through that lunch, they'd serve the upper school. And they, so it was a standard. They were moving it quicker. It was a standard one. Yeah. So there's a couple, yeah. You can talk to your food service person about that. Just as an option. That's very difficult. I don't necessarily, yeah. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, guys. You guys are great. Thank you very much. Thanks for sticking with it. This is awesome. So fun. This is so exciting. Yeah. We'll talk on Friday. Good. Thank you for your good questions. Very helpful. Thank you. Have a great work. Thank you. I can't get out of the seat. These have to go with us to whatever building we go to. This table that's like weirdly shaved. As long as we can keep the name of Happy Hollow somewhere, I would appreciate it because I still joke with my mom that she went in happy and came out hollow. Aww. And her sisters, so. That's tough. And my dad went to Loker. So he said the same things. I love Happy Hollow. I love Happy Hollow. Happy Hollow. And I think you guys worked in my elementary school too. Where? Not Beachview. Woodland and Milford. Yeah. That was mine. It does not look like it used to look. Yeah. Beautiful. It's beautiful. My kids play basketball there, yeah. Beautiful. I walked to school there. Oh, yeah. We moved when I was last week of second grade from Michigan. That's so pretty. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for joining. Yeah. Thank you. Bill. See you later. Don't underestimate. Option key. Yeah. Yeah. Allergic. Allergic. Oh, I'm with you. I'm with you. I'm with you. Bye, Bill. Good night. I currently have one that sits on the bus for an hour. Yeah. And the tour of Wayland. I do. She goes into the subway with Griffin. With Griffin. They're like, this is where we go on the bus. No, you don't. I drove three kids to school today. Well, that's your problem. That sounds like a new problem. Put those suckers on the bus. I didn't have buses for two of them. The bus school. Yeah. So. They got legs. I got strong arms. They drove one to the middle school and I was like, this is ridiculous. This is 30 feet kid. Get out. Once we drove themselves, it was blissful. I did not. Two of my kids are in an intersection today. Oh my, good luck. It was a bad line. It was a bad line. It was a bad line. It was a bad line. Did you go to school for the first time today? Yeah, no one likes using a fixed one. How many dings do you have on your car? None yet. I haven't been home yet though. It was snowing this morning and I was like. Yeah. Yeah, it was. I know. Her son drove for the first time. He drove to school the first time. Today? Congratulations. We had this morning. I know. I'm not going to say it but I did follow them. There's snow. That's on record. We're no longer going to invite you to parenting work. It was just snow. It was snow. Wow. Yeah. No, it was. You know what noise was playing in your car? Yeah. Yeah. I have a safe distance. And actually it wasn't out of my way. I had to. Uh huh. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was the snow that threw me. We love that this is the same space for you to say this. Yeah. Well I was like. I was like. It was either that or I was like. Don't. Don't. Don't. Don't. Don't drive to school. You know. You gotta let him do it. For a week. I'm like. Driving in the snow. I got mine in February. Oh. They are? The drivers are not any safer. No. But. It's all about executive functioning. And that. At 16. Do not have the like. Prefrontal cortex. And the. Freak. You know. There's actually like. No reason. Make a choice. I'm fairly certain that someone who had. Numerous children. Decided to make the driving age 16. Because they just needed their kids. Yeah. It shouldn't be. It shouldn't be. It should be reversed. Like. Drinking could happen at 16. And driving can happen at 21. It works better in Europe. And I. There's probably. The 16 drinking thing. No. I mean. We just had the Sarah Ward presentation today. And I was like. Oh my God. I'm like. I have no. Like. It's so true. I need to lower my expectations. Yeah. I mean. Kids just do not have. We think they have this attention span. And they don't. At. Nope. You know. At 16. You've got like a 25 minute. Yeah. Short drives. Not long drives. Short drives. And you're like. It's kind of scary. You learn a lot about it. Um. You'll all follow your kids today. I didn't. Just the first day was snowing. We want to hear about tomorrow. You did the right thing. Tomorrow will. You did the right thing. Tomorrow will. Tomorrow. She did the right thing for her and her kid. That's right. We listen and we don't judge. And it's a good thing he doesn't watch White House. No. He doesn't? Yeah. Um. I'm shocked. Uh-oh. Does anybody have any questions, issues, or would we entertain a motion with respect to the consent agenda? We've got two sets of minutes. Sorry. And accounts payable. You always get me leaving for two minutes to run to the restroom. Anybody? I move to approve the consent agenda. Second. Uh. