Good evening everybody.

00:00:06,299	Thank you for coming to the 6th Community Forum about the Hamilton Elementary school project. Really, uh, tough night with raining here, but we'll go through the process so that we have this, uh, recorded and we share it with people and people get the same answer. Tonight will be a little bit different in format where we

the agenda looks short, we'll do a quick project overview, but we've seen a number of questions being asked consistently over and over and over, and we wanted to address those and make sure that everybody heard the same answers. Um, we'll also send out a flyer soon that will have, uh, even more.

Expanded answers than than what we may have tonight. So they encourage people once we get through the the presentation, we'll open it up for questions and, uh, ask questions, dig into anything you need to. We do have representatives from JCJ architectural design firm and PMA, our owner's project manager, and, um, at least one Fincom member.

Two select board members, we have some people here in the room that can also help us with any questions if we get stuck. We all remember this picture and I think people have seen it over and over and over, but I thought it was important to just bring it back around since it's been a while.

Um, this is what we're trying to build and how, uh, it, you know, we would look to a render and then this space here is the overhead view looking at the roads and parking and all of the play space and one of the things that came up over and over and over.

was the road around the building, which is in blue and that road is 25 ft wide. It is not a single car road. It's 25 ft wide and it should hold between 30 and 40 cars, if not more, given the traffic situation. So that's an opportunity for us to take a number of cars off the street.

There was a full traffic study done, and there are 280 something pages that are available on our website. If you want to dig into that, it actually studies not only. Outside of the building itself, but also all the way down towards um the square where um the police station and the senior center are.

So some good information there it really talks about some of the things that came up early on that were addressed by the design team and the landscape team. I think one of the, one of the opportunities that I want to take is the MSPA reviewed us early on and reviewed the ed plan.

And came right out and said this is probably one of the best ed plans they've ever seen, and it's related to what. That our design uh crew came up with how they linked it to the egg plan and I think that you know the quote this project the next balance a small neighborhood scale sharing

resources and school cultures which is is really what this project is all about

00:03:01,870	so I wanna jump right in. I'm gonna really do this differently and we're gonna just throw the questions out there for you and give you some answers and. If you want some clarifications, please feel free to ask. But how did we get here and did we consider renovations? So this idea of consolidation started well before me.

I did some research and got all the way back to 2008. There were a number of studies done along the way, and one of the things that we are very good at here in Hamilton and Wenham is paying for studies but never executing. So we're going to execute this one way or another. It's important for us to.

Answer the question of how far back does this go. 2014 there was a strategic plan done for the district. That strategic plan stated that consolidation would be a good option for our elementary schools. So, you know, back to 2008 when those conversations started in 2014, I was, I have to be here.

I was involved in those visioning sessions and then. Um, that, that really went away for a little while, and we continued to submit our plans to the MSPA, our SOI, our statement of interests. Starting in 2018, we kept applying from there. We finally got accepted in 2022. So think about that. We're in 2025 already.

2022 we started this process. We got accepted, we jumped into the fire. We got approval, we got $1.25 million approved from the towns. To move forward to study all the options available. Excuse me. From there we did the egg plan that was in 2023 and that ed plan consisted of a number of visiting sessions and a whole

bunch of uh writing by uh people both on the design team. Uh, project manager team and the teams uh related to the schools, special ed people, we brought in our specialists so that we understood how we wanted to meet the needs of all of our kids. We brought in anybody that had any expertise in, uh, what we

needed and how much, you know, kind of space and then each of the groups. Had a conversation with the design team and that really led to OK what do you need what do you what would you really want, what do you need and what you know what really aligns with the vision

and then the the school building explored and this is important this isn't this is probably the most important piece because you hear a lot about the, you know, the idea of renovation was renovation explored, yes. Part of this was there are 3 design categories that were explored from the start renovation, addition and

renovation, and then a new construction, 3 design category, renovation, addition and renovation, and then new design, new construction. Out of that sprung out. Huge sweep of sites for potential building of a school and at that time we weren't went to any size or shape we were just looking for places to build a school and our team

went through over 30 and came up with really 20 that needed to be studied because they were possibilities based on size. Some of them were vetted out really quickly because they were landlocked or they were swamped or they were wetlands or whatever. So 24 potential sites were looked at.

And through that process we came back to the two elementary sites that we had as good, clean, viable sites that were already being used in schools. There were 14 design options, 14 design options, both involving the Winthrop and excuse the cutler alone, the cutler and the Winthrop combination and even building a new cutler. We went through property.

So there were 14 options that all consisted of the possibilities that were mentioned in the 3 design categories of renovation, renovation, addition and new building. Of those 14 designs. The school building committee and the design team and the uh owner project manager slowly chipped away at each of those

design options to determine which ones would meet the needs of our egg plan. The egg plan. The plan has been described as a pie in the sky sky document. That's not true. That is actually what we need to function in this district so that all kids, all kids are properly educated, taking kids

out of closets, taking kids out of hallways, taking kids and adults out of spaces that were never designed for education. It gives us the opportunity. Integrate our classes. So for example, first grade classes, there are 7. Those 7 classes could be together. uh, they could work together, grow together, they could be

integrated with older kids or mentor opportunities. So we looked at all the things we currently do in these small scale schools and brought them into the greater design.

00:08:16,769	Which is cheaper, renovating two schools or building one consolidated school? Is there a viable plan that will cost taxpayers less? We've done the math. Bothincoms have done the math and come to the same conclusions. So during this process, the initial estimates for um upgrading and updating, which is called base repairs, which

is ADA compliance and bringing it up to code if you will. Um, the Winthrop and Cutler, the Cutler was 48.6 million approximately. And then the uh Winthrop is 49 million. Neither of those numbers get qualified for reimbursement from the state. 88 compliance and base code repairs do not qualify for reimbursement by the state.

Why? Because there are a number of boxes that you need to check through the process, including making your rooms the appropriate size. Base code repair would not change the size of any space. It would just bring it. Up to date, up to code, I mean, excuse me, and then up to, uh, compliance.

So that number is 97.6 million. I'm guessing it's probably different today considering remember when we started 2022 or three years later. Schematic design, we, we did the preferred solution which was option C4, which was a new Cutler Winthrop in, you know, er technically where we're including all.

Those kids in 1 through 5th grade as well at $142 million. This auction gives us the $4849.8 million for reimbursement and approximately $92 million to the taxpayers. The the uh reality of that number is we have elected to the school building committee to use what's called CM at risk, construction manager at risk, which means you hire a

construction agent. Construction company and that company and the school building committee negotiate to that guaranteed price which is $142 million. All right. So that's an important piece to understand. The construction manager at risk takes the risk of the property knowing we've toured with these groups, we've had

The designers, uh, OPMs so that they can get an idea of what's them meet with.

00:10:47,399	real on that site like, OK, where is the ledge where, where, you know, they can look at the borings, they can look at everything that we've done and decide the company wants to take that risk at that guaranteed maximum price TMP $142 million. So that's really where everybody has come down to as being less. The code repairs

base upgrade uh ADA compliance does not give me the opportunity to educate all of our kids and have our teachers in classrooms where they should be just point blank renovation in addition, we could do that just did, it was hard to do and include so many of our kids. People have said, well, couldn't you have renovated it.

And done in addition to to kind of meet the needs we could have we did look at that. The school building committee decided no that is not the way to go. So those options were but back to that previous slide 14 options school you know school uh building committee looked at

those options, weighed those options, looked at what we had, you know, one of our most vulnerable populations, our preschool children really didn't fit into. Any equations because preschool programs do not get reimbursed at all. So if we decided to do what Manchester Essex did and build space for preschool, we would pay for 100% of that, which is,

you know, it's it's something we could have done, but we knew if we combined with the and Cutler moved our kids out of bure, we have the perfect spot for, um, our, our kids in preschool and kindergarten.

00:12:30,899	If we vote no on the new consolidated school, can we change the scope of the work to use MSPA funding to renovate instead? The answer is no.

00:12:42,730	It just ends the project. My conversation with MSPA and several superintendents who've been through failed projects. The MSPA wants to spend their money. They do not want to wait around. They will give extensions oftentimes they want to put their money to work, so they'll move it to places, communities

that have a higher chance of gaining a vote or are already moving towards building a project. Um, the cost escalation is, is an important factor here. The real. Example, if you will, is right next door in Ipswich 2018, 72 million consolidated elementary school for just over 800 kids

close to what we were looking at $72 million in 2018. In the fall, this past fall of 2024, they were accepted back into the. Program with MSDA and and they're looking at estimated prices that exceed $160 million for the same exact thing. That's a huge risk to take for a community so that, you know,

the the reality is how long can we wait knowing things like cost escalation tariffs and things on the table. Uh, now and in the near future.

