School Committee Meeting - August 10, 2026

It is 7pm on August 10th, 2026 and I'm going to try and make the best use of everyone's time and call this meeting to order. I am not sure who I should kick it to, but Dan, I see your face on the screen. So I'm hoping it's you.

Thank you very much. We are... Do we have to take a roll?

Yes, can we do a roll call?

Oh, my apologies. Thank you, Leron. Thank you Erica. Um all right we are going to uh I don't see the oh superintendent can you call the roll? If not I can.

Erica, can you call the roll? Sure thing.

Thank you.

President Davis? Here. Member Biton? Here Member Lippens? Member Eldridge? Present. Member Green?

Here.

Dr. Stellman? Mayor Wilson?

Present

Member Biton?

Here.

I think Dr. Stellman, we just couldn't hear her but she's present so we have a quorum.

Can you hear me? We can now.

Yes. Perfect. We have a

Thank you. I'm also here. Alright, now we will go back to... So the point of this meeting is to... To keep the MSBA process moving along, that's what is a special meeting because we're focusing on one thing. We are going to do some separate grant approvals because we want to also keep district finances moving along. but this is the main goal of this and so just to set the stage a little bit for my colleagues we have you know had a ton of documents shared with us it was A Trove. So I'm hoping the folks at Perkins Eastman will, you know, tell us which ones are the ones that are, you and people who will be watching this later.

And then to my colleagues, this is our time to be asking questions. We will be voting on this in... A week. My understanding, and someone please correct me if I'm wrong, is that what we'll be voting on is authorizing the chair and the mayor to sign this to submit to MSBA. And so with that, I will let the Perkins Eastman team take it away.

Great. Pass it to me, but I'm going to really pass it to Lisa and Bob who are gonna walk through some of the work to this date including options for your selection and the impact on the education plan so with that Lisa

Thank you all for being here on a summer night and also for putting some time aside in the next couple of weeks to review. The PSR Report that we sent over. There is a cover sheet that goes along with the PSR report that kind of identifies the content and the things that are in the report for your for your review. I don't know if you want to add anything to that Bob before I kick into the presentation?

No, I think the cover letter does highlight what I would consider the three more critical pieces of the document, of the submission. And that's the educational program which is The program written by the district of current and proposed educational needs. The space summary which is the companion to that, which tabulates all the specific spaces that you need and then the design options which have been assessed in a preferred plan is being put forth. And so those are really what I would say are the key documents.

Very good. Alright, I will get started then. All right, so for tonight's agenda we're going to summarize the PSR process review the program updates review the psr options and evaluation matrix that was done by the school building committee and then we're going to present the preferred schematic so just a quick look at the overall project schedule uh we have a few weeks left to complete our module three which is the feasibility study Then we're going to begin module four in September, which is schematic design. And this phase will take about six months to get us to February when we make our next submission to the MSBA. This is our PSR work plan.

During the PSR phase, we did a subsurface investigation to evaluate the soil conditions at 115 Sycamore Street Refinements were made to the educational program and space summary which Bob will speak to in a few minutes. We developed building system options and sustainability goals. The design team continued studying building options for a 690 as well as 925 student school for both 115 Sycamore Street and 201 Willow Street, which was a request by the MSBA. So 11 building options along with conceptual system narratives were issued to two cost estimators for pricing. We reconciled the two estimates the last week of July and developed our PSR budget.

Then the school building committee evaluated the options and voted on a preferred option. All of this work is now compiled into the PSR report, which is now a draft and we're just making all the final tweaks to it now before the submission at the end of the month. So we've also continued to meet with the city engineering department and mobility team to develop a plan for traffic improvements at the Winterhill site. The process will involve a series of tasks, starting with comprehensive transportation impacts studied. then that gets followed by mobility management plan and then a transportation access plan so this work is going to have to coincide with the schematic design phase All right, so any questions before we move into the program updates?

Very good. I can't see hands, so I'll let...

Yeah, I'm going to ask anyone to either unmute and say something or I mean, you know, robo hands or whatever we call it. We can do those but if that's not working for you feel free to unmute.

All right. I'll hand it over to you, Bob.

Okay, so I'll explain into those three critical documents or components. The educational program which I've already described was submitted to the MSBA They reviewed it for over a month and then returned it with some comments. So, it's pretty common they scour this they ask a lot of questions particularly if there are any changes to anything that you're doing now, like there's a proposed schedule change for example because more specials are planned to be offered Right now their specials are also known as Unified Arts, Art, Music, PE, Theater. So right now you have five offered at the current Winter Hill that fit really nicely into a five-day cycle or schedule. So there's a plan to have eight or more.

Which means there would need to be some sort of rotation. So that's the effect of what kind of changes would be happening to the school schedule. So the MSBA had a lot of questions about that and how it would be implemented, and how that affects space needs. They do question, quite typically, teaching and learning delivery methods. And so the idea to really get more supportive with the hands-on interdisciplinary flexible Types of spaces that are needed, the MSBA asked plenty of questions about that. They requested a little bit more about the teaching and learning overview, which was referenced in the document but maybe wasn't clear where that resided so that got clarified. and they kind of this was neat. They kind of asked what is the meaning behind the community innovation aspect of the school? And that

was probably already written in the educational program they may have missed it but opportunity to really connect it to these expanded Specials programs to the community aspect that, you know, we are very much focused on for this school. And so that was important. They wanted some clarifications on administration, support services and the request for professional development space. which I'll get to how we're going to provide that. They also questioned if just one pre-K classroom was enough and upon reflection you'll see that in when I get to the next section, that has also been reconsidered. As far as the edits and refinements that were made to the educational program They revolved around answering these questions. There was discussion or comment that

We're not certain of the schedule right now, but we're going to continue to have dialogue on that. And so explaining that process and discussions would continue was a part of it We did re-examine the kindergarten class sizes where Somerville has a max of 25. We were using an 18 student average, which is much, much lower than that. And that was generating six kindergarten classrooms. So we since right-sized it a little bit better. We're using a 22 student average. which results in five kindergarten classrooms and we took what would have been the sixth kindergarten classroom and were using that as a second pre-k classroom. There was also expanded description of world language being maybe offered to elementary grades in the future. So we took a look at that.

Sixth grade science and digital literacy, computer science labs that were needed explained a little bit clearer and this idea of adding an exploratory culinary program was something that was new and refined in this version of the educational program. as well as I think I'd already mentioned the need for professional development space. So the next slide goes into what that means from a space summary point of view. And you can ignore the light blue on the far right, that's just explaining How the scheduling of specials results in a certain number of rooms, what the logic is. But for the space summary, the MSBA asked us to move world language. We included it with specials because that's how it was described to us, but the MSBA wants to see that in core academics so it's the same space just relocated

They had us move the theater in the health rooms from the specials category into what they call the other categories. And that's a little bit concerning because whatever lands in the other category at the end of the space summary often is not funded by the MSBA. And what's important here and was part of our response is the reason why you have different types of spaces that the MSBA doesn't recognize. is that you may teach your specials like art or music one day a week where the MSBA would expect that to be two days a week You do it one day a week because you offer many more specials like health, like theater, like the digital literacy. So... Really, these should be funded spaces and we're going to keep our eye on this and we'll continue to communicate that to the MSBA. It's basically the effect of a second art room or second music room. It really is just different rooms.

In a very small piece, they asked us to move the mother's room or their nursing room into the grossing total, which means it's just like toilet rooms or other spaces that come out of the gross square footage. They don't get listed as programmed. So the changes that we actually made to the space summary were, we added the second pre-K classroom. We reduced kindergarten by one We studied whether a second world language room would be needed, and it is not because world language, even if it's expanded to the elementary grades, is not pre-K to 8th. So it would be grades one through six, so we can do that with one room. We know that we're providing STE spaces and that effectively covers the sixth grade science needs. It also covers the tech engineering special need for a space. and what used to be the tech engineering

space listed in the summary we now have relabeled to be the exploratory culinary so all these spaces are provided they just maybe are landing in different places on the space summary The Media Center square footage is very generous, and we are able to use some of that as we normally would have a computer lab in a media center for the digital literacy computer science lab. It also gives us enough room to create the dedicated professional development spaces, which is important because if we just listed it separately, it would likely not be funded. And then a few other things. We looked at the nurse and the SFLC to see if they needed to grow in size, they seem adequate But we did add an outside of school time second small group workroom. So some really in the end, that small group workroom was about the only thing added. Everything else was a trade or move in the space summary.

