The Island is less than two weeks away from voting on its most expensive building project ever. And on the eve of the consequential vote, with only a few more public discussions left on the docket, the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School (MVRHS) building committee posed a question to themselves, one that many Islanders have asked for months: Why does this project cost so much?
“You hear a lot of people talking about, ‘Why is it more?’” Jim Mahoney, school committee member, said at a meeting on Tuesday. “You have to do everything and more to get it here and get the project moving.”
The high price tag for the renovation and addition of the regional high school is part of an animated discussion across the Island — at dinner parties, coffee shops, and quick run-ins at the supermarket. Many property owners, who will shoulder an estimated $256 million of the cost burden (plus $180 million in interest over 30 years of payments), have expressed hesitations about the total price, most recently estimated at $333.5 million, which is higher than any other project ever built on Martha’s Vineyard.
The simple answer: Costs to build on the Island are steeper than on the mainland. And yet, many other school building projects across the states, albeit in larger school districts, are much more costly.
The less-simple answer is multifaceted and not set in stone, as the cost of any building project is subject to change over the course of planning and construction. If the price increases, school officials said at the meeting, it has to be approved by voters again.
The vote is on June 2 at each town’s polling sites, and no matter which way the vote goes, millions of dollars need to be spent on the building for repairs.
Here are the details
- Building materials are more costly on the Vineyard. And tariffs imposed by the Trump administration on steel and lumber have increased the price of raw materials.
- There’s a high payout for transporting, housing, and feeding workers, who have to be hired from off-Island because no Vineyard businesses are qualified to construct high schools to state standards.
- The increase in square footage of the school is a requirement of the state agency that is set to reimburse taxpayers with about $71 to $75 million of the project, which means decreasing the price by limiting the size is not an option for project planners.
- The cost to build or renovate a high school is skyrocketing across the state.
Billy Dillon, a Chilmark representative on the school committee and a local carpenter, pointed to what he calls the “Island factor” regarding construction on the Vineyard. This phenomenon describes a higher cost of building projects on the Island versus the mainland. “The costs generally are 25 to 30 percent more, and there are a lot of reasons,” Dillon said. He pointed to higher costs for materials, plus the transport and accommodation of workers.
He said concrete is $200 a yard off-Island. Here, it’s $240. A dumpster is $900 off-Island, and $1,500 on the Vineyard, he added. “All these things are things that add up,” Dillon said.
What the extra distance in travel and work means for the project is that materials could always go up in price. “The only thing we control is doing it now,” Dillon said. “If we wait, it’s going to cost more.”
Although the estimated total cost of the project is far higher than other buildings on the Vineyard, it’s nearly in line with other high school building projects across the state, which have dramatically risen in cost in recent years.
Since the COVID pandemic, construction costs for schools have spiked. A Boston Globe report found that since 2022, the cost of high school rebuilds cross the $100 million threshold. And a state record was hit this year when estimates for a full rebuild of Lexington High School came in at $660 million for the total project.
Another school project that is similar in population size to MVRHS is Watertown High School. It has 720 students enrolled; MVRHS has 744. The Watertown project is proposed at $220 million; MVRHS’s full renovation and addition plan is 35 percent more. And the total proposed cost of the Watertown High School project comes in at 15 percent less than the amount of the project Island taxpayers will be responsible for, which is $256 million.
While questions continue to swirl in private conversations across the community, school committee members said that they haven’t heard many concerns at the educational sessions and tours they’ve offered through the past year. But that’s also because they haven’t had a lot of attendance.
“It’s been very frustrating and unclear why no one is coming,” Sally Rizzo, a Tisbury representative on the school committee, said to the other members. She urged them to get the word out about the events, and committee members discussed new ways they could bring the issue to the forefront of Island talks.
If the project is voted down at the Island-wide vote on June 2, many of the repairs on the school building, namely the central air system, asbestos under the floorboards, mold in the walls, leaks and floods, and mechanical issues, will have to be fixed anyway within the next few years. This is due to the health risks many of these deficiencies cause to students and teachers.
The cost of these needed repairs could still exceed $200 million if the entire building project is not approved, and would not result in a fully renovated school for students. The vote on June 2 would also allow the project to access a $71 to $75 million reimbursement.
“Education is the backbone of every great community, and I hope that we’ve made that really clear to people that this is something that needs to be done,” Mahoney said. “It’s an incredible amount of money, but we’ve paid attention to, ‘How do we keep control of that?’”