Stockbridge — As representatives from three towns are about to converge and possibly modify an agreement that governs how much each town contributes to the schools, the Berkshire Hills Regional School District released a preliminary $11 million estimate for urgent repairs to its deteriorating 50-year old high school to be undertaken over a period of five years, and confirmed that this tax anvil will fall squarely on residents in the district.
Beyond this 5-year period state and other money, however, may be available for future work on Monument Mountain Regional High — and the district is in the process of identifying what those future needs might be.
Nevertheless, because the district’s regional agreement currently says each town pays for its school assessment based on how many of its students attend school, Great Barrington, with the highest population of the three, will shoulder roughly 70 percent of that tax pie unless the formula is changed. For Great Barrington voters, it was this paying so much more than Stockbridge and West Stockbridge, for the most part, that twice sunk the district’s attempt to renovate Monument High, and which divided the town, plunging it into a Shakespeare-worthy drama rich with intrigue and mischief. It eventually prompted a “three-pronged approach” by the district to not only prioritize those repairs that cannot wait, but to also address taxpayer confidence and educational needs.
Had the project passed, the Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA) would have paid for nearly half the $51 million upgrade and rehabilitation. MSBA funding may possibly be available in the future with the submission of a new Statement of Intent (SOI) in the next year or two, according to both Superintendent Peter Dillon and School Committee member, Richard Bradway, who also chairs the Buildings and Grounds subcommittee.
The period for submitting an SOI for 2015 closed in January of this year, two months after the last failed vote. Both Dillon and Bradway said there were a number of reasons to wait before going back to the MSBA.
“It didn’t make sense to submit an SOI two months after two failed votes,” Dillon said. “We are now on the edge of some potential changes, but it’s still premature.”
Dillon said since the district might potentially see some form of collaboration that would pull more students in from a surrounding district, among other changes, it is too early to craft an SOI that would specify details like how big the building should be. “We should see what happens with those things,” he added. In the meantime, he said, the district can’t ignore the realities of a deteriorating school.
“We have 500-plus students in the building getting educated, and we have an obligation to at least address the most pressing needs. We’re fixing things as we need to.”
“If the MSBA wants to give us money we’re happy to take it,” Dillon added, “but our impression is that what they are interested in is funding a substantial renovation, not piecemeal.”
“Our initial sense,” Bradway wrote in an email, “is that the MSBA is interested in funding a comprehensive project and not smaller ones. This is based on the feedback we received from the MSBA after the last failed vote. It seems we may not qualify for [the] accelerated repair [program] even though our facility is well maintained. This is because a number of items are well beyond their anticipated operating lifespan.”
Accelerated repair program funds are for schools that are otherwise “sound,” but need something fixed or replaced — like a roof or boilers, according to the MSBA. At the moment, the MSBA does not consider the Monument Mountain Regional High School building to be in good working condition.
“Based on the current state of the building,” Dillon said, “the MSBA is not going to fund a partial renovation.”
Time is a tricky element here. “Filing an SOI and actually working with the MSBA to determine reimbursement takes time,” Bradway noted. “The last go round took approximately 3 years. It took another 3 years to be in a position to bring a project to the town for a vote…to further complicate things, if we do qualify for a reimbursement, there is no guarantee that we will secure 48 percent again. After all the budget hoo-ha with the transition from [former Gov.] Deval Patrick to [Gov.] Charlie Baker, we probably won’t see anything close to 48 percent.”
MSBA Press Secretary Daniel Collins last November confirmed with The Edge by phone and email that “Our November 19 email to the district does not leave the door open for BHRSD to apply for reimbursement under the accelerated repair program. Monument Mountain RHS would not be a candidate for that program.”
The email did nothing to soothe warring factions. Opponents of the renovation project had assumed the school was eligible for accelerated repair funds, and some accused the district of hiding this option, convincing enough voters it was true. When it was clear the school was ineligible for accelerated repair money, renovation supporters lashed out.