00:14:17,570	Oh yeah, thank you. So just remind me of something. Also, if you go through feasibility one time like we have, we just finished feasibility and finished that first, uh, couple of modules in the MSBA program, and we, we voted no and we shut down. On this project done, move on if we apply in 3, you know, say

we apply for some 2 years from now and get accepted, feasibility is at our expense 100%. So right now in the bank I have $515,000 that's been reimbursed from the state already of the $1.25 million that was put on the table originally. And when you think. we've been able to take that $1.25 million and really turn

it into $49 million coming back from the state. That's an important factor in this. The escalation factors are, are real, but also things change. The state's not going to continue to reimburse. Well, here's another feasibility of a million dollars, and we'll put in our share. They stop after the first time. Thank you.

00:15:23,870	This is a fun one. I actually talked to the superintendent. Um, he's in my superintendent's roundtable. So if the Webb School in Peabody was renovated with MSPA funding, why can't we? Probably should have said why can't we renovate as well. So well school I happen to know well. I worked in PB for a number of years.

uh We school was at the appropriate sizes, so there are minimum standard sizes that the MS. FPA accepts and will reimburse. If you do not get your classrooms to that 950 square foot minimum, I believe they do not want any involvement in your reimbursement. So therefore the renovation kind of cleaning up of things

with an 800 square foot classroom gets zero reimbursement. So that's how things work differently in the Welsh school. Um, we are short of a lot of MSPA standards, classroom sizes. If you walk through our elementary schools, there, there's no consistency in size. There, there's the big ones, there's some little ones,

there's some medium sized ones, there's the corner ones, um, there are additions put on that, you know, get closer to the expected size, but the MSPA is very formulaic about how They reimburse money for these projects. The other thing with the Welsh school is when they were working on that project,

the square foot, average square foot price to build that building was $484 I believe 454. Thank you, $454 per square foot when they build that. Ours right now is leaning into $900. Dollars per square foot that's the project now just a few years later. So remember these projects don't start the year before

they're built and then we just kind of laid that out. We got accepted in 2022. It's 2025 we're still in the basic stages we haven't gone into design and that would be next if we get approved to move forward. So that's, that's kind of the big differences those projects

can't be compared um there's there's a lot of other opportunities across the state to look at who's renovating, who's not, who's consolidating, who's not there's a lot of consolidation going on in in um the number of communities around um the people that we work with and several of the

builders that we interviewed are involved in a number of um consolidations as well so that's really where people are looking for efficiencies. Can we change the plan to make renovation of our existing schools possible with MSBA funding? So the short answer is no, uh, if you go in and change the edge, the ed plan

to fit something that's not what you need, the MSPA will not buy into that. So we have an a plan that is designed around the. Needs of our children, all of them, pre-K through 5, gives them an opportunity to be in spaces that are clean, bright, well ventilated, enough room to be in for whatever

services kids need or whatever opportunities kids can have in schools and schools are very different. Schools in 1950s did not plan for having specialized programs in buildings. In fact, in many schools, those kids weren't in the school district. School district, you know, most of those kids were sent out if they needed a specialized program.

50s, 60s, 70s, things started changing, 80s, 90s, it grew. Now we have programs we have the CASA program, the ILP program, TLC program, language-based program, physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech and language all have to occur somewhere. So you have this little elementary school that was designed for 12 classrooms, and that was it. Where do you put all.

Other features and I need to talk about interventions we're still working intervention programs to get our kids up and above the COVID mess if you will so functionally still working to try to intervene at every single level of our district using data looking at data and trying to intervene where do those interventions.

in the hallways, in closets, on stages. That's why our plan is designed the way it is. If you downgrade the educational plan, I think the MSBA would get a little suspicious and say wait a minute, this is what you said you need, you don't need it anymore, um, and that would be another red flag for them to

say, you know, maybe you want to go back to the drawing board and think about it. And start over and starting over again, you don't get reimbursed for that first few stages feasibility and schematic design, which in our case this time around was a million2 so those some other things to think about.

00:20:44,200	Don't our elementary schools serve the needs of our students just fine. We just talked about that. It's really talk about that. The the idea of school in 2025 is very different than school in 1980, 1970, 1960. These programs that our children need that we need to keep our kids in our school.

00:21:13,099	They need facilities need water, they need toilets, they need all the things that kids need when they're in school they need space for art supplies they need space for music and musical instruments, they need space for technology. Many of our buildings don't have enough electricity to handle some of the increases in technology that we'll need over

the next 15 years. The best example is the high school right now I'm replacing the boilers in high school. I personally am not, but being deeply involved in it, um, the boilers in the high school, if we move them to all electric boilers, we would have to bring in more power from the street

at an additional cost of $600,000. So think about that as we continue down the road to renovating uh these small schools that don't meet our needs. And as I said, the programs for me are important because if you were in one of our specialized programs 30 years ago, you would not be in your local public school.

Kids in our communities deserve to go to school in our communities. Point blank. There's no other way to say it. It's important for us to understand that the ed plan is, as you know, lofty as some people may think it is really Designed to meet the needs of our kids and our faculty is the.

00:22:35,230	now and it may change and I think the flexibility that our designers have built into this new building are gonna be amazing for kids to move around, kids to interact, kids to be outside, kids to be inside and keep as many kids as we can in our community schools.

00:22:56,569	My favorite one, the 3A question. Why was the Winthrop school not considered? Was it because Hamilton wants to develop the property for 3A? I started here 12 years ago and that conversation was already happening. The Winthrop property was on the table several years before that as a possibility, in fact, in 2000.

In 2016, there was a study done in Hamilton of a number of sites for to meet the needs of low income housing, the 10% requirement for low income housing. The town of Hamilton had done this, I forget how many sites, but there are a number of sites looked at, and they looked at,

OK, what if you had an, you know, X amount of um. Apartments here or multi-families here, what would that look like? One of them that was considered was a Winthrop property. There was a consideration to say, oh, let's put those apartments in the back of the Winthrop property where there's

some space and you know, we'll have them drive in and out of what is now known as the Tally Hill neighborhood. Um, that was on the table in 2016. It was quickly off the table at a meeting of the same group and they considered, OK, does this make sense? Is it absolutely not.

For all the reasons we're talking about emptying into a into a neighborhood, uh, in a school, you know, in the backyard of a school. So there was, there has been studies and conversations about the Winthrop property, and I think it's important to note that many meetings, including the one that Dana and I and.

a few weeks ago, but people had started that conversation again. Town of Hamilton's been very clear that property is not included in the 3A zone conversation, not at all. If you look at the newspaper, I think it's up here, got a volume one issue 21 of the HW News there was a great little

map that showed where the actual outline. of the Hamilton 38 zoning conversation will be occurring. That outline does not include the Winthrop school. The Winthrop school was not originally identified by the MSBA The person who was in charge of facilities, myself, uh, I think at the time.

00:25:19,200	Dalio was involved a school committee member, had a conversation with the SBA and said, Can we look at our other schools while you're here looking at. The cutler they agreed and went to all three elementary schools with us and and they went back to their group and they gave us

the option of saying if you'd like to consolidate the Winthrop and the cutler we would agree with that but the initial invitation is for the Cutler school property. So that's how we initially kind of launched it was the Cutler school property and then through conversations and tours of our schools, the MSPA realized the.

the uh Winthrop School is also in dire straits and could use So the consolidation was one of the the uh design options that some help.

00:26:01,930	they approved when they came back to us and after our our invitation. Once that consolidation was, was approved, people have said, oh, see, it was, it happened right here, but that consolidation conversation has happened years and years before, years and years before. And then the site limitations on Winthrop school if we got

the opportunity to build a new Winthrop school, it would be phased because there there isn't as much space as you see on the on the property, so we were saying, all right, what if we consolidated, but then put that on the Winthrop site. It would have been probably $15 to $18 million more because

we'd have to phase the build. If we said we're gonna build a brand new property and it's gonna phase in. It would have been much more money. I think it was $160 million when we first looked at it. And the reason being is because you can't just like the

comforter site, you can build the building and the kids can stay in the other building while the new buildings being built. You can't do that on the Winthrop site. Having been through that type of a project again at P PB High many years ago, they did a six phase renovation while kids

were in school with, I think we had a dozen. Uh, modular units outside, so you had to lengthen your day, to the kids time to get to classes. Ele element kids would have the same issue and experiences. We would have modular units on the site and we would do a

piece of the building at a time, kind of grow it around over multiple stages. That's where it gets expensive. Modular units run about $250 million roughly, uh, each. And you're gonna need more than one, you know, they, they depending on where you locate them, whether you buy them, whether you lease them, who's hooking up the, the

electricity, the water, all the needs for that particular modular unit, so those expenses get really high, really fast because it's generally one module unit per class.

