 Hello, I'm Superintendent Michael Morris from the Amherst Public Schools and this presentation that I'll be making is entitled Meeting the MSBA Challenge a proposal for consensus a similar presentation was made last week at the Amherst School Committee meeting. I want to thank Amherst Media for Allowing me to come in and share it with the broader community To summarize the challenges at Fort River and Wildwood for which are two of the three elementary schools in our town There are three major themes one is building conditions these buildings are close to 50 years old Which the state tells us is the lifespan of the average building before it needs significant renovation or or rebuilding All of our systems are 50 many of our systems are 50 years old and just things are starting to break down in really significant ways Ways the second is safety for instance. We have Our offices are about 94 feet from the front doors, which is from a safety perspective is not how buildings would be built today We also have exterior doors that are very difficult to open for families and for students and for staff members So we have a number of safety concerns that are significant Finally the third theme would be educational challenges. These two schools have open classroom design, which means that there's Students and staff can hear one another between classes because there aren't permanent walls in between those two classrooms This creates many accessibility challenges for our students. Unfortunately, it affects our most significant our most vulnerable students The most and so it's a major concern all three of these areas are Have been talked about significantly over the past few years as being critical to the educational success of our students as every year passes these these Impediments to learning are truly becoming barriers for our students and our staff and the situation continues to deteriorate The next slide shows a survey from a few years ago of staff members I was given to all staff members across this Commonwealth of Massachusetts and The statement was the physical environment of classrooms in the school supports teaching and learning as you can see 83% of teachers across Massachusetts agreed with that statement 93% of teachers at Crocker Farmer group at that statement Only 24% of Wildwood and 9% of Fort Rivers Fort River teachers agreed with that statement This visually shows the dire situation that we currently have in our elementary schools and the extreme Urgency I feel for us to act as a community to improve the experiences for all involved I know many people have suggested could we fix some of these problems with kind of relatively Short-term fixes and capital investments and the truth is that there are some elements that you can see that we could fix There are significant funding that would have the town would have to appropriate for them in terms of exterior doors roofs These are millions of dollars to replace a roof at either of these buildings Some of the access issues some of the cooling issues that have happened But the majority of issues that are plaguing Fort River and Wildwood cannot be addressed by short-term capital Fixes they do need to be either fully renovated and or rebuilt to resolve the impediments of learning that are currently existing in the buildings We are also cognizant of being students stewards for the town that the town officials Including a town manager have indicated very clearly to us that state funding from the MSPA Which is the Massachusetts School Building Authority is needed to complete the building project There's significant capital needs that aren't about the schools in town the roads the bridges fire stations libraries Department of Public Works That there there will be a challenge for the town to meet all of those different capital needs And we want to be we feel urgency about the schools and I feel urgency about the schools But we certainly don't want to pit project against project We explicitly do not want to be involved in that we understand that there are needs beyond the schools in the town of Amherst One of the other challenges is that if we did one school at a time in terms of two schools It'd be significantly more expensive both because of escalation costs The op delay in the operational savings that will come from renovated schools. We have a net zero by-law So we know our future schools will be much more efficient than our current ones And building multiple buildings will have lots of duplicate systems that significantly increases the cost This is in the magnitude of millions not in tens or hundreds of thousands more if we did that in addition We don't know how long we'd wait if we did one project at a time MSPA does not guarantee applying to the MSPA does not guarantee funding and we feel the urgency is incredibly high If we tried to resolve the some of those needs on the short-term capital front It's also very expensive. So when we look out five or six years if we didn't we weren't replacing both buildings We're looking at six to seven million dollars that we'd be proposing an additional spending on roofs parking lots, etc That would be sunk cost so to speak if we had a building project happen And so what we really need to know is the MSPA process only allows for addressing one building At a time and so how do we make sense of having two buildings that are in disrepair and how do we approach that task? It's the opportunity so we applied for for many years for to get into the MSPA process We applied from 2007 to 2012 and we didn't get in we did get in 2013 But the prior building project did not did not receive the required votes from the town of Amherst to move forward We applied again in 2018 to the MSPA and we were not accepted again. It's a competitive process My conversations with the MSPA have been plentiful since that since we got that rejection And what they shared they really need from the community is consensus on what we want to have in our schools Not to the detail of who the architect is going to be what the site's going to be Is it going to be new or addition renovation? But some core principles of what the community is hoping to get out of the MSPA project That's what they're looking for from our community. And as you can see consensus doesn't necessarily In that everyone gets exactly what they want I don't I think it's clear that in this community there's people who advocate for lots of different potential solutions But we're getting to the place that we want everyone to feel like their voice is heard and that they have a stake in and can support the eventual Resolution That's our goal in this process the next couple minutes I'll be sharing what I proposed to the school committee for their consideration and the community's consideration of a way to move forward that achieves Consensus within the community So the vision statement for for me is that we want a high quality learning environment for all students Accessible rooms walls natural light things that don't exist in those two schools Not all classrooms at Fort River and Wildwood have natural light and not all of them have permanent walls and actually basically none of them are fully Accessible in the way they should be we want to provide reasonably maintainable buildings So the one of the other problems with Fort River and Wildwood is they're incredibly challenging for Routine maintenance tasks to occur on a regular level very time and task labor intensive for our maintenance staff and our custodial staff and we end up spending more for Having increases staffing not because of a square footage of the buildings, but because of how challenging they are to maintain We want to might what I've said multiple times this year is I think our current Kindergarten students should not graduate sixth grade from buildings That have open classrooms and no light come in no natural light are very limited natural light coming in I think that's a commitment we can make to our students another way to think about that that someone shared with me is For babies born in 2019 Can we guarantee that they don't know what an open classroom is that they're not in spaces that don't have natural light? Tremendous amount of research