AMHERST — An expanded, renovated or rebuilt Fort River Elementary School, with significant financial support from the state, is moving to the feasibility stage.
The board of directors for the Massachusetts School Building Authority on Thursday invited Amherst, as well as Maynard and Winchester, into the next step in the process of getting a school project completed.
“These feasibility studies will carefully examine potential solutions to the issues identified at the school facilities and will help us develop the most cost-effective plan to address those issues,” State Treasurer Deborah B. Goldberg, chairwoman of the MSBA, said in a statement.
John K. McCarthy, executive director and deputy CEO of the MSBA, said the state’s partnership will lead to the best educational solutions for students.
“We are committed to working with these districts to help address the deficiencies at these schools,” McCarthy said.
In late 2019, the state accepted Fort River into a process that could lead to a new or renovated elementary school building to house 600 students. Amherst entered the process in hopes of getting funding for a project sometime in 2022 and to have an elementary school open in fall 2025.
Amherst Town Manager Paul Bocklelman said the favorable decision is a significant milestone, allowing the town to put out advertisements to hire an owner’s project manager.
Amherst was last accepted into the MSBA process in November 2013, also for just one elementary school, and in October 2015 a recommendation was made to pursue two grades two through six schools at the site of Wildwood Elementary School, each with 375 students, and converting Crocker Farm Elementary School into an early childhood education center.
That $66.37 million plan, with a pledge of $34 million from MSBA, died in March 2017 when supporters failed to secure enough votes at town election to overturn two previous Town Meeting votes rejecting funding for the school. Voters in November 2016 had narrowly passed a Proposition 2½ debt-exclusion override to pay for the project, but representatives at Town Meeting failed to muster the necessary two-thirds vote.
Scott Merzbach can be reached at smerzbach@gazettenet.com.