Collins then lobbed this grenade: “The district’s next opportunity to submit a Statement of Interest (SOI) to the MSBA for a potential project would be in 2015. Just so you know,” he added, “the MSBA received 227 (SOIs) in Fiscal Year 2014. One hundred and eight of these SOIs were for potential Core Program [renovation] projects. In reviewing SOIs, the MSBA identifies the school facilities that have the greatest and most urgent need based on an assessment of the entire cohort of SOIs that we receive for that given year.”
“Nothing’s changed since that letter,” says School Committee Chairman Steve Bannon, of the MSBA’s original email that closed the door on accelerated repair funds. Bannon also said that the MSBA’s process takes too long for it to fund the more urgent Monument repairs needed over these next 5 years.
Bradway said the $11 million proposed capital plan is also an effort to get the building to where the MSBA might consider it as having undergone continued maintenance that would make the building “sound” in the eyes of the MSBA.
Bradway said the school committee still has to approve that repair proposal, which includes a “worst case scenario” of more than $2 million in asbestos and lead abatement. The roof replacement alone, with its layer of lead paint, is estimated to cost $4.3 million. Due to the expense, the district decided to wait until the 5th year to make the roof replacement.
An SOI can be filed after the School Committee approves a new plan.
“We prioritized our 5-year plan so that we can address items up front that either probably won’t last (repairing the second boiler), or are items that will provide us a return on investment in a reasonably short term (updating the HVAC and windows),” Bradway wrote. “Additionally, we decided to work on updating classrooms so that we could achieve two ends… 1) we make an effort to update educational capacity, which helps our cause with the MSBA and 2) we have a baseline for determining what it will cost to do other work down the road, namely in the area of hazardous material abatement.”
As for a future accelerated repair SOI, Bradway wrote, “the devil is in the details…most of the items we have that are immediate needs, are items that are well maintained and well used, but in a number of cases, very old. We are at a point that sourcing replacement parts for a number of things is no longer possible.”
Timing continues to complicate the matter. “In the event that we are not able to engage with the MSBA till 3-5 years out, the School Committee will have to decide how we address updating the high school in the meantime. It is extremely unlikely that we can go 5 years and not do anything.”
And so the school district continues to work on its finances as part of the three-pronged plan. Dillon said the district, for instance, has offered to also oversee the Shaker Mountain School, Lee Public Schools and the Farmington River districts, all of whom are looking for superintendents. A shared services group is meeting to find ways to save, Dillon added.
“I don’t know how many of these will bear fruit, and I don’t know how many we could actually do,” Dillon said of overseeing the other districts, noting that there may be a “tipping point.”
And the newly formed Regional Agreement Committee will clean up a dated agreement, and possibly tackle the way this three-town pie divvies up its school dollars. It was officially formed last week, Dillon said, and is composed of residents, board members, and school committee members, all from the three towns (see list below). The committee has its first meeting on December 2, where Massachusetts Association of Regional Schools representatives who have helped shepherd the district through the early stages of this process will be on hand.
Whatever that Regional Agreement Committee comes up with will have to go to all three town meetings for a vote. “Whatever parts of the new agreement are supported by the towns will go into effect,” Dillon said. “If there are parts that aren’t, then whatever we have would remain.”
The Regional Agreement Committee meets December 2, at 6:30 p.m. in the district’s Stockbridge offices.
The Regional Agreement Committee
Great Barrington Citizens:
Chip Elitzer, Carolyn Ivory, Dave Benham
Stockbridge Citizens:
Mark Sprague, Bronly Boyd, Fred Rutberg
West Stockbridge Citizens:
Alan Thiel, Henry Baldwin, Lou Oggiani
Select Board and Finance Committee Reps:
Great Barrington — Dan Bailly, Michael Wise
Stockbridge — Chuck Gillett, Jay Bikofsky
West Stockbridge — Curt Wilton, Andrew Krauss
School Committee Reps:
Great Barrington — Richard Dohoney, Bill Fields
Stockbridge — Dan Weston
West Stockbridge — Kristen Piasecki
