Community and committee members provide input on the needs for a new Mount Greylock Regional School at a workshop on Thursday.

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Mount Greylock Building Committee took input from community members at a public workshop on Thursday evening in the school's meeting room.

 

It was the latest in a series of meetings that the committee and its consultants have used to determine the priorities for the design of a renovated or rebuilt junior-senior high school.

 

"We've been getting the voices of all the various constituent groups — students, parents, teachers, community members and all the various experts in our community who can lend some insight and wisdom," Mount Greylock Principal Mary MacDonald said. "One of the activities we did in the educational working group was a 'SCOG' analysis, looking at strengths, challenges, opportunities and goals.

 

"We had 27 students come together from eighth through 11th grade. We took a look in small groups at what strengths the students saw the building presenting and the academic program presenting."

 

There were far more strengths in the latter category. The work product of those SCOG sessions — displayed around the walls of the meeting room on Thursday evening, showed a laundry list of challenges for the existing structure. The students listed things like "limited technology," "no natural light" and "multiple locations of asbestos."

 

Those problems and more drove the district to repeatedly apply to the Massachusetts School Building Authority's funding program, and the facility's flaws are well documented in the district's Statement of Interest to the MSBA, which can be found below.

 

Building Committee Chairman Mark Schiek went over some of those building deficiencies at the start of Thursday's meeting, but most of the focus was on the possibilities for a new or rebuilt school, the timetable for the building project and what happens if a project fails in a vote by residents of both Mount Greylock's member towns, Lanesborough and Williamstown.

 

The firm hired by the committee to be the owner's project manager reported that the endeavor is keeping up with the demanding timeline dictated by the MSBA.

 

"Right now, we are following the schedule pretty much right on track," Trip Elmore, a partner at Dore & Whittier Management Partners of Newburyport said during a Building Committee meeting that preceded the public hearing.

 

"Mary's done an outstanding job putting documentation together, along with her staff. Right now we're moving quickly. The development of options is actually started right now. Before you know it, we'll have some things we're going to roll out that are going to be interesting to look at."

 

By June 11, the project's architect, Design Partnership of Cambridge, will submit four potential projects to MSBA, including a renovation and a "base repair," which seeks to address only the current code violations at the school.

 

By Aug. 6, the Building Committee, with feedback from the MSBA, will have a preferred option. Design Partnership will then develop a schematic design, complete with cost, by the end of December for a district vote likely in spring 2016. Elmore said if the project is approved by the voters, a new or renovated Mount Greylock could be ready for students as early as 2018 and no later than 2019.

 

Currently, the Building Committee is projecting a 55 percent compensation from MSBA for the cost of the project. The commonwealth authority is funded by 1 penny from the Massachusetts sales tax.

 

But that rate of compensation can go up with incentive points from MSBA for building certain elements into the design.

 

That rate also could drop significantly — all the way to zero — if the towns decide to go with a base repair, residents were reminded on Thursday.

 

"That will depend on how [the project plan] fits in — or not — with your educational program," Elmore said. "The base repair may not offer the program that the district says it needs to be there. ... When that is the case, when the building doesn't meet the program, the MSBA may not participate in any of it. They, after all, are about the education.

 

"If the education and the building don't meet, your participation from the state doesn't show up."

 

That prompted a response from Williamstown resident David Langston, a former member of the Mount Greylock School Committee.

 

"The towns need to understand if they go for the base repair, it's all on their nickel," Langston said.

 

"We haven't proven that yet, but we're headed in that direction," Elmore replied.

 

Voters, for example, shot down a $51 million renovation of Monument Mountain Regional High School last fall of which MSBA would fund $23 million; MSBA then declined to fund accelerated repairs to the aging building, leaving the district to deal with an estimated $26 million to $36 million in repairs.

 

Dore & Whittier and Design Partnership were hired with funds approved overwhelmingly at last spring's annual town meetings in Lanesborough and Williamstown, at which voters were asked to foot the bill for the MSBA-mandated feasibility study that is phase one of any building project.

 

Part of that study process is a series of public meetings facilitated by the consultants, including Thursday's session.

 

Among the ideas to emerge from the discussion: creating flex space and academic clusters to promote collaboration among the faculty, more space for athletics, a parking lot that takes advantage of permeable asphalt, more windows to allow natural light and take advantage of the views of Mount Greylock and a bike path running north and south on Route 7 to connect the school to each of the district's member towns.

 

The last suggestion is off the table as far as the MSBA is concerned, Elmore explained. The building project is focused on the school's grounds. The other ideas — along with written comments suggested on Thursday night — will be considered by the Building Committee as it compiles its list of priorities for the architect.

 

More input will be gathered on May 5 when a similar session at Lanesborough Elementary School. A third community meeting is scheduled for May 12.