00:28:04,470	Yeah, and monitor units have 0 reimbursement. Thank you.

00:28:16,029	You jump right up there. Um, my name. You should, yeah, you should. Hi everyone, and online. I'm Julie Lenneker. I'm a Hamilton resident. Um, I feel like I, it's not that I feel I have had personal conversations with, um, parents and individuals. Who are concerned about

um and wanting to have Wre be the site of the new school whether it is a rebuild renovation or consolidation so what I, there's a few questions that I'd like to ask I think one is I don't know if you can answer this or somebody here can answer it about the health risks.

Knowing what is at Winthrop, the health risks that happen over the years, what the renovation would be if students are there in a phased space and just what that timeline is gonna be like and the impact of that. For 4 kids over that timeline. I think those are the first two questions I have.

Sure, hard, a hard answer tough one answer is your first question, the health impacts because we don't always know what's in the buildings until we get into them. They did some testing around the copper school and they do, you know, pieces of, well, let's test a piece of the floor. Let's, let's test this. Let's test that.

So they do testing initially in some spaces you. Open something up that was a renovation 50 years ago and you find something else that you didn't know was behind there so it's hard to even know what you're going into generally around our schools, they also do do uh soil sampling to see

what kinds of chemicals may be in the soils, um, in a project I did in Wilmington, uh, many years ago it was an oil tank in the courtyard that everybody knew was there but didn't know it had oil in it. So those are kind of surprises that come up. So there, there are certainly

risks that have to be have to be mitigated. The the builders do a lot of work to mitigate those risks. They use a lot of negative flow processes through the building process to keep kids safe and keep kids healthy, um, but it's a, it's a work site, it's a work site.

There's no guarantees of any, you know, oh, there's not gonna be any. Coming in, that's not true. I mean, in the PBI project, I saw, um, a wall get taken out with a classroom there, so those things happen and and it's, it's really, uh, a difficult thing to say this and

this and this could exactly happen, but there, there certainly are things that we would, we would work to mitigate right away, but there are also things that could appear that we would not know is there when we do the renovation. You want to add to that or.

00:31:04,799	And it happens it happens on every renovation project. We plan for the worst, hope the best, and there's mitigation planning and we have allowances and loads of money in case something happens, but we don't know what's behind these walls. We don't know what can happen. So the common things are dust and airborne, and we do things

like negative air and filtration to keep them out, but anyone who's ever, I took a painted a room, I've done your kitchen over, all the. in the world, some still get screwed, right? And then we have to be reactive, but one of the biggest things is interruptions to learn is construction is

disruptive and it's noisy, and there really is no way to mitigate that other than working at night and then the cost of that school would go through the roof. There's a prevailing wage slash union rate job. It's not like a typical house Hamilton and win. The hourly cost. The Premiums work and that is incredible, um, and almost

unfordable, so it's disruption to learning and kids are resilient and they do like looking, but everyone's got that kid that needs quiet in the room that there's any noise they're looking the other way and not doing their tests. So it's the intangibles, things like that you really can't put a cost on it's just very disruptive.

Now again, better limits for engineering and planning, we're gonna address it and make it work, but it's not the ideal. Situation and it will take a minimum of a year longer at least because it ends up being a block it off either tear it down or gut it, rebuild it, move them, then start over

again in this section and that just adds time and everybody knows again time is money. The longer it takes you into another construction year, you get more escalation, costs more money. So ultimately all of that was thought of and cost it up. As we said in all these options, we looked at the ad

renovation costs for the winter and destruction for the kids and the process wore out that it was more economically feasible and better for the kids to stay at home.

00:33:07,900	Yeah, so I just think, I think it's connected and so it's the What was your last question? timeline of what that would be like when you're having to do the modulars and having to do. The phases and so I'm just thinking about the impact on learning for however many years of students that is because it

would be happening. The construction site would be the school and what that not only would be the impact on our um bottom dollar and our our wallets, but the impact and cost.

00:33:49,170	Students learning and well-being. So what's the timeline and, and really what is the cost um of what that would be if we did this at the Windrop school? So the, the, the timeline is, as I touched on earlier, to do an ad renovation of a and end up with a similar size with the.

enrollment would add a minimum of a year to a year and a half. This is already a 2 year, 2-year projects to build it new, uh, and, and we just one we may be familiar with and it's it's not the same size, but it gets to the point is, uh, we did

Somerville High School and it ended up being an ad renovation slash noon and it took 7 years. Because and I build sockets license you'll probably drive by that on the highway, um, that only took 26 months to build them, and the difference is, as I said, you have to protect the rest of the property you're not touching,

abate the hazardous materials of what's in it, then you gut it or tear it down, build it up, then you start all over again. And then oh, we don't have enough room yet because we haven't renovated enough space, put them all in the parking lot and modules adds time.

So for every year you add at a minimum it's 5% that we have in our estimate, a 5% escalation of all construction costs. That's a minimum that any third party professional estimator will give you. Now, not to alarm anyone because we planned that for this project. Our costs are escalating. We have contingencies. We have design contingencies.

We have construction change order contingencies, and that was all I anticipated and projected through the midpoint of construction. So we've accounted for that, but I don't think anyone can tell you what the press gallon of gas is gonna be here for you is. So once you get outside that one year window, we're gonna

have to overinflate to protect the town.

00:35:47,170	the cost will escalate well beyond that 5% per year, well yeah, yeah, and, and you know you're, you're dealing with our youngest, most vulnerable learners. They're gonna move, move, move several times throughout that three year period. So if you're a first grader, you probably would move probably 7 or 8 times either into a modular.

Or into another space or into another space depending on, you know, which grade you're in, how many years this thing goes on so a new build would be about 2 years that that kind of type of a Renault update where it's phased in or even a new if they were building a new building on the winter site

would have to be phased and our initial estimates were up in the $160 million dollar range and it was for all those recent disruptions to to learning. Um, it's disruption to, to things like drop off and pick up, you, you, you, you're moving them around as you're moving the construction site around because there's only so

much space that you can put all this equipment. MSP calls it cost effective and educationally appropriate. That's their goal is for us. A solution that needs to their goal as well and that This is a this is not on the high end of, uh, school that comes up.

00:37:02,269	construction costs, particularly elementary schools as Eric pointed out before. We're, we're in a good time right now, um, as everyone reads the newspaper knows what's going on in the world, and there's threats of this and threats of that, but we built that continuously into the project. And, uh, we, we're comfortable that when we bring our

construction manager on board, that'd be the next step. Uh, one piece Eric left out is that this great part of our construction manager at risk. We don't have to wait until the job is 100% designed to start costing things out and getting actual bids. We bring the person the.

That's gonna be responsible for building the project on now during design development and they're gonna lend their expertise to the OPM and the designer to say that looks great on paper, but this is really how you build it. Oh, that's a great product, but did you know it comes from

China now we could source that in the United States and save 8% on that material. So that's the process. That we're going to undergo to make it economically appropriate for.

00:38:10,199	Thank you. It's also one of my favorites, and there are major drainage weapon issues that will be impacted by building a new school on the Cutler property and have mitigation costs for septic and drainage been considered. Yes, the, uh, things out of Facebook recently have cited that it's gonna cost between $30.50 billion dollars to address the mitigation,

septic and sewage. That is not realistic. Um, this is my third building project. I have a lot of faith in the professionals who do this work. They do schools generally because they consistently do schools. Um, they know what they're talking about. The advantage, I think, is that LCGI, LGCI, and, um, Sammy

Otis, two of the engineering groups that were brought in to do the examination of the properties. They did the borings. They did, um, what's it called a test, the test pit. Yeah, they did a test pit where they actually left the pit open and measured the water over a multi-month period to try to

see what would go on and somebody said, well, you hit water, see there's water. On the property. Well, that's how wells work. There's water on properties. You drill a hole to a certain depth and you're you're bound to get water and that's my property, your property, there's probably water at some depth underneath our property,

some shallow, some deep. Um, so the, the reality is

00:39:44,730	the, the opportunity that we have would be to improve what's happening on that site. If you, you go there, there's a lot of water that comes down to the left side, uh, and goes in the drain and goes into the mountains. Um, there's a lot of opportunity for them to bring in 2025 systems that manage water.

