The Natick Public Schools system for the third year in a row is submitting a statement of interest to the Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA) in an attempt to possibly get state funding to renovate, replace or upgrade Memorial Elementary School. The School Committee voted in mid-March to authorize the submission, and the Select Board did likewise this week.
The MSBA is a quasi-independent government authority formed in 2004 to improve the capital funding process for schools across the state. While the statement of interest is not technically a request for state funding, Natick has scored big bucks from the MSBA in the past, including a grant approved in 2018 for more than $36M to build the new Kennedy Middle School.
Natick has attempted to strengthen its case this time around for its Memorial application by including the need to accommodate pre-schools that are currently scattered across other facilities, and to eliminate “existing severe overcrowding.” The application also references overcrowding expected from increased enrollment, including from the Johnson Elementary School’s closing at the end of this school year.
Interim Superintendent Bella Wong said Memorial has 100 students more than it is designed for (the state’s Department of Elementary and Secondary Education shows 444 students at the 50-plus-year-old school).
While Natick High School was built to house pre-school classrooms, Natick is also now educating pre-schoolers at Ben-Hem and the East School, and Wong told the School Committee on March 18 that “the need for pre-school classrooms as they are is going to sustain for the foreseeable future. So it makes sense to look for a permanent siting for those classrooms.” One thing the MSBA looks for in applications are such operational efficiencies.
Matt Gillis, assistant superintendent for finance, said the school was built for three sections per grade but is running four or five sections per grade. “We’ve got services being provided in hallways, closets, and places that weren’t really originally designed to happen,” he told the School Committee on March 18. Between that situation and accommodating pre-school classrooms, Gillis was feeling like Natick’s chances might be improved this time around depending on which other districts are applying.
The timeline would be that in late summer/early fall, the MSBA would let applicants know if they should go forward, and at that point the process for a feasibility study agreement would begin, with a likely need for debt exclusions to fund the study and eventually renovate the school or build a new one.
Rep. David Linsky told the Select Board and School Committee at the Select Board’s April 3 meeting, that he and Sen. Karen Spilka will work to help Natick Public Schools on the MSBA front.
New Natick Select Board member Linda Wollschlager asked during the April 3 Board meeting if “we might have any expectation that the third time might be the charm?” She also asked school officials if they had a sense of why Natick hasn’t been selected by the MSBA the past two times. Wong said they don’t know why Natick hasn’t been chosen, other than that it’s a very competitive process. But she did say with each passing year Natick’s case grows stronger as Memorial has more needs.
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