Any questions before I go on? on the Educational Program of the Space Summary.

Member Biton? Thank you. Through you, Chair Ackman. I don't know if this is appropriate now and if you think it should be discussed later, I'm fine. But I'm curious what is sort of the educational perspective why we would go from a tech engineering orientation to a culinary orientation that seems like a surprising shift and again if it should be discussed later I'm fine with that well I can answer high level and I don't know if the um

Somerville Public Schools wants to follow up with anything, but we're not replacing it. We still have a tech engineering lab and The exploratory culinary is, I guess added. It's not an added space we've just reclaimed the spaces that were labeling as engineering So my understanding is that was discussed with an educational leadership team about what career technical kind of strands would be good feeders into the upper grades. into the high school and this was thought to be one that would work well but I see Reuben has his hand up.

Superintendent

Thank you through the chair. I think, Bob, you said it right in conversations with Jim Hatchie at the CTE. One of the things that he recommended was to actually establish One option that can be scalable and that can have a through line into high school, and culinary met that requirement. But it's not a replacement of the science and engineering requirements Category is just what is the component that can actually start in the middle school. We don't have any middle school CTE programs, Offerings. And so this was one that is somewhat of a low-hanging fruit. The sky's the limit when it comes to that, but I think we wanted to make sure that we don't set this up for failure. But do something that can be actually scale up as it moves up to the high school.

Thank you.

Yeah, and I can add that we did discuss making sure that this was a very flexible and adaptable space long term. So we plan on doing that.

Laura, I assume you're back in the queue. All right. So Leron and then Laura.

Thank you, Chair. Through you. Quick question in the same vein as Rep. Pitone offered. Can you describe the... So I did notice that the media center was really big. And I'm... I'm curious what programming is happening there, what the educational vision for that space is and sort of why the footprint was chosen for that.

I assume that's another superintendent question, but...

I can describe that. I know Bob will do a better job when it comes to the facility itself, but one of the things that we always struggle in when it Thank you very much. Often libraries have that functionality in which or the library media center has that functionality that allows you to also after school have spaces in which you bring the entire faculty together. Thank you.

All right, Leron, that was... You got your question answered? Lovely. Yes, thank you. Thank you, Leran, you were great with that.

Thank you, through you Chair. My other question was about I'm not, I want to be clear. I don't have anything that a concern like having more pre-K. I can understand why we'd want more pre K classrooms. However, also was curious about the impact to our early childhood program Building, which from my understanding we've had it's been somewhat underutilized because we redistributed classrooms throughout the The district to try to meet community members needs and so I was curious about thoughts about the impact on The Capuano School by adding yet another pre-K classroom that didn't exist, Central West. Again I'm not anti it, I just want to understand the impact to the Capuana school which again I had the understanding that we were Continuing to take, you know, it was an underutilized building at some level but I could be wrong.

Superintendent?

Yeah, through the chair. I don't know if I would use the word underutilized. We're working in collaboration with Principal Barros to repurpose the five classrooms that will have to be reconfigured as a result of the change, as you mentioned. and so I mean I've been multiple times I go to the the um Capuano and believe me other spaces are maximized there because usually when you have a small groups and you provide instruction for students who actually either require early intervention or require some extra support. The way the spaces are configured at the Capuano I think are very well utilized. The second question, or the second point around The need or what is the impact that having pre-K or a greater capacity for pre-k at the new facility will have? That's a great question.

We know that we have waiting lists when it comes to pre-K. They are always maxed out. Families are always in search for more pre-k, but we don't have the capacity So I think that in terms of that need that we have currently across the district is one that i think will be addressing a gap that we have. And as far as the impact that it's going to have throughout the district, I think that does a question that will be discussed as we look at how we reorganize the entire district including the issue of zoning and decatchment zones. So I think that in terms of the number of students that we have, in terms The future enrollment is also a question that has come up multiple times, and I guess touches a little bit on your question. But we have multiple and sites that are coming, housing that is coming online. And I'm quite sure that it will have...

It will require us to address some of those capacity issues but... I think in terms of that, our numbers continue to be stable and I don't have a concern at this point. And from the feedback we have gotten around the projections as well, it seems to be that we will continue to enroll at capacity.

Thank you. Rep Stellman? Thank you, through the chair.

Birds-eye view process question. So there's a lot of... Obviously, we need to have a plan if we're going to budget and we need all these details. I'm just thinking realistically speaking as the time horizon for this project is It's normal, it's long. And so I'm just wondering in these processes how much wiggle room is there if we learn something new about I just want to understand in other districts who have gone through these very big projects, which are very expensive. Does it typically happen that there has to be some later changes that come back to us? And how does that work?

Thank you. Great question, I would put that to the Perkins Eastman team,

Yeah, I can start to answer this. I don't know if others can add to it but if I understand the question well enough The things starting with the enrollment, that is already a certified enrollment. It's an agreement with the MSBA. The program is being vetted now, and ultimately when we complete schematic design in the next phase, the MSBA will issue its final comments on what they will fund, what they won't. Any final changes would need to be made and as schematic design wraps up, the MSBA will enter into a project scope and funding agreement. and that's a locked in agreement with the board, the MSBA Board. And that is the scope. That's not changeable they actually want to... They question

So deeply the needs now and they support them because they want to make sure the investment is wise for the foreseeable future. I mean, they know everybody knows things will change and Rooms may be intended for one use, may have to become something else in the future. But they're locking into the program. They expect flexibility and adaptability in what we do. Under all pressures, including budget the educational program must be carried out. So our design, we will look for other ways to address challenges but we must support with this design and construction the educational program.

Thank you Superintendent.

Just for perspective through the chair, we know that all of the buildings that we have are above the capacity that they were designed. So the high school is often asking for more space in how they configure the programming that they offer. As you know, the East has more students than the number that we anticipated. So if the context is a reference, we can say that consistently Somerville has been able to actually not only address the capacity for which buildings were created but also We find ourselves looking for more space to do the work that needs to be done.

Thank you. All right, I think questions were addressed. So please keep going. That is a diagram.

This is the more exciting stuff, but this is what's called an organizational diagram or a bubble diagram. It doesn't represent how many floors you have or how big your building is it really is just showing relationships And so what you can see here are a main office that's up front with visibility of approach and entrance into the school. You'll see a dotted line that captures a whole bunch of spaces. All the green and yellow spaces touch it or are inside it, so that is the community Use and Shared Use Zone. So Arts, Tech, really all your specials are in there. The Cafeteria Commons is there. Your SFLC outside of school time spaces are there. Health and wellness, including gymnasium are touched or accessed from that zone as well as the media center.

So that's the goal is to create these relationships for the community, for these connections. extended use and outside of school time. And then you can see there are three blue Orbs or bubbles that are very deliberately the grade level clusters pre-K through three, four through six and seven through eight. that helps scale the build and the experience and make age appropriate space. But then if you look inside any one of the grades, so eighth grade as an example, you'll see that includes integrated special education space collaboration space Newcomer Academy Space, and a cluster of classrooms. And I will say, this is a diagram. There are not necessarily five classrooms per grade. There's a four point whatever classroom per grade that turns out to be five for many and maybe four for others.