Uh, we have groups in town who help us with that planning Bo Conservation commission, and they would help us to say, OK, how does that, what does that look like? How's it gonna work? What, how does this system treat the water before it goes into. The system, believe it or not, that's what would happen in a

new building. There would be a designed system that would treat the run off the water before it enters down, you know, the bottom of the hill to the to the sort of weapons. So that's an important piece of it. We would actually improve what's happening now. Septic systems, there are two septic systems on that property now.

Um, we have, you know, there's money in the budget for both mitigation of storm water, uh, stormwater renewal, and then. Um, septic systems being redone and rebuilt, uh, in similar places actually bottom left and bottom right of that property. So there is a plan that has been done. The some somewhat management piece is an important gain, I

think, if any, if anything, I think it's a gain in the project, um, given what's happening there on that site now.

00:41:10,500	Of course we have the whole premise that we found water we found water. We, you drive in this town, we know you have water. You have lakes and streams and you have a reservoir and the other part is, well, I lost my train of thought. We found water found one.

00:41:37,530	surprised to find it. We went looking for it. That's part of the normal engineering process is we know there's water in this town. Let's find out where it is on the site, see at what depth it's at, and will it cause a problem and will it be a premium that makes that site not advantageous.

Previous slide, we went through how many sites? I forget now. 224 sites and a lot of them came off the table. Right away because we did our due diligence with online DDP mapping, water resources mappings it's available to anybody and said, oh, water resource area, nope, wetland drops off, drops off, drops off.

Cot did not because it did not have wetlands on the site. There's weapons down the street, across the street there's weapons across the street so we went and found the water to see how deep it was and said, OK, can we design the septic and can we design a drainage system that will not increase.

Any water runoff to the properties after we're done, and the answer was yes through professional engineering sites and site investigation. So that was put to bed. Now further that when when the CMR comes on board, we have two other permits that we have to apply for and retainPSC's permit, NPDES is a national pollution permit about

stormwater runoff and then a swift plan SWPP stormwater prevention pollution plan. So there's All these other safeties that are built in when the contractor that has to when it comes on board has to comply with so there's no additional drainage and run off going to the neighbor's neighbor's properties. So well investigated. Thank you.

00:43:25,900	This one bubbled up recently. Isn't there enough space to move some elementary grades to the middle school and shift 8th grade to the high school? Well, having been to all of our schools every week, there is, there are no empty classrooms in the middle school or the high school. There are none.

Me, you know, that was somebody said, oh, our numbers have gone down over time, our class sizes have gone down. We do have space in our classrooms, which is why we use the Choice program in 9th grade, um, so we fill seats just like we're filling seats on a plane.

The school committee approves that annually, or, or could disapprove it annually, but it has to be approved or disapproved annually, and we've continued to do that to fill space. Our elementary schools are um so to put it bluntly, like you, you, you have uh 3 elementary schools that are doing

everything they can with every piece of real estate they can if we try to take the 130-ish 5th grader. Up to the middle school that would shrink down the use of the current classrooms and increase the classrooms sizes to 25 or above 30 in some instances of middle school kids and would take away options.

So levels of classes like accelerated math versus the regular math, you wouldn't be able to do that because you wouldn't have spaces to do that uh throughout the school day and that's, you know, a problematic move. Uh, for parents I've seen it in a number of town moving 5th

grade to the middle school does become a firestorm and that's, you know, something that's an important conversation to have well before you start to think about doing that, um, so that everybody can get their thoughts on the table. That is a big move for a lot of parents.

Um, you have to really do something with some of the facilities depending on how you did it, uh, where you would move some, locate them. Um, because in, in any school district I've been involved in, if there's been a move from moving elementary age kids to an elementary school, they people want them separated to

separate them in our very basic middle school, two floors, two There's there's, what, where do you where do you put them is straight floors.

00:45:35,500	really the question. Keep them, keep away from the older kids and we, you know, those are all things that we would have to address in, in this type of a plan and. The high school especially is is not designed to accommodate younger grades. If you've been to the elementary schools, the toilets are much smaller,

lower to the ground. Um, that's not the case here at the high school or the middle schools, so those things, you know, some little things that we'd have to think about staffing, we'd be moving staffing around some more, some of the, you know, staffing that that addresses elementary school and works with elementary school. Our staff are certified.

Like grade level, so when you start to say you're in elementary school, you're generally pre-K to 6 or K to 6 or 1 to 6 certified, um, that really holds you within that window. same with middle school and high school certifications are for those grade levels. When you start moving people around, you start running into

trouble with, oh, I need a 5th grade teacher for English for two periods, and I'm not sure how to do that so you have to have somebody who would work in one of the elementary schools and move to the. Middle school partway through the day to finish out their day.

So that creates just a different uh issue and then really it doesn't solve the problem of what is going on in our elementary schools. It doesn't solve any of our problems. It doesn't give us the spaces that we need, you know, we could get some more classrooms, but if you, um, were paying

attention last week that Win through school, we had to make the decision to collapse our, uh, incoming. grade, so our current kindergarten class is a little bit smaller than they've been. So instead of having 7, we're gonna collapse them down to 6 because we need the teacher to split our CASA program into two

different rooms, and that's because of the law. You can't have kids in specialized programs with more than a 48 months spread in age. So as soon as I have a 1st grader and a 5th grader, I gotta start looking at ages and. As soon as it crosses 48 months, I have to separate them into two programs.

So that's what's gonna happen next year, you know, it's, it's a, it's a game for us. We move that bubble around next year, the kindergarten bubble is going to Cutler, and they're gonna displace a whole group of people who are in an office that do interventions. Uh, it's just it's the only space we have.

So those are the things that we're running into right now today, and that, you know, those are the things that. You never want to move children around if you don't have to, but we're in that mode of trying to move kids around so that we have the appropriate spaces for programs for these kids.

00:48:15,369	And certainly we have Q&A time. If you have questions, we will answer them. If you have, um, wonders, please come up to the mic or we Around and project website is on your left, the QR code there can pass.

00:48:27,300	and then we separate document report section on the right side, any document that we've talked about tonight including the um reports from Sammy Otis LGCI which are related to the storm water, uh, groundwater, the boring, any of the sites related to transportation. Um, any of the traffic studies are all located on that right side.

There are many, many more. Uh, there's probably, I'm gonna guess about 6000 pages of documents in the three submissions that we sent to the state. So there's a lot, there's a lot of information out there related to the project, and we haven't gotten to design yet.

00:49:07,730	a question. Scott Adam from Hamilton. Uh, two questions. One, John McGrath, John McGrath is here from, uh, he's the chair of the Hamilton Fincom, and I have a, a question for, for him. Last night, I know you voted unanimously in support of the project again, which is great. Thank you, uh, very much for that.

Hopefully one of them does that, uh, at their Fincom meeting next week. uh, but In your discussion, you talked a little bit about well if it doesn't pass and you provided a new summary of what is gonna go in the war article. Can you give us some insight to that, uh, things related to the

pro to overrides or large amounts of immediate maintenance, those, those things that you talked about last night?

00:49:53,000	Yeah, uh, thanks Scott. Um, just as a, uh, a preamble to that's, um, as a member of the Finom I had the opportunity to be part of the school building committee but not a voting member and as such I was able to sit through all the meetings.

I think I asked more questions than anybody of these folks and all the other people.

00:50:24,730	And the the role that I tried to serve on that committee was listen and sort of test what I was hearing. Many times I would take my notes and go back and get on the web and look up stuff. For example, why did the end plan drive a larger footprint? Just Google it.

It's clear that we need more space. The analogy as an example is look what happened to the average house size since 1950. It's pretty much doubled. So the role that both Fincon served in that committee was. One of pressing, asking questions, um, asking more questions, see if it made sense, go ask an expert.

Almost every time I did that, the discussions held up, the facts were provable.

00:51:30,369	um, I believe when a vote was finally made they made a good decision. So that's just a qualifier.

00:51:39,369	When we started to reconsider to answer your question, to reconsider this next vote, um, the one question we. Ask ourselves on think on was what's likely to happen if you don't vote the new school? Probably next April there'll be a $15 million override to spend money to do some critical improvements.

00:52:11,800	if it gets voted no, a planning process will start almost immediately between the school committee and the town boards. What should we do? Probably in. A special town meeting in 26 in October there'll probably be a couple of large overrides coming from the schools to start spending tens of millions of dollars on the schools.

I have no idea what that plan looks like.

