As Rundlett students return, construction continues at ‘To be named middle school’

When sixth, seventh and eighth grade students swarm into Rundlett Middle School on Monday, what used to be their playing fields will be an expanse of gray and construction equipment.

By the time they file out in June 2027 for the summer, a new school building will stand.

Construction crews broke ground on the new $155 million, 206,000-square-foot school in June. Now, they’re in the thick of underground site work and have begun pouring portions of the foundation. By next June, the new building will have walls and a roof and, still, a long way to go, according to Matt Cashman, the district’s facilities director and the owner’s project manager.

Currently, the dusty lot, populated by mounds of stone, spinning concrete trucks and pops of neon yellow, resembles the surface of the moon more than it does a schoolyard.

“We get a lot of spectators,” said Jim Schultz, the project’s clerk of the works. By scanning QR codes posted around the site, neighbors can get three-week outlooks on the construction process.

Inside the protective fencing, twin, column-like machines are inserting pillars of compacted stone into the ground. One of the two machines bores shafts 22 to 33 feet down into the earth. The other takes crushed stone and rams it into a firm post. The whole process takes eight to ten minutes each, and a total of 2100 of these underground pillars, called rammed aggregate piers, will serve to steady the ground under the building in the event of an earthquake.

Working in sections, crews have begun pouring the foundation. The building’s steel bones will arrive and start going up around January, Cashman said.

Elsewhere, a web of tubes and catchbasins is being laid that will collect and filter stormwater, a system the current school was built without.

In the coming week, installation will begin for 84 geothermal wells, which will pump water, warmed or cooled by the earth’s underground temperature, up to the surface to heat and cool the school. The wells will be complete by December.

Construction won’t slow down just because school is starting.

The old teachers’ parking lot has been consumed by the construction zone, so a new one – which is part of the final school plan – has been paved near Rundlett’s exit onto Conant Drive.

Before school let out last year, students learned new routines for fire drills and sports that divert them away from the construction zone.

By the end of this academic year, Cashman said, masonry will be underway.

Construction begins on new Concord middle school with discovery of time capsules, lower costs

This is one of two and a half school years that students will spend watching the new middle school get built from inside the old one. The timeline calls for occupancy at the new school in the winter of 2028-2029.

Construction bids came in slightly lower than anticipated in the spring, school officials said, but a final not-to-exceed number is expected this fall.

A mockup of the new school faces the neighborhood on Conant Drive. The rendered entryway is emblazoned with the placeholder “TO BE NAMED MIDDLE SCHOOL.”

The district solicited suggestions from the public last winter, but hasn’t shared updates since. Superintendent Tim Herbert is slated to share a list of potential names with the school board at its next meeting on Sept. 1.