Some of these spaces like the Pre-K K certainly want to connect to age specific play space, the health and wellness as well as the cafeteria for recess. And the community wants to connect the play fields very, very well so That's really what this diagram is describing. You can see that there is the A slash S as admin and support space, so there is distributed clusters of administration and support for each one of those grade level experiences. Um. and I think that pretty much explains it. The next slide shows the reality of a floor plan, not yet okay this shows you an axon which is also a diagram there were many ways to organize the grade level clusters This shows you the massing and so there are challenges with how many floors we have, what levels are at grade or have access to ground level.

and what floors you know stack on top of each other so this shows you that the desired relationship is it is vertical pre-k to three in a stacked cluster There's inside the floor plans I'll get to in a moment. There are vertical connections, visibility between those floors to make them feel like a connected group Right above that is seventh and eighth grade, that will have their own stairwell connecting them. So the idea is that seventh and eight graders do not need to travel through the lower grade levels pre-K to three um all the shared stuff uh shared spaces science arts tech and specials are all in the center so you know this is creating those experiences and then on the right we have grades four five and six stacked also with kind of visible vertical connections. You might ask why is seven eight above pre-k to three?

The thinking there was it's not only the way that the floor levels and the stacking work, but there is actually a different relationship between upper grade levels in younger grade levels when they tend to be close in age. Like if it were Seventh, right above fifth and sixth. It's a different relationship than this one which would be more of a mentoring type of relationship between upper grades and lower grades so This was considered the preference for how we organize the grades within school. And then, the next slide takes you into the realities of the floor plan so

Bob, may I interrupt with a quick question? So you said that these are the preferences. Whose preferences for the placement of the grades?

So starting with meeting as an educational leadership team and then communicating that to the school building committee who fully supported that.

Thank you.

So this shows lower level on the upper left, and then Level 1, Level 2. And then down below that, Level 3, 4, and 5 So these show the grade level connections that you saw in the axon, and then the yellow and green spaces you can see are pretty much in the middle. You'll see clusters of red which are the admin and support spaces that are grouped somewhere within the Pre-K to 3, somewhere within 4 through 6, and somewhere within 7 to 8. It is a complex site. The shape of the site makes it, of course, tricky. The multiple terrace levels make it a challenge and I think This works really well, better than I expected. I'm not responsible but the team did a great job to keep these relationships connected

Last thing I'll point out in the plan is you can see the sort of triangular wedge shape that shows up in each of the grade level clusters. And that's where We have kind of shared collaboration space in the middle and maybe some visual vertical connections. So, the idea is to not just have a corridor with doors off of it what's referred to as cells and bells but to create a neighborhood and a community for each grade level. And that's pretty much what I have in the show. Question, hand up?

Thank you, Rep Biton.

Thank you, Chair. So I noticed for the lower level floor plan, and this jumped out to me when I was reviewing the document before tonight. But am I just first part through you chair? Am I correct in understanding this as a basement or can you translate lower level floor to me?

Yeah, we can go back to the axon, Lisa. might be the easiest way to describe it. So you can see that that lower level is kind of exposed and daylit at the lower Brown level along Medford Street, along Sycamore where the road slopes up. It does start to Create what you would say is a basement and what we actually have done to avert that or mitigate it You can't see earlier versions of this, but we shifted the entire pre-KK wing to the right so that we were not creating a... Aboff, Ackman.

and kind of the sidewalk level that's going to bring light down. It will be, you know, a challenge but we feel that we've left the capability to really make it a nice space and really an asset The kindergarten grade levels?

Okay, if I may. So thank you. That was very helpful and I actually sort of, I don't know how but I teased that out of the way it was drawn so kudos to you and your team. and thank you for confirming what I assumed. So in that case, and I trust that you and your skilled staff are going to design something that is appealing, that has embedded light. But for my own purposes and when we're gonna be approving something hopefully in a week, I did not see in the document a visualization. So this is a very nice floor plan, but without being able to sort of visualize what that's going to look like and Feel Like.

I wonder if there's some way that you can provide us with a kind of an interior view of that classroom, what that might look like. So I know that's an ask but that would really help me make the best decision, the best informed decision I could.

Yeah, I can say that we can definitely provide something But we also know that this is feasibility level, so it's diagrammatic. We've left ourselves with what we believe are the right proportions to make something work but we have a long way to go in design and development of what it exactly is so we don't have a detailed level maybe like what you're asking for but um we are you know continuing to explore that and intend to in schematic design. For decision purposes, we can show you some of what We have diagrammatically to create that 18-foot wide zone proportionally to make sure that it's something that we can work with. I don't know if that is...

Chair, may I just follow up quickly? Sure. Thank you. So yeah, I think that sounds like a good start and I understand this is part of the process So I'd welcome anything that you could provide on that. I guess just so you have a full understanding of what I'm looking for, Before we get on this ride, I really want to know where we're going. So, you know, I want to make sure that... with whichever student is in this space that they are going to feel that it's a, you know a joyful space and I don't know that i can get that from an architectural rendering but just something that can directionally give me that sense so take that for what you will

I'll say as a follow-up on that one, as someone who taught in a classroom without windows, taught second graders and it's not kindergarten but it was immensely difficult. The natural sunlight in the classroom. and windows out to the world is something I too would be a strong proponent of. Rep. Pitone, since Rep. Eldridge hasn't asked a question yet, are you? Okay, Rep. Aldridge, it's all you and then Rep. Petone

Thank you, I appreciate it. Through the chair. I'm wondering if someone could shine a little bit more light on the placement of those special ed classrooms? I love that they're drawn in here and it's all provided for us to look at but I'm wondering if someone could share a little bit more on the rationale of the placement of them and where like how that feeds into the larger idea of inclusivity and bringing all of our students together.

Yeah, I can do some of that. We don't have them all labeled but we have AIM classrooms for every grade level that are dispersed. We have a multitude, we have three OTPT rooms that I think each one wanted to land within a grade-level cluster and we have a bunch of small group rooms as well that are clustered. The overarching goal here and something that the MSBA and the DESE will want to ensure happens is that we disperse them evenly with academics and not migrate them you know in pairings as much as we can avoid that or at the ends of corridors or you know in a place that could be stigmatized so This is about as healthy of a disbursement as we could. We also wanted to meet the needs

Every pair of classrooms connected with a special education support or small group space between them. So it's a trick of how all the geometries come together, but overall They are many of the spaces age or grade level cluster specific and intentionally dispersed. Does that help?

It does a little bit. I appreciate that, and I appreciate the intentionality behind it. One of the things that came to mind, I guess, that prompted the ask for the question was I'm seeing of that a little bit here. I don't know if there's still room for playment, excuse me playing with that a If that's not what we're seeing here, but I do notice like the end, like, you know, at the ends of all of fourth grade. Here's, you

Yeah, it's tricky. It really is like a puzzle, but I could see... And the other thing I should say we're trying to do here is have things stack as much as they can so it's a smart... Thank you very much. Move some of the special education classrooms and shift a pair. It looks like there's some wiggle room to do that and still keep... Keep special education spaces dispersed without being doubled up but not a lot of opportunity. I can see for example Grade 3 on the far left, on the bottom. If we shifted the two left-hand side third grades down to the end of the corridor and moved the

Purple shaded spaces, not that one on the other side of the corridor. Inbound, that might help disperse a little bit more evenly. So something like that we can... definitely do but um when we track it up on all floors it sometimes then clusters a bunch of special education spaces together so we will keep working on this and there's probably some wiggle room with what we do here.

Thank you I appreciate the information and the willing to like kind of re-explore and encourage inclusivity amongst the classrooms and grades thank you so much for all the time

Thank you. Yeah, and to sort of build on what Rep Eldridge said, as long as we are sure that you're also getting special educators like our district experts input on it. As much as you can. All right, Rep Pitone, thank you for your patience.