about the benefits of having walls and natural light and can we guarantee as a community? Can we commit as a community to resolve this as soon as we can? And then lastly that we have to be financially Responsible to the town as I said earlier there are many many other projects We need to have a consensus statement and in a statement of interest that we submit to the MSBA the mass school building authority by April 12th So we have this sort of condensed time frame to achieve consensus, but we're going to try our best because our kids are relying on us to do that So this is what I propose would go into a consensus statement It's that it's one MSBA project that we want to address both buildings both Dysfunctional school buildings with one project We don't want to do one after the other costs more and takes too long and we think we can come up with a reasonable scenario Second is that we have one warm child-centered building I've been to many buildings for a whole host of reasons in my educational career Some are feel very institutional and some feel incredibly warm and child than family-centered and My commitment is that we'd work with the talented members of the Amherst community to ensure any building that's either built or renovated has that feeling Third building point is that approximately 600 students would be in this school If you combine Wildwood and Fort River you'd end up with 750 students give or take and I'll explain on future slides How we could get down to 600 this is based on community feedback that 750 students is a lot to be on one site Either Fort River or Wildwood and it's a lot in terms of educational research about size of school We've 600 is a size that we know both Fort River and Wildwood have had 600 students in it in the last 20 years And so this is a familiar size and I think we can make this work K to five or K to six So we want to keep a long grade span There's been another area where there's a lot of community feedback on and again We want to build a consensus statement by removing issues where there was a lot of Disagreement in the community on the prior project and lastly that we would have community surveys would be completed during the feasibility process if we were to get into the MSPA process as we gather more information and that'd be guided by architects and Owner project managers who work with the town to engage the community As they do their work about what would be the best option for the for the for the children of Amherst Speaking a little more specifically You know small having small cohorts is really important There's a lot of evidence and research and I've shared that many times So you might say 600 students is larger than our current schools and that's true But we have a dual language program that's starting next year That by its definition would have two cohorts of students who have a shared program So within that 600 is a significant number of students who would be kind of in a self-described or self-contained program Around learning half the day in English half the day in Spanish So kind of by default the cohort size is going to be significantly smaller than if it didn't have that program in it There are multiple ways to get to 600 students move sixth grade to the middle school build an addition at Crocker Farm Looking to have consolidated seven through twelve at the high school or we have a regionalization study with the town of Pelham going on The point is we're not going to make those decisions at this point We just feel confident I feel confident that these scenarios can be looked at evaluated as part of the feasibility study if we get in the process And the best one shows and based on a lot of community input feedback and hearing from educators about what the best approach would be moving forward and So the commitment I'm looking for from the community is now not to talk about the ways to get to 600 But can we agree that 600 is the right number that we want to address both buildings simultaneously as soon as possible In a way that's educationally viable and keeps that small school cohort that so many people value Many people in the community have also shared about the social equity pieces that are very important to be considered in a building project such as Improving specialized education specialized special education programming and the busing program that we have to balance So-so get socioeconomic demographics of our students I do think that any scenario that's part of this building project will make lots of progress in both of those domains We'll have fewer students for a bus to outside their zone to attend school based on socioeconomics or special education status Which I think is consistent with the district values We also have talked about the some benefits to English language learners that actually the size of school being slightly larger allows for a more more diverse programmatic ability to program for the diverse needs of those students and So eliminating barriers to learning that are structural or based in equity is also consistent with taking both buildings Addressing them as soon as possible, which this proposal aims to do So how we're doing this or we're looking to again gather what we're asking for is can you support one MSPA project one child-centered building? Approximately 600 students and either in a K to 5 or K to 6 grade span That's what we were asking the community for consensus for feedback and potentially consensus on By April 12th how we'll do it so we presented this this been presented at school committee We presented also at the Amherstown Council. We're planning listening sessions They're ready planned for staff and we're planning listening sessions for the larger community With a consultant a neutral third party to gather feedback. We're doing outreach versus segments like today We're going to use this segment to request electronic feedback from the broader community as well Outreach the parent guardian organizations at the schools and in my weekly update So the alternative to consensus now is that we wait a year to apply That's a very challenging thing to do because our their schools our students our staff are telling us We need to take action as soon as possible and we know with cost escalation waiting another year to apply Whatever the outcome is in the end whatever is chosen is will cost the town over a million dollars Just that's how much escalation costs will affect the town and so I do feel urgency that we work to find Consensus in the short run knowing that there are many details to be worked out and as part of the MSPA process Finally, here's a timeline moving forward. So February We'll be talking back. I will back at it with the Amherst school committee Looking to get to a vote of the Amherst school committee on March 11th thereabouts Trying to then go to town council who are the other people who have to sign the statement of interest in mid-March They would then have to vote in early April and then we would submit the statement of interest by April 12th that MSPA then takes months to review all the statements of interest they receive and By December 11th of this calendar year 2019 the MSP will vote whether we're accepted What we know is that we need to have the consensus statement in there for us to be seriously considered This year. So that's what we're aiming for and that's what we're looking feedback feedback about in coming months I think I'll close by stating that this is very intentionally a Asking people to compromise there are people on thinking about the prior building project who felt very strongly on both sides of that and for me this is a Proposal that takes some elements of both of those opinions and puts it into something that hopefully we as a community can get behind Build consensus on and support so that our students and staff are in better facilities that promote learning at a much higher level As soon as possible I want to thank Amherst media for their work in filming this and we look forward to your feedback My email address is morris m m o r i s m at arps.org And if you want to email the school committee, it's school committee one word at arps.org Thank you so much and hope you have a wonderful day