00:52:41,869	Those overrides will probably happen over multiple years, um, and today we just posted yet another 30 page book recommendations on the town website for everyone to consume you can kind of go through it all. Um, I was surprised actually how many people I talked to who didn't read the 1st 30 page

document that that we wrote up, um. But anyway, if you go through that material, what you'll find is a restatement and a testing of all the facts that were accumulated over the two years. Um, what we're really trying to do is protect the taxpayers by questioning almost everything that was done and trying to

answer every question that was raised. So we firmly believe that not letting that $50 million slip through our fingers is the right decision. If that $50 million slips away, there's an implied $2.5 million penalty every year because we let it get away from us. So I really put a lot of emphasis on don't lose that $50.

Grab it and put it to good use now, and that is in the best interest of the taxpayers of both towns. That's, that's what I thought.

00:54:03,099	Thank you John. John Hamilton. Yeah, 11 more question for you here, and actually I think the numbers bear out it's over $10 million a year. It's what it's cost them in their delay, so the numbers are, are huge, um, one more about like kind of a community benefit that comes from this, uh, and when Cutler, uh, both

Cutler and with the schools are. They're not really useful for recreational purposes much for the town, but inside of the gyms, outside there's some some available stuff that's there. So, uh, this new schools we're uh we're busting at the seams in the town for recreational demands. Uh, Penry Park is a recreational facility. Patton Parks recreational facility.

We just uh. Doing everything we can at this site, uh, and there's just more that's that's demanded, especially for young folks. So what are some of the things we get out of the new school would cover? Yeah, the, the bonus if you will, is we really have developed a community center.

So the way that the building's designed is you have the academic areas. We closed off from what we found in the community areas and that was part of our visioning. The community areas were important because we do have our buildings used by youth sports generally. Uh, we have a badminton team that comes in weekly.

We have cheerleading and basketball. We host a town meetings, so there's, there's all kinds of things that are occurring. In our elementary schools outside of the school day but limited because those elementary school gyms are small they're they're small spaces or they're combination spaces where they're auditoriums and uh cafeterias

or auditoriums and gyms, um, we can't use those spaces oftentimes uh one of our, our best connections is with the community house community house right across the street from the Winthrop school actually used as part of the Winthrop school because of the number of kids that need after school programming.

Um, they also do, uh, theater program and part of that was, hey, we could use the stage at the Winthrop school where you can't because it's a classroom, so you'd have to empty out this classroom every time you wanted to use the stage. So those are some of the realities that that we would

solve, um, the way it's designed with the cafeteria, the gym, and the auditorium of stage space are all in one line, and they're all open for and available for. People to utilize. There are private spaces, quiet spaces. There you can open up a wall between the cafeteria and the gymnasium and do a gigantic community function, which I

think is important in our small towns. Um, there's a stage right there that would not be used for, uh, a classroom because it is, uh, we have built in the classrooms that we would need, um, and then we could use down the road. So I think the, the, the, the huge piece of that is the school districts.

Often close their buildings down at the end of the school day and that's it. I think it's important for us to find spaces and for our kids. It's the reason we did the high school athletic facilities improvement project to give more space and time for kids, not just high school kids, middle school, youth sports to

get on our fields and find places to play and be outside. So that's, that's really kind of driving that. There's still a baseball field. There's 5 soccer fields on this property. Uh, plenty of space for kids to get out and play. There's playgrounds, play yards, um, the spaces that kids

can use for classrooms and also for play and learning. So this, it gives us a lot more opportunity to kind of move kids in and out of the building, but also to move public in and out of the building without disrupting any of the academic areas. So that's that's OK.

00:57:41,230	Hi, Laura Baler from School Street in Hamilton. Thank you so much, Eric. This has been extremely informative. Um, I have one. Question that I've heard a lot around um transportation and bussing um and um how that's related to traffic um so could you just elaborate a little bit on the plans for the um changes

in transportation at the um new consolidated school and what that will mean for um students. I know my son personally rides a transfer bus right now, as you know, and, um, I'd love you to just elaborate a little bit on how that changes what the current model is. Sure. Transfer buses are the main.

Since every year it's like John Caulfield and I say, OK, how are we gonna organize these and then I get the principals and secretaries involved. There are a lot of people involved to make sure kids can move around the district and they're literally moving around the district. We've had some kids that get dropped at one school, they

wait at one school, they get picked up by another bus, go to another school, wait at that school, and go to a third school in the morning in the afternoon. So transfer buses, we want to get rid of those and have a little more realistic transportation schedule. Uh, we hope to reduce.

The buses that we use, um, one of the, the, the reality is we use 14 regular buses throughout the day between high school and elementary. We don't use them all for both levels, but the high school kids are too cool to ride the bus, you know, but, um, they all have cars actually, so it's, uh, it's,

it's a little bit less in the middle school high school zone, but, uh, elementary school, a lot of kids take the bus, you know, there's a conversation about kids won't be able to walk to school anymore, kids can walk to school, but. Many, many, many of our kids, I think 2/3 of our elementary

school kids take the bus, so we still have to, you know, make plans for that, and we, we, uh, we actually just received a $5 billion grant to electrify our buses, uh, so that's kind of solved the pollution issue that was out there. People in the community, the local area around the building were concerned about having a

number of buses there every day. So reducing the number of buses, hopefully consolidating the routes around, uh, the, the two communities, and giving them. It's an opportunity to get rid of, you know, the transfer of our system that we use that is confusing for everybody even this far into the school year.

00:59:53,730	All right, Ashley Bey Chaseford Street, Hamilton, um, I heard a lot of chatter about severely declining enrollment and so why do we need a bigger space? Um, I'm wondering if you can speak to what you're seeing in terms of enrollment trends because at the same time I'm also hearing that we already have 130 kids enrolled for

kindergarten next year, so. Heard that. If you could speak to them, that would be, absolutely. So 2 years ago we had the 2nd highest number of elementary schools in 12 years. Highest number we had over the 12 years that I've been monitoring it is, uh, 867. That was back before COVID.

Uh, during COVID, the population dumped out, uh, people went different ways, and then we recovered back to 847. Two years ago, uh, elementary aged kids, that's the kids who are pre-K to 5, so 847 last year we had a little dip because we had one fewer preschool class, usually we've had 3 the year before.

This year we have 2, and it's a smaller classes I mentioned earlier, kindergarten kids came in instead of the usual 130.1 average. It's, it's currently I think 118, I think it's 118. Um, and then we're looking at kindergarten class coming our way right now. Uh, registrations at the time of year are usually about 120,

118, 120, they're over 130. The kids in the queue waiting and families will come during the summer for move-ins and people that just waited to to sign their kids up. So we're continuing to see growth at the elementary school level. Um, interestingly enough, you'll see a little bump too at the, the upper levels.

Next year we have, uh, at least I know of 7 kids who are transferring back into the high school in the fall from private schools. So we're starting to see some movement in our, in our student body, um, elementary is, is the one that concerns us the most. Um, because of that, that growth period, so that's,

that's, it's been, it was up then it was down a little bit through COVID and coming out of COVID, we've gone up since 2020 every single year except for this current year where there's, uh, one fewer pre-kindergarten classes. Does that answer that question? OK.

01:02:04,900	I, uh, Sprague when I'm, I'm the finance shareholder when I'm um talking just as a, um, so I just, I wanted to get your take on a few things

01:02:20,269	my, it's my understanding right that, um, if there's gonna be any investment in Cutler and Winthrop, you're gonna need a 2/3 vote from Hamilton voters and Wynham voters basically for the foreseeable future. That's. That's your understanding too. The way the current regional agreement is written, yes, current regional agreement calls for a 2/3 majority vote on that exclusion.

So if we listen to what John was talking about a second ago, we're talking about a $15 million vote that will have to happen next year to basically replace just the HVAC systems in the two schools, and that, that's not. Part of the 90 some odd million dollars of code compliance

that's that's needed, right, right, so if I understand what happens if if you are a person that wants to keep the neighborhood schools, you're gonna need to get 2/3 of women voters to vote for uh an investment in Hamilton structures this coming year for $15 million and then start working on those $90. all our um code compliance

problem in each one of these schools. Again, another vote, again, another vote get the Len voters to vote for this again and again and again for how many different, how many different bites of that apple it's gonna be, it's gonna be a decade of asking when voters to in in a supermajority vote for that.

I think there that was if you go back, maybe my, I think it was the 4th forum I started talking about that but you. Kept your neighborhood school structure as people may know there's one school in Wyoming, one school, and the other 4 are in Hamilton.

So as we said, OK, we're just gonna build a couple school to the point of these gentlemen here, they're gonna build a coupleler school. When voters, Hamilton voters go to the polls. They go to the town meeting. They voted in and now they're in debt for something of $40 to $70 million for that particular project.

