Hopkinton is among the rare school districts in the state that have seen an increase in enrollment. That rise is putting increasing pressure on the school board to invest in expanding and upgrading its facilities, a year after officials decided town voters wouldn’t support the price tag.
Now, the school board is considering a new proposal for the district’s three schools that it hopes voters can support at the annual district meeting in March.
On the heels of last year’s $30 million plan, the board has now refined its goals to fit a lower budget and it’s asking the public for feedback.
“What the board is going to need to do in the next couple of weeks is really decide if they want to move forward in terms of a facilities project,” board chair Liz Durant said during a public forum before the board’s business meeting Thursday at Maple Street School. “We’ve been unpacking aspects of the facilities project all fall based on a revised charge given to the steering committee after the March meeting.”
After the last plan failed to reach the voting stage, the board’s facilities project steering committee drew feedback from the community in a survey that showed residents would be more comfortable with a project in the range of $12 million to $15 million. To cut the cost, the board has pulled back on building a STEM suite at the middle-high school, redesigning the entrances at the elementary schools and revising the concept for a redesigned entrance at the middle-high school.
There are four main priorities the project aims to tackle: safety and security, accessibility that is ADA compliant, adding class space to relieve an overcrowding issue and tackling the list of deferred maintenance projects. The board was focused on hearing the suggestions of which areas the public would like them to prioritize.
The overcrowding issue stems from increased enrollment across all three schools in the district, most noticeably at the lower elementary Harold Martin School, which includes preschool and kindergarten. The school had to effectively give up its art and music rooms to make space for additional homerooms.
The trend of increased enrollment in Hopkinton, which has more than 1,000 students in the district this year, runs counter to the decreased enrollment other schools in the area have seen in recent years. And administrators in Hopkinton don’t expect this to slow down anytime soon. They believe a permanent addition in class space, likely four to six new classrooms, is necessary somewhere in the district, whether it be at Harold Martin or another school.
One idea that was thrown around was to move sixth grade from the Maple Street School to Hopkinton Middle/High School, but some residents voiced concern over having too many students in the high school which already serves grades seven through 12.
Another suggestion was to build a new permanent building for preschool and kindergarten, but steering committee chair Jay Burgess said that would drive the cost outside of their budget range.
“A standalone building gets expensive pretty quickly,” he said, noting a six-class building without office space would cost about $2.5 million before considering the cost of land.
As for security, the district is in the process of installing controlled access at all of the schools. It also wants to move the high school’s main entrance to the back of the building near the main offices, which school board members said would increase security.
The deferred maintenance issue includes a wide range of projects around the district, some of which are necessary to bring the district into compliance with New England’s secondary school accreditation organization, the New England Association of Schools and Colleges.
“We’ve been on warning for a long time,” Chamberlin said of the school’s accreditation status. The board “is making sure we’re doing the facility work that maintains accreditation.”
There will be more opportunities for the public to speak with the board in the coming months if the board decides to move forward with shaping a project to present in March.
More information on the project can be found at hopkintonschools.org/facility-project.