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? None. Aye. And are there any matters not reasonably anticipated by the chair? We do have some FY27 capital prioritization items to, and I apologize, the urgency was kind of all transpired over the February break and FinCom was meeting this evening and asked for some of our attendance, and I just, you know, informed them that we were all already meeting, and that we would revisit the priorities for FY27. Um. To recap, the prior FY27, um, capital requests that I brought to you, um, were for new requests that had not been on the capital, um, five year plan. So that was for our safety and security items, um, to become compliant with the, um, police and fire station in all the buildings and for the prioritization of the, um, literacy, uh, curriculum that we received a significant grant and we did not want to lose that opportunity. So those two were already considered and included on them. What this new conversation is about are two, um, items that are both located at the high school campus, both similar in cost and, um, capacity. So what the ask or what we are looking to provide some support going forward is the, um, first, the phase three athletic complex, which includes the baseball fields and some ancillary pieces. This was already approved in the 2017, um, full scope of this project. So phase one and phase two were done, completed. The pandemic obviously kind of held things off, but this project continued to, um, get pushed back. And due to inflation, that cost is now at 2.5 million. So the, um, concerns that FinCom has is that were these, is this cost still going to be relevant? Should they bring it forward? And what the, uh, conversation has, um, provided is that, uh, Abby Shrest, she's the new town engineer at DPW. She is already currently working on the other project at the high school, which is the wastewater leach field replacement. And that is a $2 million project. They both sound very similar. They both sound like they're kind of abutting, um, the same area. And there's, there's some confusion around that. So we are just trying to provide some clarity. And the hope is that, I believe Abby, um, is at the FinCom meeting this evening, identifying a third. That's another third party, um, contractor that did review the prior scope and the re-cost allocation of the 2.5. And that it does seem to be within the capability of progressing in, within that, um, budgetary guideline for FY27. The hope is that by doing those projects together in FY27, there could be some savings of roughly $250,000, because of some excavation costs on a shared, very slim shared line. So that's been a lot of dialogue and confusion. Myself, I am not an architect or engineer for any of this. I could not speak to that, nor have I been part of the capital process. So I've had to kind of look in, in research and work with, um, Jeannie Downs, who thankfully she had all of that, um, historical knowledge about the program and the projects. And she was very much, uh, part of that spearheading it in 2017. And was very anxious to be able to, um, continue that momentum and move it forward to get that phase three completed. Um, so the ask is that FinCom was looking for just a recommendation, affirmation, that the school committee understands both of these projects and that the school committee would still be, uh, willing and looking to put these, uh, put that second, the athletic field phase three project forward at the 2.5 million. There's no question they have to put the, um, wastewater treatment plan as we've heard. That now there's, there's too many variables and DEP is not going to continue to allow them not to, um, correct it. So that project will go, um, the other consideration that we're looking to do was to kick this phase three project out yet again. And the concern is that, you know, we've had some fields where our spring teams can't even play on their home fields, and there's operational costs with that. Um, transporting our teams, um, paying for other facilities for them to play. All of those, um, you know, factors for our students. But, um, just looking at trying to get these significant cost savings, um, efficiencies. And, so this was, um, an informational piece that I wanted to bring to you immediately, because it was so time sensitive occurring at the same night we had our meeting. And if you would like to, um, consider this or look at this on a subsequent agenda, or if you are able to discuss that, um, per, that per your prerogative to do so, I just wanted to bring forward the information as we have it at this juncture and the time, the very condensed timeline before all of the warrant articles needed to be finalized and prepared