Thank you through the chair. First I do want to compliment When we were looking at the elevations and looking at group clustering it seems like a very Creative and elegant solution that really represents these clusters or grade spans, or I don't know learning communities. I'm not sure what language you guys have landed on but I just wanted to compliment that because now I can visualize this idea of having these different developmentally appropriate groupings of classrooms and enabling thank you to show that image the students to have a more intimate experience with students their age. So I just wanted to compliment that first. The second part is just a question that's related a bit to what Representative Eldridge brought up about inclusivity

and I understand this is not a detailed design so it's really more me vocalizing something that's of concern um you know often There's this interest in open spaces, group spaces, windows. However we also have students that are sensory sensitive right especially with the AIM program and so you know maybe you could just talk a little bit briefly about that push-pull. So I absolutely agree with The highlighting of Representative Eldridge saying, you know we don't want our students who have special needs to kind of be off in the corner. We wanted them to be integrated and we want them to also, and we want to be sensitive to those sensory needs. And so like I'll just use the example Beautiful, beautiful space.

The H room at the high school where the cafeteria is for some students who have sensory needs walking into that space would be really challenging and so if you could just speak a little bit to that push and pull about inclusion but also Being sensitive to sensory needs, that would be helpful.

Absolutely. Lisa, can you go back to the plan? Yep. So some of the strategies I can point to in the plan and some of them you'll just have to imagine along with us I can tell you that we overall, that we're thinking about students approaching the school from outside coming in and kind of what anxieties and the feeling of arrival how much we can You know, possibly make it a comfortable arrival and one where you don't feel like you're very close to cars or noise. We can't control everything but we know that or at least our experience is, you know, sharp angles and overwhelming patterns can do that as well. So we try to soften the approach make it more biophilic integrate landscape into it and then upon entry into the school, which is on the far right upper plan. We have scattered throughout the school

um what we're calling uh i don't know what we call them actually respite spaces but if a lobby is noisy there is a quiet portion and we're not deep into the design to know whether that has a door, whether it's separate room you know We've heard comments that, well if we make it too small it gets to be a labeled room and we want it to just feel like another piece of the lobby that happens to be quiet. If we go... Oh, you can't see it in this plan. A little bit. If you go down to the middle upper plan, the cafeteria, You can see there's like a light gray line through a third of it and what that is, we actually have a cafeteria space that's of a certain size

We have a line that separates the playgroup space that starts before the end of the school day, but within that space actually there's a bump out and that's intended to be we don't know how enclosed it'll be but a quiet calf. So that type of thing we're thinking about. The gymnasium as well, you can't see it's, you know, it'll be developed in design but we have a connected adaptive PE portion to it so an alternative to a big loud noisy gym not quite the volume or the height of space we can also use the margins of the gym intentionally to create different zones We have scattered throughout the school what we're calling these respite spaces so that there's... There's a place to kind of not be overwhelmed. We also employ strategies, I don't know if we'll be able to do it on this school but on other schools we've designed where

Even if you have a large calf and there's assembly, you have quiet calf but the assembly is where everything's happening. We've created window boxes from a floor above and the sound can be can be kind of piped in, but you don't have to be within the space to be part of or participate in a large group assembly. so there's a lot more design to do but some of this we have planned in the program and thought through and some of it will be developing and keep in mind this is only feasibility study it's not Necessarily what I would call design. So schematic design is where you'll see things really come to life.

Can I quickly follow up? Of course. First of all, thank you. I enjoy having the opportunity to just vocalize a lot of this stuff. And again, I'm seeing this push-pull. It's really, really challenging because we want inclusion. However, we also wanna be sensitive to the needs. So thank you for sharing that last question and again if this is too much detail or not relevant right now we have in most of our elementary schools Not all of them, but several of them where we have the gym and the cafeteria sort of connected with one of those kind of rolling doors that can open and close. And the ideas in those events are times This is almost the opposite of sensory sensitivity. We've used those larger spaces sometimes for events, and I'm curious just the way this is formatted it looks like it's not set up in that way. I'm not either pro or con to that design but i'm curious what went into making that decision, or is that not what I'm reading here? Is that these are two separate spaces

They are separate. As I had mentioned, the site does present a lot of challenges and some of the goals of, for example, coming into the main lobby and we've got... SFLC space and we've got multiple levels that are trying to connect to create these zones like the community use zone can't be on one floor. We just can't Get what we need on one floor. So there are these kind of vertical connections so some of it is driven by sight but this is also one of the reasons why we have sized the cafeteria larger than what's needed and we have that light gray line which is an operable partition so it basically has an expansion capability. That door can be closed, and it's intended to be used for the play group after school

but the idea is that door can be opened up and it creates a larger audience not as large as a gym and a CAF combined, but I think we had limits to what we could achieve.

Well, thank you for speaking to that.

Awesome Thank you again, and as Rep. Pitone mentioned this is our time to be asking every question that comes across we want to vote with as much information as we have so thank you for answering Rep. Biton

All right. Thank you, Chair, through you and your suggestion that I should be asking everything that I can prompted me My personal preference is that I think cafetoriums are imperfect spaces. They don't, in my mind, really serve as... Fully usable space during lunch periods. or as stages. So I'm wondering, are we locked into that as a design feature? Is there any other possible way to extract a stage in the space available or is that a requirement under MSBA?

Thank you. We have the flexibility or freedom to move the stage and connect it to the gymnasium if we so desire, which may be less perfect for everyone. or a performance and you know the only other thing I could say is that we do have examples where um where this does work well maybe not like anything you're experiencing in your schools right now but um uh You know, performance spaces that have a great deal of attention to the acoustics and lighting and sound. While not as ideal as a full auditorium, do function well.

I can say that at one point there was a discussion of an auditorium if that was possible The MSBA wouldn't participate in it, but I think we'd be approaching a point where we can accommodate significantly more program than what we have. It certainly would be a challenge.

That's probably didn't answer the question, but. It sort of answered the question and I'm not sure I really had a fully fledged question and chair if I just may follow up real quick. I would encourage I wonder if we might be able to find a way to incorporate stage into the media center. There seems to be some thematic overlap with what we're trying to accomplish with the Media Center in kind of like group gathering venue. So there seems to be a little bit of overlap there, and I wonder if there's opportunities there to think about that as performance space. in a way. So anyway, just throwing that out there. Thank you.

Thank Thank you so much through the chair. Just a quick point of clarification I'm wondering, I think it was Bob that had mentioned earlier about some of the special ed classrooms being supporting our AIM students and I'm wondering if within those AIM classrooms, if there are restrooms or if Some of those square boxes might not be restrooms, but the intention is for them to be closets or some other type of storage or along those lines. But I guess that the main question is, capacity within the AIM classroom, special ed classrooms to have restrooms.

Yeah, it's interesting. Virtually all of them are Tier 3 and they do include restrooms within the room. There is one Tier 1 and we were asked... Not to include a restroom intentionally so that students were using the toilet rooms in general classrooms. So for the most part, yes is the answer.

Can I just quickly follow up, Chair? Go ahead. Could you just clarify for me because I'm not sure if I fully understand could you just explain a little bit about what Tier 1 versus Tier 3 classrooms might be?

I can explain it not as well as Somerville Public Schools can. So maybe the superintendent, but... And I hope I didn't get the numbering backwards. Sorry, I'm looking at my notes right now. So One, if I have it correct, requires... Less substantially separate time with students. They're more in the general ed classrooms. And the, unless I got that backwards and the tier three is opposite of that. I'm sorry, I don't have my notes.

No, I think that's right.

Superintendent Ioanna Eade? You're muted. There we go.

Thank you. Through the chair, we have Courtney here, Principal Gosling. I think she is more closest to the actual functioning of this space. So if I can actually have her explain that from her technical knowledge is better.

Yes, thank you. Thank you for that. Yeah, so a Tier 1 classroom is pretty much a general ed classroom what most students would receive where your younger grades, you know, your pre-K and K would have would have bathrooms in the classroom and as you go up through the grades, the bathrooms would be in another location not directly in the classroom. Once you get up to tier three those will be for students who have substantially separate classrooms where they do require to have the bathroom In the classroom in terms of the services that they need around toileting, etc. So that would be how those are divided. Does that answer the question sufficiently?

