O.B. School shines with new improvements

The $7.7 million improvement project is in its final stages.

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Next time you head to the Oak Bluffs School, you may notice a new thing or two. 

The Oak Bluffs School has made significant improvements to its campus through the efforts of selectmen, the finance committee, the capital improvement committee, and town voters, who approved the $7.7 million to fund the extensive project.

The project was led by Megan Farrell, school principal and facilities manager. The laundry list of improvements included the school’s cupola, which had extensive rot that was cleaned out and repainted; new fans and ventilation on the roof, plus new air conditioners inside the school; condensers were replaced in the fridge and freezer units. Many of the updated items were not repairable because they were so old, and had to be completely replaced. 

One of the major parts of the renovation was the school’s roof. Leaks in the membrane of the roof led to significant damage in several parts of the building, but now the roof has new gutters and shingles.

“What is really great about our school is our bones of this school are really, really great,” Farrell said of the 27-year-old building. “We’re in great, great shape.”

Members of the Parent Teacher Organization are also working on a beautification project, sprucing up the school grounds and hallways with plants.

While much of the school was updated, there are other capital improvement needs the school still has to address, such as the boilers, which have three to five more years of life left. Farrell said the boilers will be the next phase of their project.

In addition to improvements inside the school building, and with support from the Community Preservation committee, Oak Bluffs School received grants two years in a row, totaling $450,000, to redo the basketball and tennis courts, adding in a new pickleball court. The Field Fund also helped upgrade the school’s fields with a new well and new irrigation system.

“We’re really, really grateful for their support as well,” Farrell said of the Field Fund.

Reactions from students has been overwhelmingly positive. On the first day of school, students wrote Farrell a card thanking her for a new roof, and listing all sorts of things they can do now such as learn, have fun, and meet new people.

Farrell thanked town officials and voters for helping get the project funded. While $7.7 million is no small amount of money, in the long run it saves the town from having to build a completely new school, which can cost upwards of $40 million, Farrell said. 

“A lot of the kids are just saying ‘wow’ and ‘thank you,’ and you can totally see when you look outside, it just looks so much better,” Farrell said. “We have a sense of pride in our community because our community helped us and supported us. The voters of our town supported this project, knowing that we were in a critical situation.”

At the selectmen’s Sept. 10 meeting, town administrator Robert Whritenour praised Farrell’s efforts in completing the improvements.

“Special recognition goes to school Principal Dr. Megan Farrell, for her conscientious, hard work to will this project to a successful conclusion to benefit the children of our community,” Whritenour said.

While the entire project is now at substantial completion, Whritenour said there’s still a punch list of items such as edge metals, roof transitions, fan noises, and exposed duct pipes that needs fine-tuning. The town will bring in a third-party commissioning agent to do a full review of the project to make sure all components perform to specification. 

“The scope and the scale of the renovations that took place at that facility this summer — that was a bear to get it done,” Whritenour said. “On time, under budget.”