5 or 6 or 7 or 8 years later we go back to the. To the MSBA and say, you know, all right, we want to do the next school, um, which by the way, probably won't make it 7 years, but the, you know, we're gonna do the Winthrop school just I'm just gonna pick the Winthrop school.

We're gonna do the Winthrop school and we're gonna go back and say, hey, when the voters, you want to vote for this school in Hamilton again? And that might be difficult. That might be absolutely difficult. That's, that's true. I think what you're bringing up is no matter what, whether

we're building a school or doing projects in the schools in wherever they may be located in Hamilton or Wenham or or both, I think the, the beauty of our towns is we have the regional agreement that gives us the opportunity to work together on behalf of all of.

Our kids to make sure that we can give all of our kids the best opportunities, but I think that's a real um concern that I, I, I brought up earlier in these forums to say how many times we want to come and vote for a Hamilton property. I don't know what you know I I

I gotta put a roof on the high school. I'm putting more windows in the middle school. I got, you know, there, there are lots of projects. Coming our way and I think you know part of the the bigger problem is you start stacking debt on top of debt on top of

debt on top of debt, and that doesn't work out well when you look at it over a time period. I'll give you a quick example.

01:05:43,030	This, this is just a quick example that we may not pass our business manager made up. Everything to the left side is what's currently bonded out. We're already paying for it, so the greens and and the stuff on the green and that dark blue. The two bigger debt columns are a renovation to the Cler school

at $70 million and then a renovation to the Winthrop school at $70 million and I think what's important to note here if you look at this graph and then add on any other. Projects in town including the water. Here's your first debt with slightly under $9 million for

the copper school plus all the other debts you already are paying for and then that goes out until FY 39 when we say, OK, let's do the Winthrop school and add that on top. Your debt shoots to above $13 or $14 million and that's a guess only because we're just using.

Round numbers of 3 3.5% escalation over time we're gonna stack that debt of the cover on top of that debt of the wind through and that will take us all the way up to 57, 2057, and that's a long deadline when you start looking at all the other projects related to sewer and

water in our communities, um, our high school roof, any other building means that are in the. any other debt needs. On the other hand, there's your school for the consolidation. Same, same things on the bottom left, the debt we already have, green is the athletic school athletic complex upgrades, so we're running around 2 million

years, $2 million in debt for 2 years. Then we add the debt on for the consolidated school. And this is figured on uh the our original 150 million, so it's actually slightly less, but you can see how quickly the line comes down as the debt decreases over time and then you're up to 48 instead of 57.

You're starting to look a little differently when you start stacking debt on top of debt. So when you look at just the color in the winter, what about the future? By the time you get to the end of this. That structure you got stack the bure on there.

The bure is not gonna last until 57, so now you're stacking even more on there. So I think it's important to know and to give people a realistic look at debt over time. It doesn't go away when you get a new project you're stacking on top. Of what you're already doing, so that's, I think that's kind

of like what you're trying to get out as well when you're looking at going to a vote and having somebody in another town where the structure doesn't exist and they don't benefit from it, they may not vote that second time. So I answer that question? OK.

01:08:48,270	Hi Gary. Gary Chies and one slapboard. First of all, I'd like to say that thanks for the great presentation tonight. Well, I hope the audience out there takes it to heart with these great numbers. Uh, one select board has been in favor of the consolidated solution from the very start we reiterated at these select board meeting.

One thing that comes up that's difficult to talk about is the reality. is a security and certainly we see deficiencies in our current schools. The fact that uh cut or renovation would not solve the problem that the fire department has no access to the backside of color. So could you just, uh,

give us the pros of a consolidated school based upon the security needs. Sure, security is number one for me. It's a big deal. As uh someone who's formerly in law enforcement, it's I understand the power of these weapons that are out there today unfortunately, um, there is no real defense against some

of these weapons that are being used around schools, and I think it's important to note that you can walk in any of our elementary schools and be in the building where the kids are, any one of them walk in the front door of the proper school you can take a right and be with the kindergarten kids

without anybody. Intercepting you from the office because the office is around the left corner, uh, that came up in 2008 that came up in 2014 studies when you go back to the Winthrop school, you walk in, you could be walking into a full cafeteria full of kids because you walk right into the cafeteria, um,

bure school, same thing, go in the front door, they buzz you in, you can access go right by the office and go into left or right into the school. These are important factors that we talked about a lot with the police department, fire department, the designers, um, even how we did some of the landscaping, looking at open

sight lines trying to find ways to make sure the office was located so they could see who was coming, uh, so police and fire had access there are access, uh, areas on the roof that were specified for the police and fire in case of emergency and not just a fire emergency. Um, the, the building actually closes down.

The academic wings get closed down individually, so all 5 wings would get closed down individually, and then there's a steel security door that comes down right near the office to really seal off the building for safety and security. Each of the neighborhoods can be secured individually and then, um, the, the rest of the building can be separated.

So there's really 7 sections of the building once the security system gets activated. Uh, we don't have that now. It'll be this does not pass, that'll be the first thing I'm going to address in all of our schools, and that will be, uh, expensive but realistic, needed unfortunately part of the other security features is the glass

after, um, Sandy Hook, the gentleman, uh, designed. He had a company designed glass that's a little more difficult uh to access with a firearm the name of a

01:11:49,199	school guard safety glass, um, and that is, is configured into this project because we, we feel like it's important why kids to be safe and our staff to be safe. Um, so safety has been considered all the way around. The road around the building is a safety feature as well as an access feature.

Uh, fire department's number one complaint was no access to water in the back of the building and can't get around the back of the building with a fire truck, so called the school right now unless we can slide over 20 ft, they can't get a fire truck all the way around that building, which is a concern.

I would say brought that up in the meeting when we met with the police and fire. There were two different meetings with the. Architectural team safety, um, people, our um support our police and fire departments in both towns and everybody got to weigh in on on those security features.

That's a, that's a big piece of this puzzle for us. I think it solves all of our security problems in really 11 opportunity. Does that answer your question?

01:12:49,800	Hi, it's Stephanie Andrews. Um, I live at 29 B A. Um, I wanted to talk about what the cost of the taxpayers would be if the project fails and there are additional lawsuits and um out of district placements for students because the district isn't meaning faith or isn't meaning idea. Thank you. Great question.

01:13:15,729	Part of the specialized service in in. Is is really what's called fake free and appropriate public education, um, and I said it earlier kids in our community should go to school in our community we should make every effort we can that is not always possible um we have been through the discussion I've been through discussion with

area superintendents about the realities of, uh, is it cheaper to send certain specialized programs out of district and keep others in district. Because of the budget issues that are occurring right now, you're seeing cuts in almost every district around us, uh, due to increasing specialized transportation costs out of district costs, um, and transportation costs in general

so you're starting to see, um, some, some decisions being made where it's gonna get expensive really quickly. Um, an initial move of a child from our school into a landmark program is approximately $7000 to $80,000. Um, there are. Programs out there that depending on the the needs and

severity of the needs of the children they could be up to $300,000 annually and we're responsible for that and that comes out of the school budget so even though they're not in our school district we would have to pay um to to transport the child to a program, pay for the program, transport the

child back um if you haven't noticed a lot of these new transportation companies. Popping up these little vans and private cars with school bus signs on top of them, those are all coming to life because of the special ed transportation issue. It is, it is a way to, uh, make a serious amount of money.

There's just no way to get kids to all of these places with one bus. You, you need all these smaller transportation companies to do that. Um, it gets expensive quickly when you start to, we're currently 41 kids out of district and if you looked at our numbers we're in the middle. Millions of dollars, uh, and

I'm not saying that's a bad thing. I'm just saying that's our responsibility as a as a community, but that could rise over time if we can't find the appropriate, uh, spaces and places for our kids and these are kids that should remain in our district. um, it's just a matter of if, if our programs continue to

grow and we're splitting our castle into two, we're gonna split our ILP in the next 2 years probably into 2, so all And that's 2 more classrooms that that can't be used for of this.

01:15:34,630	regular classrooms. Where do they go? So some some tough decisions need to be made, um, and that's, that's part of, part of my job and special ed director's job and our business manager trying to figure out the best way to fit those pieces and puzzles together. We've been working with the statehouse on, on, uh, trying

to increase that funding and we're looking at the possibility of supplemental funding for this year's budget because now the statehouse is starting. I realize with all of the budgets being slashed around, um, these communities in Massachusetts that there's a need for a change in the chapter 70 funding which is how

schools get their, their, um, state monies, uh, from the from the state, uh, a change in transportation reimbursement. So, um, in the law really says that the state should be paying for 100% of auto district transportation costs, but it doesn't, it has never last year I think it was 57%.