Yeah, no I appreciate the context thank you. So could you just clarify for me because i know we said one and three what would tier two be? Just to better understand

Right, tier two would be in the middle. It would not require a bathroom but it would be for students who are in a smaller group setting perhaps and maybe moving between a tier one Thank you. I appreciate the clarification. Thank you, Rep Piton.

Thank you through you. Again, I know this is not detailed design but I just want to appreciate that you flagged that there are better designs for quote cafetoriums I know that our cafetoriums are all from, I'm not going to get the right date so maybe the 80s and 90s they were all of that generation I know that the space at the Argenziano seems to be a better space. It's a much more recently created space with a cafeteria Eating space and a stage space so I'm excited that you know if this is the solution you're coming up with it um I'm optimistic that they're going to be uh better spaces uh and I'm sure you're going do the work that really what we struggle with at least in my experience Most of the cafetoriums is the acoustics, so that's going to be a high priority. Those spaces are incredibly overstimulating loud for students and adults alike.

So that's just naming something that I'm hoping is going to be part of it. And then there was a small question. I am just curious, is this going to We're not knowing what the elevations are, but are these spaces, the cafeterias and the stage going to be like higher ceiling spaces? or is there like a limitation because we're putting that field space above I'm just curious and again if that's not designed yet i respect and understand

Oh no, that's definitely part of this level of design and the answer is yes to both. There are limitations but yes they are taller than single story spaces so we're working for example with the cafeteria Cafetorium and music rooms and everything to even have them lower into the ground to create some of that height. Whereas other spaces don't quite need that height. You can see the gymnasium is really kind of two floor levels stacked, so a full anticipated gymnasian height.

Thank you. Sorry, thank you, Rob Green.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Through you, I just think it's probably important to remind ourselves and the community that a lot that despite what is, you know, I want to believe we haven't seen this for most generations There was a lot of thoughtfulness and a lot creativity on the part of the designers. There are very limitations that we have to accept if we're going to have an MSBA-funded school because the MSBA funding process is still deeply equality based, not at all equity based and so a lot of the things we would love to do in vacuum if we were building an equitable school our dreams they're only possible if we have the equitable budget of our dreams which as we know we do not have And so I want to remind people of that, and that if they think that should change, that is something they should bring up with candidates for treasurer. Because the match is your treasuer, ultimately it's probably going to be responsible for MSBA.

Thank you. That's a great point. All right, I think we're going back to Perkins Eastman. Thank you for these questions. in response to Rep. Pitone's questions was most of the cafetoriums were designed in the 90s and that Argenziano's is slightly newer thank you very good

Okay, I'm going to have us take a look at the PSR options. So 11 options were studied during this phase. We had two base repair options, one for the existing Winter Hill School and one for The Benjamin Brown School which was requested by the MSPA We developed an addition and renovation option 1A and 1B for 690 and 925 students at the Sycamore Street site. and we developed an ad reno for 925 students at the 201 Willow Street site which is the Benjamin Brown School. So for the new school options, we developed 2A and 2B, which is the 690 and the 925 student enrollment that was on the Sycamore Street site. And then also in option four

which is a new school building of 925 students at Sycamore Street site. So based on the subsurface investigation, Ledge was found around 18 to 20 feet below grade on the hill. at the Winter Hill site. So we took a look at option 4.1 and 4.2 which uh pulls um a portion of the building that's at the northwest corner of the site um away from where that anticipated ledge is to kind of minimize the, just to see what would happen from a construction standpoint if we try to minimize the potential of rock removal. and I'll talk more detail about that a little later. And then the last new school option is for 925 students at the 201 Willow Street site it's a new school

On a half-acre site, which actually will result in a 12-story high school with rooftop play space. It actually ends up resulting in a very expensive high-rise project. All right, so let's look at the evaluations that the school building committee did. So they evaluated all 11 options based on the criteria that was set Sorry, just saw you.

Rep Davis, thank you.

Thank you. I'm sorry if we could go back one slide and you know I have a broken record here but like Somebody mark this slide number. When I and others talk about there not really being a square look at a 690 student option with Some other renovation potential addition at 201 Willow, this is what I'm talking about. The 6B and 6E in my opinion are poison pills and it's If you saw me actually laugh out loud when I saw this slide, it's because that's what happened. So, you know, this is the reference point for any future conversations when somebody asks what I'm talking about, this

Thank you. Go ahead, Lisa.

Okay. Very good. All right.

So the... Do you have a response, Laura? Or a question?

Oh, yes. A follow up. It's a curiosity follow up, not in response to President Davis.

Lisa, I'm sorry. Thank you.

Yeah, that's OK. Going back to the original slide.

Oops, am I locked up or are they?

Did Laura freeze to everyone else?

Okay. All right. It must be Laura.

Alright, I'm going to talk slowly because I think I see her reanimating. Can you start from the beginning? We didn't hear anything you said.

Laura, yes. Oh, my connection's unstable. I'll turn my video off and then I'll start talking.

Yeah, that's totally all right. Thank you.

Is this better? Can you hear me?

Yes. We can. Fire away.

Okay, thank you. So my comment or question is not in response to President Davis and I... I completely understand that point of view. Seeing a high rise at Willow Street is an unexpected thing for sure. My curiosity is that it sounds like we're required to have an alternative site to form the MSBA. And because Aboff, the MSBA process but I could be wrong and I'm curious about that thank you director ish

Yes, Member Pitone's suspicion is exactly right. 6B and 6E were specific requests of MSBA. For us to look at that, this was not anything that the city or the Perkins Eastman team was concocting for any evaluation within the city. It was simply MSBA's observation that we have a lack of sites in our feasibility study, i.e., the only other site we proposed. Trump. Looking at the study that we gave them, they saw that 201 Willow Ave., was a lot that had a school that was controlled by the district and city. And so, the MSBA specifically asked for amassing of the 920 on that site.

Thank you, Director Raish. Thank you Rep Pitone. All right I think we can keep going to the Perkins Eastman team thank you very good okay

So the school building committee evaluated all 11 options based on the criteria that was set during the CAG study and then additional criteria that Thank you so much for joining us. School Building Committee. And they're rated on a red represents least advantageous, and then the green represents most advantageous. And then you have your Your middle range is in between. So with the collected data, we generated the averages from these individual evaluations. The result in the end was still showing a strong percentage towards the 925 student Enrollment at the Sycamore Street site.

Option 4, 4.1 and 4.2 had the highest percentage for most advantageous. So from that, we wanted to study option four a little bit further and look at some of the pros and cons. So based on the educational program needs, we found that option 4.1 had the most challenges It was more cost effective to build because we're reducing the size of the footprint and limiting the amount of rooftop structures. But it also moved PK and kindergarten spaces to an upper level where they didn't have direct access to outdoor play space or dedicated pickup drop-off area.

The cafeteria also being moved into the smaller footprint of the building, we ended up losing the direct access from the cafeteria to the outdoor play space on the north side of the site. Option 4.2, which is actually very similar to option four but it's um it actually ended up being a little bit more expensive because of the amount of exterior wall that we ended up creating by pulling the cafeteria more to the east of the site. and putting the multi-purpose field on top of the roof of the cafeteria. And then the playground would end up at grade in the back northwest corner of the site. So in the end, the school building committee felt that option four would best meet the educational program needs for the students.

Bob, if you wanted to add a little bit more. Detail on that.

Yeah, no I was maybe just going to add a high level we talked about option four at length it ends up being the preferred one and if you're trying to understand the difference between them 4.1 does not build the cafeteria as um space over part of the play area with then a rooftop that would be play at the ground level height so instead it tucks that underneath the footprint of the of the larger building. And it did some things that, the reason it's got red circles on it, Kindergarten and Pre-K up in the air, not at ground level. So that creates a lot of challenges not being directly connected to outdoor space. It also at those grade levels requires dedicated stairwells just for those grade level and no other grades using them in case of an emergency.