to present for any account meeting. And I think that's the urgency in the process of this timeline and not being able to be a little more prepared and have more open dialogue about that. Kirsten, and I was, I was reading and, and kind of looking at this while you saw this, that's why I apologize if you mentioned FinCon's recommendation, I understand they wanted you to bring it to us, but is there a recommendation to do both of these projects at the same time? They don't have a recommendation. They're recommend, they're, they're asking us on the fence of not wanting to do the second one. We're pushing it off another year. I'm struggling a little bit in the historical documents, mapping those, because it just came for the first time. So, um, I've looked at the 2017 slide deck. I'm looking at the five-year capital improvement plan. I'm having a hard time finding on that where this part three that's baseball only is. Fiscal year 2019 to fiscal year 2023. That's what I'm looking at. What row? It's on row 15. Thank you. And have we done everything else? Mm-hmm. Okay. Phase one, phase two are complete. And then the deck was like the Weston and Samson analysis of various different options. Did anybody ever land on what type of field we'd be installing? Because that's now nine years ago. Well, we did not have turf. So that, that's, there's a moratorium, so it would be grass. And did this improve the field hockey field or just that baseball field and diamond? What field hockey field? Yep. The one, like if you're standing in like the batting area. Not a baseball person. The field, like all the way back by the woods. They don't use that for games or anything. They do. JB does. Well. But, JB ends up on. They call it the trench. They jump over it. It's home court advantage because there's a big divot. Yeah. That, I don't think it includes that. Okay. The trench. Just baseball. It's maneuvering that field around, I believe. You can see it in the. And again, this is not asking for a vote or anything. I just wanted to bring it to your attention that this was, um. Well, but. And I don't even know at this juncture what their decision is that they could be making right now. I don't know. But the draft letter in the event the committee wanted to sign that. That would need a vote. Putting something. Yeah, yeah. Understood. Understood. I just want to make that clear to those members of the committee, should they want to do so. I mean, David or Betsy, is it still needed? I mean, it got approved almost nine years ago. What's the current state of the field? Yeah. I do think it's needed because they can't play on it. Which means that because they're only having to go off to other places. They don't have any home games. Yeah. It's unplayable. Yeah. My understanding. I mean, you have more knowledge, but. I mean, it's my understanding that this should have happened years and years ago. Why does it have to go back to town meeting? Right. Went to town meeting once already. Why does it have to go back again? The funds didn't get appropriated. The capital expenditures weren't approved. Okay. So it's made on the plan, but it just keeps getting the technical. No, it's true, but now it's twice as costly and the cost-benefit analysis of the investment ten years ago, I don't know what it is today. Relevant to our earlier discussion about when to work. Right. I mean, that. Right. And it's injury-prone, so they can't play on it, among other things. Dude, so. I'm sorry. I was reading. So what, do we need to take a vote on this, Erin? Like, what do we need to do? I know. I was reading. I'm sorry. If we want to forward support as requested by Mr. McCall in support of this conjoined effort to put this on for fiscal year 27, instead of continuing to kick it out because no matter what high school wastewater is happening, there's an anticipated cost savings of about 400-something thousand dollars if they're done together per DPW engineer, then we should come to a decision and take a vote whether or not we want to put our name on such proposed letter with edits, not with edits, whatever. But I was not willing to do anything without it being discussed at the table with all of our committee members. So, I do act like that. I think it makes a lot of sense. Yeah. I'm comfortable doing that. Especially with the synergies, right? I think maybe we take a read on this letter. I mean, we could defer that, too. You know what I mean? Take a vote that yes, we support it and Kirsteen drafted the letter and someone can take an edit to it and then forward it with the school committee's name on it, pursuant to that vote that approves support. I second. That was not a lovely motion. I know. Too unheard from countries over here. Understood. Not that we need to be unanimous, but I'd like to get there. I don't have a strong opposition. I just don't know enough. I don't