AMHERST — Money to pay for renovations and possible expansions to the aging Fort River and Wildwood elementary schools will be sought from the state, a year after the town rejected a twin school project that would have replaced both buildings.
The Select Board on Monday voted 4-0, with chairman Douglas Slaughter, who is a school employee, recorded as absent after recusing himself, to authorize School Superintendent Michael Morris to submit a statement of interest for funding from the Massachusetts School Building Authority.
Last week, the Amherst School Committee also endorsed pursuing money for the buildings.
According to the statement of interest, the 1970-era schools should be considered priorities by the state because they are obsolete, jeopardize student health, feature poor learning environments and poor educational space utilization and need to be modernized due to energy and operating inefficiencies.
James McPherson, director of facilities for the schools and the town, said both Wildwood, on Strong Street, and Fort River, on South East Street, are safe to occupy and to use for classes, and that parents shouldn’t worry sending their children to them.
But they are in bad condition, he said, with roofs leaking and air conditioning systems not always working.
“We just have a multitude of things that need to be done to the schools to improve them and increase their long-term viability,” McPherson said.
A recent analysis by McPherson’s department on the condition of the schools, which also included Crocker Farm School, on West Street, the third elementary school that was previously renovated, the town will have to spend more than $1 million per year for the next four years, and more than $3 million in fiscal years 2022 and 2023, to maintain them.
A project that would have built two elementary schools in one building at the Wildwood site at a cost of $66.37 million, with about half coming from the state, was narrowly approved in a Proposition 2½ debt-exclusion override vote in November 2016, but Town Meeting twice failed to authorize borrowing for the project, and a townwide election March 28 to overturn the Town Meeting votes was unsuccessful.
That final attempt meant the town missed out on being able to submit a similar statement of interest last April.
Select Board member Alisa Brewer said she has been on the board for several years when the statement of interest letter seemed to be an annual occurrence.
“It’s not a matter of convincing the Select Board that these need to be done, because we know they need to be done,” Brewer said.
Select Board member Connie Kruger said two submissions doesn’t mean two projects will be funded.
McPherson said Fort River is prioritized over Wildwood, because of the immediacy of roof and ventilation system problems.
Still, McPherson said it’s possible the state would give the go ahead to do repairs and possibly put additions on both in a similar time frame.
“How that exactly unfolds in the future is entirely unknown,” McPherson said.
Scott Merzbach can be reached at smerzbach@gazettenet.com.
