School officials have narrowed down plans for the Island’s regional high school building project, and estimates for the renovation and new additions come in at around a quarter of a billion dollars.
The Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School (MVRHS) project has been a contentious talking point for the past three years as it’ll be one of the largest regional projects on the Island, with more discussion to come. But at a recent public meeting, it was announced that the committee has settled on a renovation-addition plan — one of three final project designs that were submitted to a state authority. “The option for new construction was taken off the table,” Sam Hart, coordinator of special projects, said in a community meeting on Wednesday in the MVRHS library.
The latest financial figures were also publicised at last week’s meeting. While initial cost estimates were around $400 million, Hart said he was excited to report that they’ve gotten that number down to about $220-$270 million for the building plans, with a roughly 39 percent reimbursement rate from the Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA).
Hart showed the room of teachers, community members, and administrators drafted architectural designs for the new school in the MVRHS library, created by Tappe Architects, who will spearhead the building project.
The designs feature a central courtyard in the middle of the building — an area where students will theoretically have their lunch and outdoor time.
And the school will be two stories, with classrooms and offices on each floor, and enough space to hold an estimated 803 students — about 50 more students than are currently enrolled. The floor plans he showed were “high-level conceptual,” Hart said. But the design is a closer look than ever into the future of the MVRHS building.
The decision to go with the additional renovation option — instead of only renovating or a completely new building — is an effort by planners to keep the students in school. They learned from the Tisbury school building project that moving students to and from a building during construction, and creating temporary spaces, had its difficulties.
Choosing to instead work on each respective side of the building comes with its own challenges: namely noise and distraction. But it ensures that students will have a place to learn all the way through.
“For the majority of the time, students stay in the building and then flip over,” MVRHS principal Sara Dingledy said. This enables, she said, for students to maintain a sense of stability and security in their daily lives, albeit a louder learning environment.
The percentage each town will pay for the project — based on terms officials from each town agreed to in prior meetings, negotiated nearly three years ago — were publicised by Hart, with community members and teachers asking questions immediately about the rates.
Edgartown will be paying a larger percentage (30 percent) and Aquinnah will be paying the least (2.4 percent). But because of the different municipal tax structures in each town, Tisbury and Oak Bluffs will likely end up taking most of the financial load, with both towns’ percentages at nearly 23 percent. Chilmark will take on about 8 percent of the financial burden, and West Tisbury, a little over 13 percent. This pay structure has created some uneasiness among the down-Island towns’ select board members, where officials have complained about the high price tag.
But an all-Island school committee dedicated to planning the project said these rates have been decided by the towns themselves.
“The town [officials] got together and hammered out this agreement,” Michael Watts, former Tisbury school committee member, said. “It was always going to be a big number, but now it’s real.”
The formula was calculated using a weighted average of 70 percent of the population of MVRHS — measured for every class from 2019 to 2023 — and 30 percent equalized property valuation for each town.
Kathryn Shertzer, a member of the All Island School Committee, acknowledged the formula used would likely receive some pushback from the towns.
“There’s a lot of challenges wrapped up in that revised capital funding formula,” Shertzer said at Wednesday’s meeting. But since the pay structure was devised with MSBA approval in mind, and was created when MVRHS started working with the state authority, Shertzer said it’s important to recognize its finality.
“Changing the formula could jeopardize the project,” she stated.
The funding formula was decided by town representatives in May of 2022, when a committee was formed to address any financial disparities or concerns.
“All six towns compromised,” superintendent Richie Smith said. “I think it was six or seven meetings where they were all in the room, all in the high school library to discuss what would be, in their minds, fair for allocation of the cost of this capital project.”
This sounds like a great “middle ground” that keeps the best interests of the students, faculty and staff in mind during the project’s execution. Impressed that the high-school administrators, their partners in the mission, and the island community could coordinate to come up with what sounds like a workable plan that will enhance facilities without being a budget-buster (not that 250 mil isn’t a huge chunk of change!). The “investment” in a sustainable building retrofitted for the times is the right call. (I hope they have excellent central AC that reaches all classroom spaces in there, with hotter late springs and early falls!)
I predict a steady decline in students starting in 3 years. Cost of living and housing to high here, means a drastic decline in new students.
The cost of living has always been high here.
Enrollment keeps going up.
What has changed?
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