The cafeteria also then became very disconnected from the site, the play area. And the cafeteria and the gym are no longer really near each other so it it kind of lost the community zone as well and then 4.2 really is option four but just sliding the cafeteria further towards Thurston And that's interesting because it's a challenge to keep it connected inside the building, but because now all of the play space is on the roof, it creates that similar kind of disconnect between the cafeteria and play space. direct at grade but instead vertically connected so that's high level all right thank you uh rep biton

Thank you. Through you Chair, quick question about the outdoor space being above like the cafeteria and other indoor space my question is informed by being a frequent visitor to the CVS in Davis Square where it's directly under the weightlifting of the upstairs Boston Sports Club. where the very strong people are constantly dropping weights on the ground and you feel it back there in the prescription area. Will a similar situation, what will it be like sitting indoors with people playing above you? Will you feel the trembling of feet inside?

I think to build on that while it's very relevant the next wave full circle our most recent MSBA school has that exact issue under our gymnasium so That is, you know, our last school is dealing with that also.

So we will be working with our acousticians to deal with or to look at the structure This being an outdoor space, there are actually lots of layers. We will have our structural steel, we'll have our roof system and then we'll level an entire play surface above that. There is a way to acoustically Create an acoustical separation between the structure and the space below and the in the space above. So it will definitely take... Some design effort together to collaborate that between our structural engineer, building envelope, landscape architect as well as our acoustician but we will design our way through that.

And my muted note. We have plenty of examples of challenges. There's a school we designed... A few decades ago in Brookline that has a gymnasium over cafeteria. The cafeteria is used for testing at times and so it needed much of what Lisa was talking about. It's not just the acoustics that you apply, it's the structural separations that become really important to not carry sound through spaces. We've faced many of these challenges. I can't speak about your other schools and the design, and I definitely don't know if CVS was designed with a plan for weightlifting above it. Probably not.

That was a commercial building. Probably would have been great having offices over offices or offices over retail, but certainly not New York Sports Club.

Thank you. That's Repitone, do you feel? I don't see your hand.

Yeah, I'm good. Thank you.

Okay. I learned a new word, acoustician. All right. Good. Keep going. Thank You.

Very good. No problem. So this is just a recap here of just the selected preferred Schematic Option, Option 4. This is actually the option that Bob had spoke to when he was going through the program updates as well as the same plan layouts that we've discussed earlier. And then I also just wanted to comment on some of the things that we will continue to study during the schematic design. So this is a list of what we refer to as ad alternates. That have been developed and priced. And it's things that are more or less desired, things that have been brought up that are desired to have on the project but they do come with some added cost.

So one of them is a hybrid air source heat pump and geothermal system as well as a full geothermal Aboff, We also have to understand how that coordinates with the stormwater management system. Understand if we can get enough geothermal wells coordinated with the stormwater management system so that'll continue to be. studied in schematic design. Mass timber, in lieu of structural steel is another item that we're going to look close to in the very early stages of design it would

From a biophilic standpoint, having the exposed wood timbers in the building and to reduce the carbon footprint from not having to build with steel is a desire that we've also heard. Parking garage option because of the amount of ledge that we have on the site. It is a very expensive option to do those deep excavations and that rock removal. but we'll continue to look at that. We were asked to look maybe a smaller parking garage to see what the cost of that would be and then also PV, photovoltaics or solar-powered energy we'll continue to study. We need really to understand a little bit more about the energy consumption of the building and then understand how much PV capacity we can actually get on site. And some of that may require building canopies because they'll

There's so limited space on site, there might be a lot of equipment up on the roof. So we might have to build something up and over the equipment so that we can maximize Some of those photovoltaic panels over the building. Construction management versus design bid build, which is a delivery method, is another thing that we can continue to look at. CM Fees is basically bringing a construction team on during schematic design or the early phases of design development to work with us in developing Pre-construction to develop a guaranteed maximum price to construct the building versus... Aboff,

will also evaluate during schematic design. and then the last one is the mobility improvements which I actually mentioned earlier. And that's really a process with the city team to work through a comprehensive transportation impact study The Mobility Management Plan and then Transportation Access Plan around the Sycamore Street site.

Rep Green? Are you far away from your mic? It's very quiet.

There it is. I see parking garage in the and the alternates I know from the experience of the high school that this is a question we're going to get from the community if parking garage isn't what it's been doing so if it's not a parking garage What have we thought about four parking for what is literally right in the middle of town?

So that's something we are studying with the city engineering team and the mobility team. There's things that our... The design team and our... Traffic Consultant have looked out for locations of potential street parking or shared parking as well as maybe off-site parking and shuttles. Other things like that, that might be able to compensate. But but that's something that we're still working with the city on to come up with a resolution. Of course.

So, working on it makes sense. But again, this is a question we are going to get if this is the plan we put forward. So what's the timeline for having an answer?

The goal is to have the direction at the end of schematic design before the schematic design documents get submitted to the MSBA and in prep for the vote.

So for the lay people in the audience, that is when? In terms of month, year?

Oh, sorry. So that would be the end of February 2027 is when we complete schematic design. Apologies.

We have follow-ups?

They are. We're going to need to know that as soon as in February.

So that's a note for the planning team. The earlier we can learn about it, the better.

Yeah, we probably could know about it sort of midway through in terms of... One of the things that we're doing here is trying to understand what the impact is. If that were free, we would clearly put the parking and so we're looking at can we put a level of parking Under the building which might yield 80 to 100 spaces or half of that level and it might be half of but one of the things we've found in investigations is There is rock here underneath, so those spaces while technically possible do come at a premium cost per space. So that, you know, and we did hear that rep green early on. That's why it's on the table at least to study so that you will have the data that

to make an educated decision about it.

That's great. Rep Pitone, do you have a follow-up or can I call on the superintendent?

I have a follow-up, but if the superintendent wants to follow up and then I can chime back in it's up to the superintendent.

Well, if I may, this is in regards to what Member Green brought up as a point of concern. One of the challenges that we have in our role is to establish that fiscal responsibility and also for me it's hard to envision a place that doesn't have a space to account for the educators who will be teaching day in and day out. even if you say for the spaces this is such a community space imagine we have older people and coming into the space to see a play or to see anything where do they find a space to park And so I am really challenged about this because in part, you know, I think we know the density of the city. Is that right? Balance the line between our fiscal responsibility, but it has a direct impact on our educators.

And I know that the high school are here constantly and I just want to make sure that that's something that we look at seriously.

Director Arish and then Member Pitone

Just for the school committee to understand, as we're targeting the submission of the schematic design in February of 27, we'll come back to the school Thank you very much. The decision to include or not include the parking and whatever the mobility improvements are to offset that in the parking plan Those are all things that will be discussed in the school building committee. And the school Building Committee will be making the recommendations that lead into that February 27. And so there will be at minimum monthly status reports and cost estimates until liberation on those items.

And as passed as precedent, the high school parking was deliberated extensively at the high schools School Building Committee. So I imagine it'll be the same thing here. So these parties that are sort of competing the costs and the benefits, that's the forum through which we'll be having that process.

Thank you. I'm going to call on Rep Pitone and then Rep Green.

Thank you through you, Chair. I want to appreciate Representative Green for bringing up the question of parking. I, as I think we all are, are sensitive to the needs of our educators and our families. And we all want to make SPS the best place to work and accommodating to everyone. I also want to bring up the context of the high school and that at one point, the building committee had a parking As part of the plan, it was going to cost an additional $10 million that was not going to be included with reimbursements from the MSBA. So I just want to make sure people had that context right now The Winter Delt Hill doesn't have parking right now. The Brown doesn't

In an ideal world, absolutely we'd love to have parking and I'm thinking oh you know the annex that building has been a problematic building for a while and i imagine that there are some tentative plans But if the city is making that decision whether or not we make something into a parking lot, or do we make that space into some kind of usable A service or accommodation for members of our community, I can see where the city may lean. So and if anybody doesn't know that The Annex is on Evergreen Aft, I think. And it's fairly adjacent. So I just want to flag that this is money and I'm so excited that we're investing all this money around educating our students and you know we're kind of between a rock and a hard place on this one so Again, appreciating Representative Green that he was able to bring this up because community will want to talk about it. But we've had some history here and I look forward to seeing what the opportunities maybe identify. Thank you.