Um, and then you start to look at reimbursement what they call circuit breaker reimbursement for kids whose costs exceed, uh, a threshold and it's a little, I can't remember the exact number it's a little over $46,000 a year. Anything beyond that comes back to the community but not for a

year later so it doesn't impact you right now. So those are all moving pieces of the, the puzzle with with faith and keeping kids in district and, you know, really working hard to make sure. We have programs to meet the needs of all of our kids and as we said it's not always possible.

I'm on the, um, I'm one of 2 superintendents who's on the board of the Northeast Consortium, and we work really hard to try to figure out how can we work together to isolate a program say in this way so we can all move kids to in in a safe place in the in the space

that we're all aware of still expensive. The transportation issue. We're working right now on a contract to uh meld together 15 or 18 different communities to say right you have a kid going I have a kid going to this school they have a kid going to to this school.

school one route instead of 3 different routes at $300 a day. So we're trying to look at it because now it's getting, it's getting really quickly out of hand. It's starting to get really expensive and that's just the reality of what's going on in, in special ed in public education in general.

01:17:47,100	Hey there, I'm Catherine Spano. I live on Lindon Street in Hamilton. Um, I just wanted to ask a question about the sort of idea of small neighborhood schools being better for smaller children. Um, I've heard a lot of chatter about that. So we moved here for small schools, that sort of thing. I find the neighborhood

issue to be a little bit confusing. I live down the street from the library, and Bucher is less than. and Cutler is around 1 mile and Winthrop is a little over 1 mile. Um, I, I have a first grader at Cutler, but all of those felt pretty neighborhoody to me. Um, they're all walkable.

um, so I wonder if you could speak to that and also to the idea that, you know, are smaller schools better for smaller children and, and how has that been built into.

01:18:37,829	Sure, to answer that question, the number one feature of our school district that benefits our children is our staff. The relationships our staff have with the kids really dictates how things will occur in the building. Uh, the design of the building, we heard that that loud and clear about small schools we

want to be able to walk to schools. Well, more than 2/3 of our elementary kids get bussed. You can walk to the schools if you're within probably that triangle of the schools. It's you can walk to any of them, um, but I talked about enrollments earlier. The best example is the current kindergarten coming incoming

kindergarten in the fall. There's 7 classes. I can't fit 3 in Winthrop so I could put 2 in Buker, 2. Winthrop and the 3rd now is instead of being in Winthrop it's gonna go to color. So some of those kids in your neighborhood or in the Winthrop

neighborhood are going to end up at the bug or the Cler only because there's no seats available at their neighborhood school. It just works out that way. Kids that move in, families that buy a house in November and move in, end up saying, Well, why do I have to send my kid? I live over on Asbury.

Why am I sending my kid to the bure when I. Can I send it to this school here. Well, there's no room. There's no space for, um, to do that with with kids and, and I think that's one of the problems that we're having with the, the smaller schools. School itself will be the same for kids.

It's exa you know, it's anxiety inducing for the adults. It absolutely is, you know, my child is going this big school. We design the school to be small neighborhood on purpose. It's very purposeful and if you look at the left side of the building, go back to this slide here, if you look at that left

side of the building, our 1st and 7th graders are really They don't, they're stuck in that kind of small school right there. field, casts there, music's there, art's there, uh, science is there, the gymnasium is there, PT, OT is there, uh, speech language, TLC, all of those things are offered.

In that specific area of the building purposefully because we do feel like OK, we can make it smaller for us for our youngest learners and they'll be fine and they'll be fine because the adults we have working with them are important, the most important factor I think you know welcoming the feeling of belonging the opportunity to

bring all of our people together is amazing we have all our first grade teachers together and have conversations and talk about best ways to educate kids, what can we do for. Belonging, what types of community things can we do? That's a huge shift for us where now it's hard to do in

three different schools, um, so I think the I understand the neighborhood feel and you know we moved here for the schools, but did you move here for the neighborhood schools or did you move here for the quality of the schools and I, I would say you moved here for the quality of the schools and this, this

school quality it won't be diminished because it's bigger. I think you know there several things will happen we'll have a greater sense of belonging. Uh, both with our kids and our staff, uh, I will be able to retain teachers. Much easier to be able to help and safe healthy environments

uh every day and not have to worry about if there's a mouse in between my classroom walls or if there's a, you know, my ventilator's not working, so I'm opening all the windows, but it's 22 degrees outside so you know I think the realities of what's happening in our small schools versus what we

can do with this consolidated school are, um, huge, it's a huge difference, uh, for everybody again I will always go back to the one thing when I was high school principal. Came up in accreditation. The number one thing that came up in accreditation, strangers came from other schools came here and studied the school and

they looked at the environment. The first thing they always said is the relationships between the teachers and the kids is unbelievable and to me that's been an easy horse to ride because it's everywhere. I mean every single school every week and that's the strength in what we see in our building. It's not about, you know, the,

the, the neighborhood classroom is. You know, your, your children are in school and it's a small school and they feel that kids will find their way. Kids will absolutely find their way, and I think again I think some of the, the, the angst comes from the adults, and I

understand that, you know, some of us went to small schools. I didn't, I went to a rather large schools, but, um, some of us went to smaller schools growing up and some of us in town went to these schools. Uh, I had a conversation in Honeycomb with a gentleman

yesterday, and he's like, it's not the same school I went to 35 years ago. You know, so that's, that's also a reality. I mean think about it, Buer doesn't even have a library. We took the classroom over to put a library space into the Buer school. That's weird. So in, you know, where's an

elementary school without a library? Uh, so we built this so that we have 5 libraries plus a central library, so each of these kids now has a library right in their neighborhood, right there in their neighborhood and their learning space. So I think that the way this has been designed is super

thoughtful, um, and there were meetings with teachers, the visionary group. You know, please fire all the people to kind of bring that together. So I really think the idea of this being big school is not a problem for, for the children and for our staff. They will, they will make it and make it hum.

I know they will. Did I answer your question? So I get passionate about that one. Hi, um, I'm Bill,

01:24:03,369	uh, I'm Bill Singer from 20 North Street. First of all, I wanna thank you for the, the great presentation, the Q&A. Um, I have several questions and I agree. Teachers are great. My, I have a graduating senior

01:24:22,500	I have a 5th grader moving on to middle school next year and, and I have.

01:24:28,829	uh, so one of the things that she does after school is she goes to Cutler, so she meets up with her friends in the Cutler the after school fights fights over there and meets up and has a lot of like fun time and lots of memories and all that. My the biggest question and I mean I came.

I came to know this a little bit late, you know, is, um, how did, how did the architecture of this come into being, you know, because I, I look at it it looks for me, to me it looks a little incongruous, um, to the rest of the town town feeling and it because this

morning also in preparation of coming. Here I also quickly looked at the, the, the Manchester somebody mentioned Manchester also consolidated their school so I'm look, I looked at that school as well, um, so this has a very like a feel of, you know, so I mean I I know I sound a little, you know,

sorry about that, but don't just curious about and is is the design will be fixed or. The altar. Yeah, so where we're at now is we designed this around the neighborhoods. I'm gonna go up the stairs again here. Um, these neighborhoods were important piece of the puzzle

for us to answer the question you had about it being kind of the this big place. Um, each of these neighborhoods there's one here on the 1st floor, one on the 2nd floor, 1st grade, 2nd grade, one here on the 1st floor, one on the 2nd floor, then one single floor back there, so 5 different neighborhoods where

kids would go to school, um, and they, you know, for, for example. First grade all would be right here and they would literally stay their classrooms are here, their supports are here, the special programs are here, the gym is here, the cafeteria is here the music room here so we designed it specifically to

mimic the small school field within that space, um, and as kids grow older, so 5th graders currently work with 1st graders or 2nd graders as mentors, um, and part of that is still. Built into this program as we as we developed, you know, the, the neighborhood feel we can mix our neighborhoods we can

you can put 2nd grade and 3rd graders in one neighborhood, you could put 4th graders and 5th graders in one neighborhood. You could separate them out individually and keep them apart, um, and I think the, the whole space of kids coming and playing, there's still everything just moves to the

right hand side where kids play and hang out. I, I do see a lot of parking space. I mean, I bring this up often and also so, so the. 5 Soccer fields of them are in the softball. Yeah, yeah.

01:27:25,300	Which is where they are now. The soccer fields are in the outfield of the baseball diamond that's there, softball, baseball diamonds there that the little league uses. There are 2 fields there, um, there, there's 5 in this new in this new layout with the other 2 are down on the right hand far right hand side.

So this they're huge size, uh, soccer is a big deal in town, so we have, we have a lot more demand for our soccer fields. Uh, it also, uh, happens to deal with soccer in the fall, baseball, softball in the spring, so that, that's a good opportunity and it's a play space for kids.