know how to weigh that $2.5 million today against what was $1.2 million. I don't know what the cost of the alternative, like, Band-Aids that we're doing are. We're not doing Band-Aids. I just heard we have to bust them elsewhere. Well, right, which really isn't a Band-Aid. That's not a fix. That's... No, no. I'm curious what that's costing. I'm interested in gathering data to understand that for our community who was not, that also didn't get to hear any deliberation of this $2.5 million expenditure because it happened in 2017. Well, it was all approved as... So I'm trying to understand what cost savings doing this now would benefit us. It was all approved as the whole project. And in order to get our sports teams to be able to play at home, we have to do it. It was just that the funds weren't actually appropriated at the time because that was done in phases because of the debt and the exclusions, et cetera. Kirsteen, do you know the cost of bussing these teams to other practice spaces and the cost of practice spaces? Between the transporting and the rental fees, it's between $10,000 and $15,000 out of our operating budget within athletics. So... For the season? Right. Per team? I think it's just varsity baseball, right? Pretty much. Okay. Okay. I'm assuming if we don't come to a decision this year, we're going to have the same language ahead of us next year. Yeah. Just going to be coming back. And the cost is going to go up, sure. And the savings of the dual projects was gone. Yeah. I mean, we have such a limited field space, as I'm just going to put it out there. We can't be down a baseball diamond. Baseball is huge in this town. It's, you know, it's one of our, I don't even know what the right word is, but obviously one of our big sports at the varsity level at the high school. To not have it, I think is... Is Little League using it in its current state or is no one using it? I wouldn't think they would be able to rent that from Little League because it would be even more challenging for younger feet. Do we know how long it would take to complete the project? It would be done over a summer. So it wouldn't be usable this, then it would be... Well... Right. They're... And again, right now we're going to be into March and we still have snow on the ground. Right. So the fields are not going to be great. So if we were able to get this approved, again, it still has to get town vote approval. But if that was approved, then fiscal year 27 begins July 1. So essentially that work can be getting concentrated with CPW and their project that they have to also manage. So that would be kind of a joint venture in that aspect. I would then be very involved and there would be much more updating and detail in that process. So just to be clear, would it normally cost 2.9 and it's only going to cost 2.5? Or are we appropriating 2.5 or expecting it to cost 2.1? No, 2.5 is what the cost is, what they anticipate. And 2 million, I believe the 2 million dollar project was higher previously. And they are what the new engineer has looked at and utilizing various architects and studies that instead of redoing or rebuilding a full wastewater treatment plant, they're doing this leach build type of option that will then reduce that kind of cost. And what we were talking about in savings was like possibly $250,000 in excavation because you're going to have the machinery doing one side of the project anyway, so you wouldn't have to bring it out yet again. So that's kind of where the savings would be. It's not necessarily on the face of the total cost that it will need to finalize the project. It's just identifying that when you do them that close together, you will have some kind of scale in order to, especially that heavy equipment that just costs money to be on site. And resurfacing and reseeding and all that stuff, right? So that FINCOM is not decided on? It is not decided on, and that's where the urgency came in for me to provide an update on this to you. And you said the wastewater has to happen. It has to happen because that has been kicked out, and that is a DEC. Okay. So I'm just thinking about our total FY27, like capital expenditure asks. Is the $2 million for the wastewater, which is non-negotiable, potentially this $2.5 million if we revoice our support that was previously approved, and then we have a slug for reading literacy as well. Is that it? I'm just trying to remember our point. So again, those larger ones are not necessarily school requests, but they've been under the umbrella because they've been at the schools, and they were prioritized a decade ago and brought forth in this packaged, you know, phased out priority plan. So that's why those are, and it's all coming together now in the process. So yes, the total, and that's where they need to know whether they are going to move this project forward or potentially recommend