I'm enjoying the pun of rock in a hard place as we have to dig through a lot of rock. Rope Green, do you have a follow-up or is it okay if I go to the mayor?

Yeah, real quick and this is definitely a response to what Great because she's right and I just want to remind, add context that as Rep. Patel mentioned it was originally in the high school plan and the city council voted it out. And I know that has been a sore spot for educators since, which is one of the reasons I actually brought this question up. And I come to this perspective of having already voted for this being my preferred outcome in the building committee and looking forward to voting for it again next week in this body. It's not that I think we shouldn't do it, I do think the city owes the families and the educators who are working in this structure some answers for that very reason. The current building causes traffic and parking snafus around pick-up-and-drop-off If we're going to expand it, and we should, that's a question we're gonna get asked. We deserve people to answer too.

Thank you. Mayor Wilson?

Thanks Jared. Yep agree with everything that Rep Green just said there around Doing the work to make sure that we're looking into options. I want to follow up on what Rep Pitone mentioned in terms of... The Evergreen Terrace, the Annex building there. And yes that is something we're looking at doing There are a number of dominoes there that would need to... Well, fall sounds negative. A number of things would need happen in order for us to get that space. The first one of which will be Coming up with what the school committee wants to feel comfortable releasing the 1895 building because this body has operational control of that building. That building could then be renovated. City Hall staff could then be moved over to that building in Swing Space.

City Hall can then be renovated and then we would be able to consolidate staff up on Central Hill, which would make all those annexes no longer necessary at that point could be 10, 15 years down the road but that site would then be up for grabs in terms of the best use there. Just wanted to throw that out there.

Thank you. um all right Perkins Eastman feel free to keep going yeah that actually is um

It's pretty much where we've wrapped up with any questions that anyone has. And then just asking for everyone to review the draft PSR and then... We can have another question and answer session on the 17th, then cast a vote. Hi.

Okay, thank you. No, that's my daughter giving me a hug because I committed to letting her get second piercings on her ears for her birthday. Okay. Repetone, thank

Thank you, through you. I know there's a ton of detail in the documents and I've been working myself through it. I was surprised there wasn't something that was highlighting costs in this summary. Just some context or comparables around costs, or maybe it doesn't belong here. I'm curious any thoughts about that?

Yeah, we do have the budget from the cost estimators that was done on all 11 options in the PSR. Report. There's also There should be a budget sheet in there as well, illustrating some of the soft costs that's either should be attached in the appendix and also within the body of the of the report. I don't know if Sean you wanted to speak to anything as far as what is in the budgets that you put together?

If I understand the question correctly, you're talking about whether or not the budget should be up on the cover sheet? Like talking about the costs and I think we normally don't do that it's usually we have a lot of detail around budgets of each of the options down lower in there so uh that's usually where it sits and cost is not the number one driving factor here i think the educational plan comes first and we start putting costs up in the cover letter, then I think maybe the focus goes on whether or not we're choosing an option based solely on the cost versus what is the best fit for the city. So I think that's often why we don't put that up in a cover letter.

Do that address your question?

Sure. I mean, obviously, I'm going to look at all the details. I just thought in the top line presentation there would be something about cost but and I really respect what you're saying which is you know you're trying produced the best execution of the educational plan, and that's what you put forward. But I thought I would ask the question because obviously that's a big responsibility in our space.

Thank you. Rep Green and then Rep Pitone, uh, Biton.

So, you know, it was shared with the budget. The comparative budgets were shared with building committee last week. If there's no reason why it shouldn't be shared with the school committee, it's part of their deliberation. So if it hasn't been presented as a public document, can we fix that?

We have them. They just haven't... I think she... My understanding of what Laura meant is just embedded in this top-line presentation.

Okay, all right. Exactly.

Is that? Yep, great. Okay. All right, remember Biton.

Thank you, Chair. Through you, I have a question about the option 6A, the code upgrade for the existing Brown School. I understand that this is not something that we are seriously considering. I'm just curious what upgrades are included in the code upgrade? Is this ADA accessibility? If you can speak to that. And then I have a second follow up and I can get back in line for that if necessary.

Yeah, so the base repairs that the MSBA typically is looking for on these projects is all of the accessibility upgrades as well as Code upgrades for building envelope structure and mechanical systems. So anything MEP, fire protection, and things like that. For this particular building, it's a little tricky to get accessibility to get an elevator inside of that building. So they're As we started to look at it, we actually had to build like an elevator shaft outside of the footprint of the school in order to... In order to get accessibility to most of the program spaces, it was a little tricky to

Find a way to get accessibility into some of the offices that are kind of in like a mid-level stairwell area. In addition to that there's also some foundation Cracks in that building that we also had the cost estimators price for the base repair.

Okay, and the price tag on all that is $40 million, give or take.

I don't remember off the top of my head. Yeah, that's what the spreadsheet shows.

Well, it says in the spreadsheet.

I do want to highlight though that this was a high level evaluation knowing the building as I do since I had two students that went to it I know that there's some very tricky program spaces that I'm not 100% convinced we could get with this. So, I think with that $40 million price tag, we would likely lose some program spaces and what SPS would have to do in reaction to that, we haven't really run the ground.

Thank you. And I'll get back in line if I...

I think you are the line, so fire away.

Thank you So related to that or building on that, I just want to note that the new construction cost of option 2A That's building at Sycamore Street at the 690 size. Has an estimated price tag of $198 million. If we think about needing to maintain the brown and adding on the 40 million from the Brown that brings our total for 2A and 6A to 238.6 million That is about 12 to 20 million more.

Then the costs of options 2B or any of the options in 4. So my question then is... I guess for the mayor through you chair or Mr. Raish, we are not considering the cost to the city of Some eventual reuse of the building that is currently the Brown School. I would have to assume that such use would cost more than 12-20 million dollars for renovation. So I guess I just want to know, can you speak to that? I know that some of our deliberation included consideration

The cost of building the 690 school versus the 925. And I think that the data that we have here in front I... It may not be as much of a money saver to build the larger school as some folks have been suggesting, but it's actually more for me more of a question. So if someone can speak to that.

Mayor Wilson.

Thanks, Chair. And Director Raish may come up with things that I forgot to mention while answering that, but... Yeah, these are the sorts of questions that we mulled over when making these decisions. And yes, there will be a future disposition of any... Unused building in the city? You know, there's a process that we go through to determine the best disposition of that. There are maintenance costs as well Maintenance costs for two separate buildings will be significantly higher than the maintenance cost for one building. That's just a fact. Between what Director Raish added about possible lost space, I know that like for example the principal's office is a mid-landing office and I don't know how we ever make that ADA compliant, for example. And there's issues as well, I think with the current lunch area as well

uh so you know yes to do that that 40 million dollar thing would see a reduction in usable space in that building. So it's not as if Spending that money gets us the Brown School as we know it, magically made accessible. Yeah, I guess between that and the fact that doing the largest school does not cost nearly as much on top of the 690 cost as a lot of people think it might made this make a lot sense to us. But I'm sure Director Raich has things to add that I've either got wrong or omitted from my explanation.

No, boss. That was all right. Just to Member Pitone's other question, or at least to describe the process by which we would determine a future use renovation or whatever disposition of We have not advanced any of those concepts. It would be part of a lengthy community process to determine its highest and best use and what sort of development partner we would seek. to redevelop that. So it's nearly impossible to speculate at this point what those costs or opportunities would be We already have a list of properties that are in the queue for that disposition process, and it's even premature to determine what those things are going to be.

And we're much closer on those.

All right. Mayor Wilson, do you have another follow-up?