You want to jump in? These guys want to jump in. I think you talk. I wanted to tell you how Doug Roberts, the JCP architecture, the, uh, yeah, yeah,

01:28:16,829	so the idea behind the architecture is we've looked around the community closer to my mouth. OK, now you can hear me. Thank you. Uh, we looked at the community, we wanted to break down the scale of the building, so we wanted. We use familiar forms which are the gabled forms of houses, and

again, you'll see that each classroom wing are two gabled roofs to break down the massing of those wings, so it's a more residential, comfortable scale for the young learners. In addition, buildings integrated into the site, you have to deal with the topography, so each of those components is no more than 2 stories. So again, the architect.

01:28:58,000	But again it was very intentional to break down the scale of the building so it was more appropriate for the residential neighborhood and in keeping with the community. Is that the midday?

01:29:11,029	I couldn't tell you exactly what

01:29:19,869	time of day that the sun was. We have solar studies if you want. We have complete solar studies of. The full year, uh, glass studies, solar studies on what the building, how the building would act and react and the things that they designed in to take advantage of light, the

natural light was a key, uh, design function for the team. The other aspect is the materials again, we wanted to use materials that were common throughout the community and try to have it be better integrated into the neighborhoods in the Hamilton communities. I think you're a softball here. I don't think you hit it too hard.

If, uh, there were so many meetings, uh, where we discussed, so I'm passionate about it because I love. I love driving through your Hamilton my neighborhood's beautiful. Um, there was presentations put together by the architect for the building committee and anyone who wanted to, uh, come and I believe they're online where they drove.

Around Hamilton Leon and they had representative pictures that they showed the building. Here's a typical barn structure that we see here in Hamilton Lemon and here's a typical older house, here's a typical newer house, and then they showed the materials and they helped the building committee come around to picking a brick type, uh uh clador type.

profile that fit the neighborhood. It's tough to see on a 3D image, but they did it, and I think it's up on one of the barcodes if you hate it that presentation on materials and how you came about was fantastic. It was diving into the community to really look at

what, what it was made of, what it looked like, and then to try to complement it the best you could on a larger scale. I think the other, the other important piece, I'm gonna use my voice again, the other important piece is where it's. Located on the lowest point of the the property right now the

current school is up on the top. Uh, this, this school is down low, so taking advantage of that, that, uh, height change in just the topography so the building slowly climbs back up the hill instead of being this, you know, that building was on top of the other hill I think

everybody would say, wow, that is a tower, not a building, but this is designed purposely to to answer that question for people in the neighborhood. Including the materials, um, anything that that they they brought pictures of houses, barns, stables and try to integrate light materials into, uh, and a lot of us.

One of the big things we wanted to have was a lot of natural light, uh, for kids and staff, um, and, and the rooms are designed to do that as well.

01:31:45,000	You're welcome.

01:31:49,869	uh, so I had a question to follow up on the security thing you about a job, you know, you were talking about you really interested in making a new project of, of working on the security of the schools and that this would again be an investment, uh, in

the structure, um, you know, one of the things that he'd spoken of in previous uh meetings was that we're limited by the state on. What size project you do to improve any of these buildings before it triggers a requirement that you do the $45 million code compliance. So I think the number that you

had said before is about $1.5 million. So if you tried to improve the security of the structures to to more than $1.5 million you'd have to do the full 45 to $40 million. I was just wondering if the, you know, the owner's rep or uh would be able to tell.

Is there an exemption for that sort of stuff so you're just talking about renovation. So if you're going in to do a repair renovation, right? Well, if you said, look, we, we want to improve the security of the structure, and it's gonna cost $2 million to do that and

and the way you explained it previously was now as soon as you spend $1.5 million you have to spend $50 million. You have to do all the coal. So I'm wondering is there an exemption for a project like that or do you have to do it? So state law requires us.

To if we if we open up a building and get into the 20% of the value of the building, how the town values it, so the school is a great example because I looked that one up. Uh, it's like $8.4 million is the value of the schools to the town of Hamilton.

Um, maybe we can talk about that later, but no, uh, the $8.4 million if you're looking at 20%, that's where the 1.6% came from. So if you start doing those repairs. Um, that triggers two things fire code, which would be sprinkler, and, uh, ADA compliance. So now you're into fire code and ADA compliance and you're,

you're really making some significant changes within the building, um, and I think it becomes a mishmash if you don't go out at all at once. So I think, you know, it does trigger, uh, updates the code and um. Fire fire safety in the fire department is the determining

factor ultimately from what I've read in the law, but um we had to do a sprinkle upgrade in the winter school already part of the winter school part of the Coer school, the newest part has has sprinkler, but you'd have to do the rest. So it would get expensive really quickly the exemption, I don't know.

Yeah, I'm not sure either. I don't know. It doesn't mean there's. and basically compensating that out loud too is that

01:34:29,369	you're, you'll be asking your authority out of jurisdiction, your police, fire a building code official to take an exemption to a statewide building code, structural code, ADA code, that's not likely to happen. So the upshot of this is that if you're a voter that thinks that you can vote. And then piecemeal do, you know, small improvements over

time to these structures you won't be able to do a small improvement because it'll trigger a complete, you know, requirement to, to bring it up to fire code, bring up ADA code, which is the 4540 some odd million dollars. I'm not comfortable answering on behalf of the code official, but it is the jurisdiction.

They have to make the call. And it is based on an assessed value and value of work and it's kind of hard to get out from under again, who wants to be the guy that says, we'll we'll look the other way or not and then something happens. So that's the practical nature of it as well.

Is that something you really want to do, to seek an exemption? Yeah, you run into issues, you run into issues with with some of the union groups as well, um. You know, if you do a project, try and skirt around something, so plumbing is a good example. There are school districts that try to, uh, build new fields,

build new tracks, multi-million dollar projects, and said, we're not gonna build the bathrooms because we can't afford it. Well, the plumbers union stepped up and filed a claim with the state and said, Hey, wait a minute, they have to because code says bobo bobo. So this, this. More than just localized watching I think there are

there are a lot of other uh groups watching as well so I think you know we're very careful now what we do we replace only the windows in the middle school, not all the frames, because of, because we didn't want to start triggering something on a school on a new on our newest school which is

26 years old.

01:36:19,829	Other questions?

01:36:24,729	All right, so I wanna thank everybody for coming tonight. I hope we've answered, uh, everybody's questions. We tried to get the questions to keep popping up in the community, uh, most often, certainly if you have questions, let us know, send me an email, jump on our FAQ site and drop the question in there.

Um, we'll be happy to work with our, our team to answer questions and get, get them up we try to get them out within 48 hours, um, of, of receiving them, but there's a ton of information on the website. There is a ton of information. There's a ton of information on both Fincoms have done. Uh, unbelievable work.

The, the, the, uh, video you can watch is the one video Finn and his team did, uh, February 5th and February 12th meetings of the FinO are, are pretty informative. If you want to learn about two things, uh, why this project makes sense and math, uh, because they get into regression theory and I had to

go back to some of my college days and think about, wait a minute, how does that work again? So, uh, thank you to. And thank you to John and his team for doing the work, uh, as well, so you have two different bigcoms, two different communities, two different financial situations, both coming to the same conclusion, uh, 22,

kind of independent groups if you will, they don't work together. They, they've come to these conclusions that two separate times actually, uh, because John had been on the committee, he had asked literally a million questions and had a lot of, uh, had a lot of fodder to work with.

Finn came on, uh, you came on last year, right, as the chair, yeah, so Finn's on a ton of work to really get the numbers out there. Take a take a look at those. Those are there, the public, they're on the websites, um, they're, you know, we can we come to the meetings, ask questions.

Uh, these are public meetings we're out there, uh, we're not hiding. We wanna make sure and then you gotta get, you know, we, we gotta get to this next town meeting. We have an opportunity to, uh, decide what we're gonna do. As as communities and what we're gonna do on behalf of our

children, so my hope is that we've answered all of your questions. I thank you for coming here tonight on this rainy, windy night and certainly, uh, safe travels and Tom meeting is now the 9th. So both of them are on the 9th. Hamilton is here at the high school and the gym from what I

heard at 6:30 on the night. One of them will be at the Buer school, uh, in the gym notorium it's called the gym notorium. Uh, where they always meet, uh, same night, same time, I will not be able to be at both, but I will do my best, uh, to, to figure out how to do that.

So, uh, we want to make sure people are there to answer questions and help out with any issues that may pop up. But if you have any in between, please reach out and let us know.