voting it out another year. No, I was just trying to get the complete menu of our capital expenditure requests for FY27 going before town. Because some of those I'm not familiar with because they fall under facilities. Right. Okay. They fall under DPW. They fall under Parks and Rec. So that in and of itself is something that, again, I think this process needs to become more cohesive and all of the departments working together, because this is what happens. And now we're trying to scramble to where we do have support of DPW. We do have support of Parks and Rec. And we've had, you know, the baseball coaches come out. So we've been there, and we've petitioned for this during the CIPC, which is the new building, the new entity that was created for reviewing all of the capital. So they did put it on the FY27 at our persistence and request of urgency. But it hasn't gone through FinCon for their final kind of okay to move forward to term meeting. Yeah, I mean, Betsy, I feel like I have a little more history on this. So I'm comfortable with it. And if we don't do it, we're looking at usability of this field if we were to approve it next year, two years out or three years out or four years out. It's not even this year. So I think we saw, like, the time value of money today. And just the longer it goes, the more expensive it goes, the more expensive it becomes. Yeah, I mean, I'm not asking questions to challenge the need for it. I'm trying to understand if we're going to get confronted with a tradeoff. And so what if we want the $2.5 million now? Is there anything else? Fair point. We already did provide a tradeoff, and I did explain that we did close out some open items that were several years back. That was also in partnership with facilities. He was able to identify some funding from other things that he will be able to still accomplish the important, you know, functions for HVAC and LOOP and things like that. But we did close out approximately $400,000 worth of capital that was identified as school-related so that we could get the $350,000 curriculum. So there was, we did do that exercise as well in a scramble right before our break. So you don't think that adding this at this point would put any of that work at risk? No. That's a good question, though, Betsy. Thank you for asking that. Well, I say that, but I can't be 100% sure they wouldn't come back and say cut more. I would hope not, but we have done that. Anybody want to make a motion? Not make a motion? Use it as information and move on? Well, I'm happy to make a motion. It's going to need edits. Bless you. I move to support the $2.5 million athletic field project in conjunction with the High School Wastewater Leach Field Replacement, Understanding There's Efficiencies Gain. What else do I add to that, Erin? And delegate review of the letter and communication to a member of the committee to work with Kirsten Patterson. For a letter in support of SED. For a letter in support of SED. Movement of Phase 3. Movement of Phase 3. Of the High School Athletic Complex. Of the High School Athletic Complex. To the Fiscal Year 27. To FY 27. Capital Budget. Capital Budget. Plan. Plan. Plan. This is ridiculous. We done? Do we have a second? I will second that. Thanks, Kate.
All in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? What? You can laugh out loud, Ronnie. Oh, no. Just let it go. You can just let it go. No, no, no. Any opposed? Any abstaining? Abstaining. Abstaining. So that's 401 with Betsy Cullen abstaining. And Erin, do you want to take on just if you work with Kirsten? Yes. I would be happy to work with you on the committee. I don't even know if it needs anything to be quite honest. I would just say let it fly like we can approve it as is. I read it. Okay. So do we feel? That's my feeling. So do we all feel that we can approve it? Do we even need to do that? No, just delegated you. Yeah, we delegated you to approve it. We'd like to approve it. Why don't I do this? I'll read it one more time. And then I will leave it.
I think if we can get it over there before the end of the night, that would be great. I'm going to read it right now. Okay. Thanks, Kirsten. Thank you. Thank you very much. And thank you for getting all the background, too. Okay. Okay. Um. Because we haven't had an executive session so long as we are. Diane! Okay. Hold on. I'll have to. I move to enter executive session for the purposes of discussing bargaining with the collective bargaining with the Wayland Educational Association, Units A and B, pursuant to MGL Chapter 30A Section 21A3. The school committee will be joined by Diane Marabella, Recording Secretary David Fleischman, and Betsy Gavron of the school committee will adjourn an executive session and will not reconvene an open session. Do I have a second? Second. Uh. Betsy. Yes. Kate. Yes. Christina. Yes. Erin Gibbons. Yes. Okay.