Chair, I was just going to very quickly add if people are worried about boxing ourselves in and having to spend money on a building down the road This position could take a lot of different forms. It could be us repurposing that for something else, which would involve us spending money It could be us disposing of that property, which we've done in a number of cases. I know people tend to not like us just selling off some of the precious few properties we have. Just mentioning that that we don't know what form that could take. With any villain that we have, those are decisions that would get made in the moment.

Thank you. Rep Pitone

Thank you through you. And if I freeze up, let me know. I'll turn my video off. In the interest of transparency, there's been a lot of numbers going around and I want to take some care around this $40 million number. And we had some original estimates that were put together for the Brown that was, I think it was a $94 million. And I want to be clear that my understanding is, you know, the $40 It has nothing to do with educational programs or programmatic. Enhancements because the expectation that I understood when we were looking at this $94 million estimate was about making sure that we had appropriate spaces for delivering services, making the building accessible. adding gross motor space so it was a much more complicated and I just want to take care to name things because I don't want people to feel like the city is flim-flamming because I actually don't feel like that.

I just have a little more intimacy to this than maybe anybody, not anybody else obviously. I think it's important to make sure that we're transparent about the fact that this $40 million was for something specific, which is fixing the building, but not to necessarily provide the educational type programming that we want to have in all of our schools so that all of are accessible. And that means special ed services, that means gross motor spaces and it's more than just fixing repairs. I might be wrong but that's my interpretation and I want the city to speak to that so we can as transparent as possible about these numbers

Director-ish?

Yeah, I just want to highlight that Member Pitone is exactly right there. The $97 million sort of project if you were to conceive it What that would give you is... All of the full range of educational programming and spaces for a student body of approximately 235. which is like what the MSBA considers to be the population at that school right now you know where we did not combine the two schools in grade consolidation Right, that's as we discussed last time around. That's the difference between the 925 and the 690 so that the nominal Student population there is 235.

And to make it exactly equal, those 235 students should have access to all the things that all the other schools have. Cafeteria, gym space, breakout areas, 100% accessibility to all the program spaces. So that was working up to get that sort of apples-to-apples programmatic space. That's the 94. The MSBA did ask that we just do the base repair costs at that building, Now keep in mind on that same slide that we just showed you, they also asked for the base repair of the Sycamore Street building. which we know would not hold 690 students and we know does not have all the full program that we want. Principal Gosling did a wonderful job there, she's doing a wonderful at the Edgerly But it is not delivering that it is.

So when you see those base repair options on the suite of options there, those are not equal to the other ones. It is a requirement of the MSBA process that we document what those base repair costs are. Acknowledging that they are apples and bananas or maybe grapes and watermelons. I don't know. It's getting late, and I'm going to stop talking now.

Yes, I was going to say it is we want all the questions but we have where we're coming on two hours so repitone.

Thank you through your chair More of a comment than a question. This is a different topic. I know my friends like Mr. Burke and Mr. Raish are very intimate around the Ground quality and the challenges that we had with the high school. Obviously, we spent a lot more time, a lot Having to deal with surprises and I appreciate, I was one of those people that's actually reading all the details about how this space was historically used because that was such A painful thing for that project. So I don't know if there's work going to be done in terms of being a little more generous on a contingency cost for that kind of work. Just for the context of anybody who's listening to this, they found a lot more things under the high school than anybody ever expected in terms of the quality of the soil and things that were That's a great, great question.

Sure, yeah I'll start and if Lisa wants to jump in certainly please do. I think for this one we're going to certainly do a lot more site sub-site investigation but also the plan here is to demolish the building Early, so the Perkins Eastman team will come up with a demo package prior to construction. So we'll still be in design while we're demolishing that. And the idea behind that is to try to get all of that risk ahead of us. And so if we do find anything, we'll have time to deal with it versus is delaying our project which would cost a fortune for delay and cost escalation. So right now it's really the early demo is the goal to get that building out of there so then we can do whatever other investigations under that building that needs to be done. We'll have plenty of time to do that before the construction project starts.

The phasing of this project will be different from what the phasing on the high school was. I don't know if it's good news, but if we have bad news, we'll know that bad news earlier in the process than we did for the high school. So we can manage the... Thank you. But Sean and I will have more gray hair by the end of it, I'm sure. I'm not sure if that's possible but maybe.

We have actually started some investigative work with the test borings that we did wasn't only for geotechnical but also for geo-environmental and So far actually the results haven't been too bad, but that's only based off of six borings. More to follow as we work our way through the next phase.

Thank you. All right Rep Stellman.

So yeah, I got a chance to read some of the report that you have sent and there's some surprises that you've already can anticipate with the potential oil tank. all sorts of, yeah not good environmental stuff that you'll see when you dig under old buildings. But what the question I had around that is that In the current budget that you prepared for this, And can I assume that there is room for this type of remediation if you do in fact find really significant environmental challenges?

Did you want to take that, Sean? I know you had numbers in there to...

Yeah, our geotechnical engineers looked at it and we've done some limited subsurface investigation because there's still a building in place there. And they carried a cost for soils removal of different contamination levels. So we carried certain costs for different levels in certain areas of soil. We haven't carried every bit of soil as fully contaminated but we think we have There's also design pricing contingencies in there. So as we further develop and further test, we'll refine those numbers and All right. Thank you.

To my colleagues, to my teacher wait time. Any other questions thoughts for this This team that has done all this work, you know as the person who has to sign off on it along with the mayor I want to know that we have dug into this. Okay With that, I want to thank everyone for their great work, for their thoughtful questions, for your time, for you patience with us as we pop in and out with our questions. I'm going to call this meeting to close at 8 53 p.m and my colleagues we will be voting on this on the 17th chair oh yep

I'm sorry, maybe Superintendent is asking the same question. Do we have grants to approve?

Oh snap! Thank you, thank you. We sure do. Well Perkins Eastman and Director Raish feel free to sign off we sure do thank you thank you does somebody have the call in front of them I really appreciate it okay

My pleasure. I move to accept all federal entitlements and continuation grants, and all state continuation grants awarded to the Somerville Public Schools Listed as follows. FY26 grants, private grants, The Joy of Nature to MLE, Summer Spell Programming Services for $3,000. Aspen Institute district-wide grant increase of $500 Morris Bender Foundation to SFLC department at $2,000 and FY27 summer grants private Coordinated Family Community Engagement for SFLC Family and Community Support, $371,477. Bar Foundation, La Mariquita Fund Spell Summer Programming $950

Mass Life Science OST grants to the robotics team $29,924. The following state grants... Early College Planning Grant to the College and Career Readiness Infrastructure Planning Resources for Potential Partners at $20,000.00 High School Equivalency to the SCALE Chief Examiner to oversee test centers at $17,717. Comprehensive School Health Grant, district-wide health related courses and language services for nurses. at $85,500. CS engagement district-wide professional development at $37,001 and the following federal

Homelessness, I'm sorry, homeless transportation $139,562 CTE frameworks and competency-based, I assume that's implementation to CTE professional development at $35,000. And finally, Strengthening Career and Technical Education to CTE for a value of $87,015.

Thank you. All right, I have a motion by Rep Biton, seconded by Rep Pitone. I'm hoping there's no discussion. Ms. Garcia, are you willing to call or Superintendent? One of you, are

I can do it.

Thank you.

President Davis?

Yes.

Member Piton?

Yes, with gratitude.

Member Eldridge?

Yes

Member Green?

Yes.

Dr. Stellman? Yes Mayor Wilson? Yes Member Biton?

With gratitude, yes.

Dr. Ackman? Yes. Thank you. With eight yeses, motion carries. Amazing.

As always, kudos to the district for bringing in grant funds. We really, really appreciate it and we're thankful.

Can I add who seconded the motion?

Member Pitone, Laura Pitone.

Thank you.

You're welcome. All right, with that amendment at 8.57 p.m., we are calling this meeting to close. I will see my colleagues in a week and I'm sure the Perkins Eastman team does not mind if you reach out with other questions. Thank you. Good night, everyone.